Wilkes University badly wanted 18-year-old Nicole Pollock to be part of its freshman class this fall—so much so that it made her the star of her own ad campaign.
The small, private school in northeastern Pennsylvania plastered Pollock’s name on billboards, pizza boxes and gas pumps—and even aired a commercial on MTV—in hopes of getting her to enrol. As one message put it: “We just hope you’re on your way to Wilkes University next year.”
Mission accomplished: Pollock recently picked Wilkes over her hometown University of Scranton. Even better for Wilkes, the ads put it on the radar screen of many of Pollock’s college-bound classmates.
The quirky US$120,000 ad campaign, which also featured seven other students, helps Wilkes stand out in a crowded college marketplace. It also demonstrates the lengths to which some colleges are going to reach today’s media and marketing-savvy teenagers, who are just as likely to shop for a school on the Internet as glossy brochures and college fairs.
Increasingly, schools are using podcasts, virtual tours on YouTube, live chats and other interactive technologies to get their messages out.
Wilkes’ ads, now in their second year, are focused on the university’s traditional recruiting area in northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as the Allentown-Bethlehem region to the south, and the Philadelphia suburbs, Long Island and Binghamton, N.Y.
“This is pretty trendsetting and forward-thinking,” said Nancy Costopulos, chief marketing officer of the American Marketing Association, which runs a yearly symposium for colleges and universities. “It positions Wilkes as an innovative and fresh kind of school.”
The university picks applicants from markets where Wilkes wants to promote itself and who have a “mix of talents and determination,” said Jack Chielli, Wilkes’ director of marketing. Applicants featured in the ads must consent to have their names used.
The ads are the brainchild of Philadelphia marketing firm 160over90, which had a mandate from Wilkes to convey the message that the school gets to know its students personally and pays close attention to their needs.
Some examples:
- “Lake Lehman senior Greg Heindel: You give your time at the soup kitchen, the firehouse, and your church summer camp. Wilkes University would like to give you something—a top-quality education.”
- “Hey Kristen Pecka. Only your closest friends at Central Catholic call you Pecka-lecka-lecka. Choose Wilkes University and add 2,362 more people to that list.”
- “Scranton High senior Nicole Pollock: Our goal at Wilkes University is to be as much a mentor as your mother has been. (Now, if we could only make her ravioli.)”
That last one, on a billboard close to Pollock’s high school, made her mother cry.
Each ad also includes an invitation to “call a Colonel”—the school’s nickname—and provides a phone number that plays a recorded message from a Wilkes student.
