The 2018 JCU Student Recruitment campaign brief was that it should be simple, direct and focused on student employment aspirations. The initial tagline of ‘Be a … (teacher, scientist, etc)’ was used to focus on these aspirations. The campaign’s aim was to increase student enrolment and build brand awareness.
Primarily focused on digital channels, the material also needed to be adaptable for print, radio and TV, and cost effective due to budget cutbacks. The campaign was to last two years with the design flexible enough to be adapted for various sub-campaigns: promoting undersubscribed courses; unique selling points, and key marketing messages. Audiences included mature age students, school leavers, postgraduate, interstate and international students. The sub-campaigns also promoted new courses such as the Online Bachelor of Education and Master of Tourism and Hospitality.
Digital campaign material consisted of artwork for Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Google Display Network advertising. Several also included Google AdWords and lead generation through marketing automation.
Campaigns included:
• Student Recruitment – enrolment campaigns for February and July each year. Focused on occupations, aspirations, etc predominantly through social media channels.
• JCU Branding – Two carousels of artwork used to promote JCU marketing statements and unique selling points.
• Promotion of specific undersubscribed courses and colleges
• Non-School Leaver Campaign – Mature age and postgraduate students.
• Change of Preferences – Aimed at high school students who wanted to change their course enrolments.
• Enrolment information sessions
• Meet us in… – to advertise JCU roadshows held in Darwin, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
• New courses – Bachelor of Education Online, Master of Tourism.
• Tertiary Access Course campaign – advertising the TAC pathway to a full university degree for those who don’t qualify in a traditional way.
I created the artwork and developed the advertising copy. I made slight changes to each campaign iteration (every six months) to help keep the content fresh. For example, ‘Be a geologist’ became ‘be an original rockstar’, ‘be a teacher’ became ‘be a life-changer, starting with yours’.
Artwork image choices prioritised authentic JCU student photos from our own image library, but used commercial image libraries when we had nothing suitable. The campaign commenced in January 2019 and, while it officially ended at the end of 2020, the style has continued to be used and adapted for ongoing campaigns and JCU branding. In total I created 615 individual pieces of artwork and copy for the campaign.
