Rethinking Student Engagement: Unlocking the Media Connection for a London University.
Objective
Despite extensive brand work to refine its message, our client, a London-based university, was primarily attracting older students and not “traditional” university audiences, i.e. school leavers. They believed press and media activity had more potential to connect to this audience and drive brand awareness. Research was thus required to understand how they interact with the media and what messaging, language and tone of voice would resonate.
Approach
To overcome this audience’s complicated relationship with content, an innovative technique was used: a behavioural prompt in the form of a vibrating alarm watch that nudged participants to record behaviours from the preceding hours. This foundation task was followed by indepth interviews exploring the needstates identified in their task and the types of content that would motivate them to engage further.
Impact
Off the back of this project every output from the smallest note to key advertising messages is put through the lens of the project findings to ensure the message will have the desired impact, be viewed as often as possible and keep the university at the front of mind for future applicants and current students throughout the university life.