Ask Benji FAFSA Assistant

LINK worked with a coalition of higher education leaders in Arizona to develop and launch a brand for “Ask Benji,” a first of its kind multilingual chatbot, powered by artificial intelligence that is designed to help students and families complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) as quickly and easily as possible. Arizona has one of the lowest FAFSA completion rates in the country, and Benji was launched to reverse that trend and help make postsecondary education more affordable and accessible for the state’s students and families. Following a compressed research phase that included focus groups with students to hear their thoughts on how Benji should look and the messages it should convey, the LINK team rapidly developed and launched a comprehensive brand for Benji in a very short timeframe (approximately four weeks).

Brand elements developed by team LINK include a comprehensive brand suite; an array of collateral to help spread the word about Benji among students, parents and families, and educators in the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas; and an integrated mobile responsive website. Additionally, LINK stood up Benji’s social media channels, developed and published content for those channels, and launched a social media campaign to further drive awareness about Benji to potential users. Through our paid and organic engagement, we earned a total of 4,840,538 impressions via digital outreach, reached 280,144 unique people across several platforms, generated 30,104 clicks to askbenji.org website, and received 9,580 post engagements (likes, shares, comments, follows, saves, and clicks to Benji’s social channels). Since Benji launched in early October 2019, more than 35,000 people have “asked Benji” by texting in their questions about the FAFSA and higher education.