St. Mary’s University is launching a multimedia advertising campaign today designed to pique potential students’ interest in the Halifax school.
The campaign includes transit shelter creative, print and online ads, and posters in Nova Scotia malls and high schools.
The creative features actual St. Mary’s students in a variety of settings, from an organic chemistry student in a lab to a global business undergrad in Japan. In each case, the individual’s student identification card is superimposed over their actual face.
The copy, meanwhile, uses different riffs on the campaign’s "Get closer" theme. In the ad featuring the global business student, for example, the line reads, "Get closer to the cultures that fascinate you."
Halifax agency Trampoline Branding and Design handled creative duties for the campaign.
"It captures the university spirit of being able to go places with your degree," said Steve Proctor, special projects, external affairs at St. Mary’s. "It ties the idea of an education at St. Mary’s with an ability to go someplace in the world beyond."
Brad Dykema, creative director for Trampoline, said his shop was looking to show how the intimacy of the St. Mary’s campus fosters student success while at the same time tweaking the messaging typically favoured by smaller universities.
"A lot of smaller universities take the approach that the professors know your name and other clichés like that," said Dykema. "We wanted to avoid those specific clichés."
St. Mary’s will launch a Facebook-based contest next week that invites prospective students to create their own version of the student-card ads. Visitors to a special contest page on the school’s Facebook site can choose a visual background and upload a photo of themselves that will appear in the student card within that image. Contestants are also asked to list one of their career goals.
The winner of the contest will receive a MacBook.
In addition to the contest, Trampoline has also worked with St. Mary’s to spruce up the school’s overall Facebook presence, consolidating its various individual Facebook pages–for example, its alumni and future students locations–into a single main page.
