Belong here, at unsw
Finding a new home is hard. It’s an emotional decision and a little traumatic. Just imagine how much harder it is to make decisions when you’re moving out of home to go to uni. Some students come from overseas, some from interstate and some from regional and rural areas; for them it’s hard to figure out where to live.
For the first time ever, UNSW found that they had empty beds in their on-campus accommodation. But why? After some interviews and surveys we figured out that students craved an understanding of the culture and inner-workings of the colleges and apartments. It wasn’t enough to read a description on the uni’s website. The students who were surest about their accommodation were those who already had an insight: an older sibling had attended, a friend from high school made a recommendation, or they’d message someone they found on Facebook for their perspective.
I concepted a ‘life in a semester’ video that energised this insight. Even in this pre-Tik Tok period, we could see that this was a generation and audience that relished candour and rawness. Unlike people of my generation who prefer to curate and qualify their social media, there’s more of a turn towards the ‘Stories’ side of life rather than being a slave to the grid.
So our video had to take more of a spontaneous, not-too-glamourous slant to counter the traditional marketing of campus accommodation. The video team and I drew inspiration from the candid, unfiltered videos and snaps that students were already posting to Instagram.
The campaign returned a 14x ROI and reached 150% of its click targets.
Then it was time for the second phase.
The college students felt strongly about the differences between college cultures (even if people on the uni’s marketing team didn’t quite agree). And they’d asked the uni to create a digital ‘Sorting Hat’ for future students. The marketing team thought the idea was worth trying as long as it could be paired with a strong digital campaign.
So I got to work creating a quiz about a group of colleges and apartments that I’d never set foot into. That meant re-reading interviews and student experiences, stalking social media pages, doing 3D tours and getting feedback from the college deans.
The result is a short, interactive engagement which gave insights into the culture and values of each accommodation option. The results cater to older, self-sufficient students as well as extroverted and active students who are more interested in being around people. And everyone in between.
Peppered with emojis and a more youthful brand voice than UNSW’s own, but it avoids any pop cultural references so as not to head into “How do you do, fellow kids?” territory.
Because each ‘bed’ in accommodation guarantees strong revenue for a whole year, the campaign only needed to bring in a moderate number of leases to pay off. But it went far beyond UNSW’s goals.
With the aim to get just 500 unique visitors to the quiz, we hit 5000 unique visitors instead. And got a 79% completion rate. (Which made the multi-day agony of figuring out how to score the back-end logic a little bit worth it.)
With 1255 leads captured, a whole 151 lease applications were generated — 300% above the goal of 50 applications.
It was a successful campaign and it came down to some foundational ideas:
Listen to your audience. But also stalk them on social media.
Where people are already curious and invested in an idea (like going to uni), you’re better off showing them something authentic than glossy marketing. You’re not selling them anything new, you’re reassuring them instead.
It’s pretty powerful to locate people in a like-minded community when they’re about to go through a massive life change. This campaign is about offering the comfort of a tribe as people embark on a new adventure.
Everyone loves a Buzzfeed quiz.