Balancing Consistency with Flexibility.
In the first year UEA met 101% of its recruitment objective, one of only three UK institutions to do so.
This is UEA
Student recruitment journeys are, in marketing terms, long and involved. Very few consumer decision-making journeys span years, require multiple points of intervention, and involve a comparable volume of communication.
The challenge for communication is balancing flexibility (so you can use relevant messages at relevant points in the journey) with consistency (so that campaigns can be recalled after multiple exposures). Not to mention finding a single campaign vehicle that makes as much sense when you’re talking about academic research as it does when you’re talking about clubbing.
This is UEA was born of that need – a consistent, repeatable campaign umbrella that links together all the communication along a single recruitment journey. Flexible enough to be relevant, memorable enough to be effective, varied enough to stay interesting.
Initial communications were designed to build foundational understanding, as well as concentrate on the impact the University of East Anglia (UEA) makes through its research focus. As the recruitment cycle continued, messages expanded to encompass the breadth of opportunity on offer to students at UEA.
When the campaign entered a period of more focused conversion we integrated emotional messaging and visual leads, flexing the campaign to engender a strong sense of belonging on the basis that the final decision at the end of a prospective student’s recruitment journey is so often governed by a feeling of ‘fit.’
We complemented this phase of the campaign with an organic social media campaign using the hashtag #HomeOfTheWonderful to aggregate user-generated content that showcased the diversity, vibrance and community of the UEA experience.
During Clearing – where we needed to target audiences who hadn’t been on the full communication journey with us – we condensed the entire story into a single, high-reach 30″ film for use across paid social media, cinema and VOD.
And by tightly controlling the identity it meant the whole journey was visually and tonally consistent, giving prospective students a holistic experience of UEA right up to the point that they enrol.
In the first year of This Is UEA the university met 101% of its recruitment objective, in an environment where only three UK institutions met their targets.
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