Royal Roads University has launched the second phase of a $1.5 million two-year rebranding and awareness campaign.
Since Cossette Vancouver revamped the B.C. school’s website, logo, signage and tagline in June to highlight the Vancouver Island university’s point of differentiation – a blended model of online and on campus learning – it has added interactive print, digital and outdoor elements to increase awareness.
Michael Milardo, creative director at Cossette Vancouver, said that the strategy behind the campaign was to use traditional media to reach a mass audience in a nontraditional way. Its secondary objective was to demonstrate personal traits such as creativity and determination to reflect the brand values of the university.
Cossette created an interactive billboard wall at the busy Burrard Skytrain Station in Vancouver and filled it with 5,000 branded pens. When all the available pens were taken by commuters, the “Life. Changing” tagline was revealed.
Other elements of the campaign included a series of transit shelter ads. One was a blank canvas with a logo in the corner and a peep hole in the middle. When someone looked in, they read “Curiosity. A trait we admire.”
“Instead of just saying ‘hey we’re different,’ my mandate for all of these pieces was to make each of them interactive and different either through an innovative use of media or a unique interactive way geared towards awareness, talkability and word of mouth,” said Milardo. “It’s the people who do exhibit these traits that are the actual people who would interact with these pieces.”
The campaign runs until September and includes outdoor ads in airports, transit stations, restobars and Skytrain stations, as well as print buys in national mainstream and business print media and online venues.
