Higher Ed
Advertising, Digital, Social Media, Strategy
Ursinus College, a liberal arts institution in Collegeville, PA, needed to attract open-minded college-bound students swiftly to hit yearly enrollment goals. With high school seniors already making decisions and only eight months left until College Decision Day (May 1st), we embraced Ursinus’s new “Purposefully Open” positioning and set to work on the challenge: how can we communicate that Ursinus defies traditional educational norms while also breaking free of higher ed advertising clichés?
High school seniors face immense pressure to choose a path in life before truly knowing themselves. That choice is tough to make when they don’t yet even choose their own bedsheets. But, unlike other colleges that box students in by forcing them to choose a path, Ursinus breaks them out, encouraging them to explore their identities and remain open to who they are destined to become.
We launched a 360-degree campaign inviting students to get lost, question everything, and fearlessly explore the world around them — without a single lab coat or campus drone shot. The campaign leveraged authentic stories from real students and alumni to create a genuine connection with prospective students.
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Despite being fully launched in market for only four months before College Decision Day, the campaign shattered online video and social media industry norms. And, it helped bolster enrollment efforts at the college, demonstrating the effectiveness of our unconventional approach at a time when small liberal arts colleges across the country were experiencing significant enrollment declines due to a variety of industry-wide issues.