Case study

Being a world-class institution with internationally recognised degrees, GradSchool boasts the expertise to assist students in designing and implementing a postgraduate program, which fits in with their busy schedule and lifestyle. Read Hide the full case study

Background

GradSchool is the University of Newcastle’s dedicated arm for postgraduate programs, which offers students and professionals alike a platform for rapid progression in their chosen field and/or a leap in a new exciting direction.

Being a world-class institution with internationally recognised degrees, they boast the expertise to assist students in designing and implementing a postgraduate program, which fits in with their busy schedule and lifestyle.

Pioneering online learning from the start, using multiple mode study options (face-to-face, online, or a blend of the two) and progressive technologies, GradSchool offers students postgraduate degrees which can be completed in their own time, at their own pace, when and where they want it.

As part of their ongoing recruitment drive, GradSchool identified five priority program/disciplines that they wanted to actively promote throughout the Tri 1/Sem 1 period to prospective students in the Newcastle/Hunter/Sydney regions. These were Education, Nursing, Business Psychology, Project Management in the Built Environment and Master of Business Administration (MBA).

Headjam have collaborated with GradSchool since 2009, and were again engaged in this recruitment project to develop a new, engaging and effective creative campaign for the five priority disciplines, to encourage people to choose GradSchool over other competitors in the marketplace. The campaign needed to be multi-disciplined across digital, print and outdoor media.

Objective

To increase postgraduate domestic numbers for the campaign's programs offered via GradSchool for the University of Newcastle. In total, the overall objective was to achieve 47 enrolments across the three trimesters as a result of both internal and external Tri 1 activity.

Target Audience

Using GradSchool’s segmentation framework, the campaign was to target individuals in key Australian cities in the outlined industries:

+ Education

+ Nursing

+ Business Psychology

+ Project Management

+ Business Administration

We were also required to reach two specified groups, who were personality profiled by GradSchool as Eagles and Owls.

+ Eagles: Want to complete their degree quickly and efficiently and don’t need any F2F. Enjoys working alone and ideally online.

+ Owls: Wants to complete their degree in their own time and pace. Likely they already completed a university post of an undergrad degree. In it for the knowledge.

Consumer Proposition

Must-have, world class, flexible postgraduate degree.

Desired Consumer Response

'I chose GradSchool over others, because it provided me great courses in a flexible way that helped me with juggling my life, family and work'.

Creative Solution

Our consideration of the target market for this campaign formed the basis of our creative solution. The varying degrees of involvement and types of learning people enjoyed, informed the direction that we took during the ideation phase.

During our initial brainstorming, we all agreed that career progression was a generic motivator across all audiences, and not a campaign message. We took it as a given that our target audience wants to further their career, and while we considered that the body copy within the campaign would talk about the benefits that doing a Masters degree would have on their career, the headline would instead convey a key message that resonates with the target audience.

Despite the overarching campaign message being the same for the two segmented audience types, the characteristics of the audiences were different and therefore, we addressed these differences through the use of imagery. Those looking to complete a postgraduate course quickly tend to work full-time, are extremely busy, and have limited time available to study. They are all about moving forward in their professional life and reaching the top rung of that corporate ladder. Others are more likely to be in the earlier stages of their career, and are focussed on the task of learning and getting the most out of career opportunities. Everyone is moving around them, but they are still.

We devised two image setups that represented these two segments. Both of these reinforced the headline ‘at your own speed’ in two distinct ways. The chosen photographic style was dynamic, punchy and eye-catching, to cut through the cluttered digital and real world landscapes.

We planned and executed a photoshoot in order to generate unique and distinct imagery for this campaign, specifically for GradSchool.

As part of the campaign, we also designed unique microsites for each of the five program/disciplines being advertised in the Trimester 1 period. This allowed us the flexibility to appropriately attribute and distinguish Headjam leads the numerous amount of internal activities which were also supporting and promoting the campaigns throughout this period.

The outcome was a really strong campaign that was rolled out via online display, EDMs, LinkedIn, Facebook, customised lead generation program websites and outdoor media. It was a campaign with longevity that didn’t limit or exclude other programs or disciplines that might be rolled out by GradSchool in the future, and therefore one that could evolve with GradSchool’s future recruitment needs.

The dynamic creative positions GradSchool more appropriately as the pioneers of fast and flexible postgraduate education and sets them apart from the competition by moving them beyond the obvious in the minds of their target audience.

Evaluation

The targets set by GradSchool for this campaign were incredibly ambitious and the overall outcome was incredibly successful. Throughout the 3-month campaign period the following results were achieved:

29,655 individual unique users viewed the campaign microsites

40,795 website sessions

436 unique form

submissions for in-market program/disciplines

497 applications for in-market programs submitted

295 enrolments for in-market programs

The campaign had a multi-pronged approached and was a combination of both external (Headjam) and internal (GradSchool) efforts, however Headjam’s specific efforts accounted for 25% of GradSchool’s overall online traffic throughout the campaign period.

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