When We Grow Up

As a private university in Canada, our market research has shown that potential students are skeptical about the validity of private universities, so we are constantly working to build our reputation and brand awareness.

What makes us different is our greatest opportunity; we are flexible, accessible, online and allow people to work/live their busy lives while they study. We needed a strategy that would set us apart on an emotional level, one that would inspire and motivate by directly resonating with the experiences of our prospective students while communicating our brand advantage.

We distilled this insight down to a single but powerful initiative: our first ever national brand awareness campaign, consisting of three videos. And, we would do it in-house.

Our primary objective was overall brand awareness, with a goal of 5M impressions and a 35% view rate in the first three months post-launch, aligning with Education industry standards.

Our talented teams worked to create our new brand awareness campaign, titled “When We Grow Up,” In three videos, our characters are confronted with a thought-provoking question typically reserved for children: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In each story, the question serves as a catalyst for change. These videos now live on our digital channels and are shared via our digital advertising efforts.

The videos impactfully communicate who we are, and proudly stand out from the competition. In fact, this awareness campaign was recently featured in Strategy Online. This national initiative marks a big strategy shift for our marketing and communications planning, as we embrace a willingness to own our unique qualities instead of trying to compete with big-name competitors. It has inspired and shifted how we talk about our offerings, and we’ve embraced heartfelt, outcome-oriented alumni stories as our core storytelling strategy.

Lastly, we surpassed our KPIs! These videos have seen over 20M impressions, and a 61% view rate. We are also proud to report a CTR rate of 0.6% (with industry standard for Education sitting at 0.56%).

1: https://youtu.be/WaAHazi9S-Q?si=y6U8lsJQa2OzlC6J

2: https://youtu.be/Rfygy7ZNNx8?si=ipW7gFJJweWL2I-5

3: https://youtu.be/prh9iHrnWCY?si=TIzEQxjTdEZmWefn