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Hi, SAIC,

We’ve hand-selected these case studies to show you our range and depth in higher education marketing and advertising. As you wade through, you will see that we’ve got the strategic, creative, and media chops to help SAIC develop an airtight communications plan, inspired creative, and outstanding results.

Welcome SAIC,

On this page, you’ll find the case studies we’ve selected especially for you. All of them showcase the talent, passion, and ingenuity we put into everything we do. Reach out if you have any questions!

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Elevating awareness in an uphill market.

Bloomsburg professor and student sit in front of monitors at an on-campus media editing station

Bloomsburg University Recruitment Marketing

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Bloomsburg University Recruitment Marketing

Home Work Bloomsburg University Recruitment Marketing

The Challenge

Bloomsburg University has always been focused on student access and success, and a rebranding effort in 2019 helped to sharpen that focus. But then BU needed to enhance brand awareness, support enrollment growth, and communicate its value proposition in the crowded Mid-Atlantic higher education landscape to multiple audiences—undergraduates, transfer students, graduate students, and parents.

Strategy

Partnering with Bloomsburg’s marketing and admissions teams, idfive developed an integrated, multiyear campaign strategy, informed by audience demographic data developed during the University’s rebranding. The objective: to drive site traffic, engagement, and CTRs to the BU Admissions microsite and position “Bloom” as a top choice for prospective students and their families.

While the FY20 campaign focused primarily on brand awareness, the FY21 campaign capitalized on the increased brand awareness to deliver a hybrid brand and lead generation approach. Among the tactics added were Facebook and Instagram retargeting and creative A/B testing across the Google Search, Facebook, and Instagram campaigns.

Media

With ongoing active account management, and using the information gained from the previous years’ campaigns, the idfive media team further refined audience segmentation in FY21 by audience type and location.

Facebook social campaigns and Instagram story placements focused on driving engagement with two main strategies: prospecting and remarketing.

Prospecting ads targeted parents, students and curated high school lists, as well as newly implemented Facebook/Instagram page and website visitors lists created with existing lead and inquiry contacts.
Remarketing ads targeted recent Facebook/Instagram page and website visitors of the BU page and lookalike audiences created based on this list of users.

259

Percent above Google Search industry benchmark, Aug. to Oct. 2021

It’s been rewarding to partner with the Bloomsburg team and push the media plan to deliver more each year as capabilities in attribution and tracking have expanded.

Erinn Hesse

Associate Director of Client Services

Results

Year-over-year CTR performance, FY20-FY21:

Facebook ↑24.33%
Instagram ↑ 39.71%
Google Search ↑ 166.12%
Google Remarketing ↑ 915.24%

Banding together under a bold umbrella.

University of Hartford

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University of Hartford

Home Work University of Hartford

The Challenge

The University of Hartford created their UHart Start Strategic Action Plan as a guiding light for the next five years, then they partnered with idfive to turn their action plan into a rally cry that would generate excitement and share their vision with stakeholders and the community.

The Strategy

After analyzing UHart’s strategic plan, idfive got to work by reorganizing the plan’s contents to lead with a shared vision in its realized state, and then use goals and objectives as proof points, creating a compelling narrative for the next five years and beyond. We also reformatted the action plan into a glossy, full-color 20-page booklet that puts the University’s future in the actual hands of key stakeholders, as well as a bi-fold mailer summarizing the plan for additional audiences.Finaly, we built a robust and engaging landing page hosted on the main site that detailed UHart Start’s story while granting full transparency into the plan’s details and responsibilities.

Print Collateral

It’s nice to have a plan, but policy and strategic documentation can often look and feel sterile and calculating. Our job for UHart was to make it fun, dynamic, and useful. We started by remixing the UHart Start plan into a 20-page booklet. Leading with a bold visual representation of the UHart community’s vision, the spread showcases each goal with flair. The result is a tangible representation of UHart’s promise.

For those in the extended UHart network who are curious but not directly involved in the strategic action plan, the mailbox still offered an opportunity to showcase the vision for their beloved institution in a way that still feels real. The mailer succinctly summarizes the plan with a call to participate and engage. But even more importantly, it delivers a physical reminder of the benefits of buy-in to a donor base that rose to the occasion with a 30% increase in unrestricted donations during 2020.

Landing page

UHart’s vibrant brand color palette and pattern library beckon users to dig into strategic action and find out how to engage in key initiatives. The website rewards curiosity and exploration by progressively disclosing information to increasingly specific user questions. Along the way, custom module designs keep things visually interesting as users progress from passing interest to downloading the fully ratified policy document.

The Result

Getting people excited and engaged with a strategic plan with just policy and strategic documentation can be herculean. Using the sum of its parts and remixing it into something exciting, compelling, and full of enthusiasm is how we did it.

Since deploying the landing page, the average time-spent-on-page was around 2:28, showcasing a higher-than-average engagement rate, rather than the average of 0:52.

2:28

Landing page engagement rate

Creating tomorrow’s public health heroes.

A Drexel Dornsife student wearing glasses smiles while sitting on a bench with a slate wall background

Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health

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Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health

Home Work Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health

The Challenges

Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health has a strong foothold in its Philadelphia hometown. At the same time, it’s a nationally ranked Top 20 school with a global reputation as a leader in urban public health.

Here’s how idfive told that impactful story to a diverse audience to increase applications for the program.

In 2019, the American Public Health Association held its Annual Meeting & Expo in Philadelphia, attracting over 17,000 attendees. Dornsife had an opportunity to make a powerful statement in its hometown. The event was also an opportunity to promote Dornsife’s Master in Public Health program to the public health community.

#1

School of Public Health in Philadelphia

Using lookalikes, retargeting, and contextual tactics we were able to boost enrollments 25% YoY - 35% when including online as well as in-person enrollments.

John Love

Senior Media Strategist

Marketing/Media

The campaign focuses on the school’s global impact while reinforcing Dornsife’s strong foothold in Philadelphia. With emotional imagery and stories of Drexel Dornsife students and faculty who are solving public health problems locally and across the globe, the creative serves as both lead generation and general awareness messaging for a targeted campaign that supports Drexel Dornsife’s admissions team efforts to increase MPH program enrollments by 25% by:

Increasing brand awareness:

The volume of branded search keyword traffic to the Drexel Dornsife site
The number and frequency of ad impressions

Engaging qualified prospects

The number of requests for information submitted through the landing page
Amount of social media campaign engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc.)
Click through rates for campaign tactics

Event Promotion

idfive created an experiential conference space, sponsorship banners, charging stations, and print ads to boost brand awareness. The environmentals offered compelling stories about education and research — from national safety for firemen to research about the inequality of health in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. The campaign included strategic billboard placements and delivered ads to audiences in close proximity to the conference center to capitalize on the convention to support awareness of Dornsife’s differentiators .

Promoting the human side of online learning.

Walden University

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Walden University

Home Work Walden University

The Challenge

Walden University is one of the largest online universities in the world with over 50,000 students in over 120 countries. One of Walden’s core strengths has been developing innovative new modalities and evolving their programs to meet contemporary challenges. When they wanted to launch some of their newest, they turned to idfive for creative approaches driven by research.

Research

It’s tempting to think of “adult learners” as a monolithic category, but both we and Walden understood that nothing could be further from the truth. While most adults going back to school do share similar challenges when it comes to balancing learning with the rest of their lives, what drives them very much depends on their profession, their interests, and their ultimate life goals. Unless we knew them, we couldn’t speak to them.

MSEd

So we got to know them, and the knowledge we gained drove each unique campaign. For the relaunch of the MSEd we learned that if we were going to get noticed we had to break away from the very crowded competitive set by being bold, sounding fresh, and ditching the cliches every other program seemed to be using. Our ads featured bold, single-color backgrounds, exuberant, real-looking people who looked nothing like the ho-hum stock photos featured by other schools, and typography that evoked real-life classroom tools such as notebook paper and blackboards.

Woman standing in front of teal background laughing

MSW

In order to reach out to prospective MSW students we had to take a different approach. For these audiences Walden’s long-time emphasis on social change already resonated: our research showed that “change” was the key word when it came to motivating people to go into social work. The imagery of this campaign focused around images of real students and their stories of how their education would empower them to bring real change to their communities. Using a dark, somewhat muted palette for the background along with strong, simple sans-serif type, the effect was to put the student front and center, projecting power and determination.

Doctoral

Prospective students interested in doctoral programs had similar motivations and shared many of the same characteristics as the prospective MSW students. People interested in earning their doctorates, regardless of the discipline, were driven people determined to make real change, something many had experience with through their work with their communities. These were inspiring people and our campaign reached out to them with a story-driven approach featuring accomplished alumni in close-cropped, eyes-forward poses and short, declarative copy about their accomplishments. The effect was like having an intimate conversation with each, one designed to draw in the prospective student and inspire them to action.

Undergraduate Academy

Our research also showed that adult learners who had committed to returning to finish their undergraduate degrees after being out of school for a long time were pretty determined folks, too. They had to be because they often had to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to gain the education that would help them obtain a better life for themselves and their families. We tested two concepts for the new Undergraduate Academy with them: “It’s Your Turn” focusing on empowering their decision and “Think Again,” a phrase which pivoted on the double meanings of both “thinking again” and using education to reconsider their lives. Walden eventually chose “It’s Your Turn” and the campaign imagery focused on simple shots of “everyday” adults in the target demographic boldly filling the frame over an “It’s Your Turn” watermark background, their eyes raised towards the future drawing the viewer to the straightforward, encouraging, empowering headlines.

Celebration Slate

Cool grey

Graduation Gold

Traditional Teal

Tempo

Finally, our campaign to promote Tempo, Walden’s new self-paced modality for undergraduate learners used straight talk and bold statements to make sure that prospects knew “yeah: you got this” when thinking about completing their degrees. Knowing that employers were taking a more active role in educating their employees as a way of increasing workforce effectiveness and employee retention, our campaign addressed the needs of employers as well, speaking directly to them to emphasize that the program would be ideal for improving the effectiveness of their employees and that their financial support or support offered by giving employees time off to complete their degrees with the Tempo program isn’t a cost: it’s an investment in their own business.

Survey responses for Tempo campaign research

Campaign Optimization

Much of Walden’s media buying is handled by another agency employed strictly to handle those transactions, so idfive collaborated with them and our partners at Walden to create a wide range of formats and executions for all five campaigns. We utilized a wide range of channels in most cases, including traditional banner advertising, social media advertising, email, and, in some cases (eg. the Doctoral campaign) even print collateral such as posters.

Wherever possible, a “test, optimize, focus” approach was used, starting with multiple executions of online ads that varied headlines, imagery, and, in some cases, colors — all within brand and campaign standards, of course — which would run in flights on targeted media. Results were analyzed regularly, often on a daily basis in the early stages, and creative that performed the best replaced creative which did not yield optimal results. Using this method, the campaign was quickly optimized around the most effective ads yielding the greatest response rates.

Alumni Magazine

Walden Magazine, published twice a year for an alumni audience, highlights the contributions that Walden graduates make to their communities and the world. The 2021 Summer/Fall issue—with a theme of Finding and Building Community in a Transformative Time—took the community focus to another level. Walden already had an important story to tell: as a leader and early adopter in online education, they maintained a sense of community throughout the challenges of education in the time of Covid. But in early 2021, both of Walden’s founders, Rita and Bernie Turner passed away.

From Confronting Healthcare Disparities in the LGBTQIA+ Community to Stopping the Spread of Covid-19 in the Navajo Nation, the magazine flips from an expected, somber tone to a celebratory one. With a visual focus on what makes Walden special—people—the 2021 Summer/Fall Walden Magazine both engages its audience and honors the University’s founders in equal measure.

Redefining business school prerequisites.

A woman smiles while standing at podium during a speech in a conference room

Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

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Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

Home Work Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

The Challenge

The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School competes for students in a difficult global market – one that’s gotten even more challenging as economic, political, and demographic forces erode enrollment numbers at business schools nationwide. A decidedly different kind of b-school, Carey looked to focus on both International and domestic students who take a more holistic, mission-based approach to business—fulfilling the Carey mission to “teach business with humanity in mind.”

The Solution

Research/Analysis
Graphic Design
Copywriting
Media
Enrollment Strategy
Branding

Recruiting a proud new generation.

Baltimore Police Officer smiles, wearing sunglasses and holding a traffic control whistle in his mouth

Baltimore Police Department: A Force for Good

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Baltimore Police Department: A Force for Good

Home Work Baltimore Police Department: A Force for Good

The Challenge

A changing economy, restrictive police qualification standards, and expanding responsibilities are challenging police department recruitment efforts nationwide. For the BPD, a strained relationship with the community it serves compounded these challenges. The BPD needed an authentic yet hopeful recruitment and engagement campaign that demonstrated commitment to constitutional community policing while initiating restorative dialogue.

See the recruitment microsite.

baltimore police department full width desktop ad

Strategy

Working with the BPD and the Mayor’s Office of Performance and Innovation, idfive uncovered insights from hundreds of hours of officer and community interviews. The message was clear: the traditional macho recruitment messages weren’t going to work. The community didn’t want “cops.” They wanted the police to be a force for positive social change.
We also realized that the best way to reach the community was through the voices and stories of the officers who had been tirelessly working to do good in their own communities. By focusing on their experiences, told in their own words, we knew we’d be able to inspire a whole new generation of recruits who were committed to doing good in Baltimore.

Branding

Bold. Honest. Unflinching. We knew that those three tenets needed to inform all aspects of the campaign. The design bucked the traditional blue often associated with police, and instead featured a bold yellow and black, the colors of Baltimore City’s flag. The strong, condensed font modernized the campaign. Key elements include a main headline style, black and white photography, pops of yellow, custom icons, and the BPD shield logo. These design elements solidify the campaign’s goals and maintain brand consistency.

Black

Yellow

Campaign

The campaign tells stories of real officers who’ve made a real difference in Baltimore. It features honest portrayals of officers and messaging that focuses on the positive aspects of policing — without glossing over the challenges. The #aforceforgood campaign speaks directly to potential recruits who want to bring change to their communities.

Design & Copywriting

The campaign includes digital display ads, paid search, and social media video content as well as :60, :30, and :15 online commercials featuring interviews, body camera footage, and officer profiles. Developed in partnership with the creative agency Kapowza, #aforceforgood sparks an honest but optimistic conversation about the future of the BPD and the city.

Our strategy for this campaign was to let the officers (and their experiences on camera) we featured tell the story. The message — be a part of the greatest comeback story in America — stressed the need for positive change agents with a commitment to social good. As the campaign progressed, we provided a deeper, more visceral look into the impact of police officers. We evolved a conversation that was sparked by negative cell phone videos and court cases into the narrative of a department recommitted to community-based policing and a city’s rebirth.

Media

Online tactics allowed us to better target, measure, and manage audience segments. We focused on metro areas with demographics similar to Baltimore’s — but whose police department salaries were lower and costs of living higher. We appealed to their shared experiences and promoted the benefits of a life and career in Baltimore with social media, YouTube, display, and paid search. We also rewrote and promoted job posts on Indeed and on less traditional sites like Idealist — reframing the role of police officer as creative problem solver and community advocate. Tactics led to landing pages with promoting the audience-specific nuances and benefits of a career with BPD.

Results

The campaign has paid dividends. Between July 2019 and June 2020, applications to join the BPD have doubled and hiring is on pace to increase by 33%. In just nine months, the campaign logged 13,962,753 impressions and 265,055 audience interactions, which have driven the outstanding results.

33%

Increase to hiring pace

Refocusing on the heart of public health.

A young girl smiles while being chased by two other children in a game of tag

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Feel Good

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Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Feel Good

Home Work Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Feel Good

The Challenge

Regularly atop the U.S. News rankings, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health wanted to build on its success with an integrated campaign to attract the best public health students in the world. As a trusted partner that had previously produced award-winning work for the school, idfive was brought in to help.

The Strategy

Working with the school, idfive created an advertising campaign to appeal to the hearts and heads of top-tier students. The “Feel Good” campaign includes banner ads and magazine print ads, as well as a landing page that collects and funnels prospective students to the admissions team. Targeted to top prospects, the campaign invites students to join a school whose mission isn’t just to educate but to advance research and save lives.

The optimistic tagline “feel good about the future of the human race”—excerpted from a speech given by the school’s dean—is supported in print ads and a landing page with real stories about students, faculty, and researchers who’ve made a significant impact on the public health community. As the first-ever national campaign in the school’s 100-year history, the series of ads both persuaded top students to apply and promoted the school’s brand and public health significance to a national audience.

Results

With enhanced brand awareness and positioning as a mission-based—and mission-first—institution, the Bloomberg School strengthened its position as the largest and most highly ranked school of public health in the world.

The “Feel Good” campaign received a Collegiate Advertising Gold Award for web advertising.

There’s more where that came from. Explore our website, meet our team, and learn about idfive.

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