On Monday, Oct. 3, Longwood University launched a new marketing campaign to attract high school students. The campaign, which was developed in August and will run through the end of November, features animated commercials and online advertising.
According to Gina Caldwell, media specialist for Longwood, the school has partnered with the public relations company CRT/tanaka since 2004 to create marketing plans and strategies. Together, they developed key messages to attract prospective students: real world experience through the required internship, small class sizes, leadership potential, and academically challenging classes.
For the past few months, Longwood and CRT/tanaka have worked to create a new marketing and advertising campaign. The marketing campaign consists of two commercials that air in the Northern Virginia, Richmond and Tidewater areas. These three locations were selected due to the high number of applicants Longwood traditionally receives from these areas. The campaign consists of four commercials, all of which are posted on whylongwood.com and the university's YouTube account.
The commercials started airing on Tuesday, Oct. 4 on basic cable, primarily on MTV, BET, VH1, Cartoon Network and other similar channels based on their viewer demographic. These commercials will air in only the state of Virginia during prime-time television and popular shows.
According to David Hooper, director of web communications, the marketing team received a $50,000 budget for the production of the commercials and a $17,500 budget for the online campaigns.
Longwood and its marketing team developed commercials in 2007 that aired until 2008. Those commercials featured students and faculty. The new series of commercials, however, are designed to attract prospective students through their use of animation.
Christian Munson, associate vice president for CRT/tanaka and primary contact for Longwood, said, "Nielsen Media reported in 2009 that evening animation was the most popular genre for teens."
Hooper said, "The reason to do something bold and different is because the latest research shows there is a lack of awareness of Longwood of prospective students in Virginia, so these [commercials] are created to stand out from all the other traditional higher education marketing."
CRT/tanaka created the marketing campaign to include the cable commercials, but to also advertise the commercials on the Internet. The commercials will be on YouTube, Pandora and Faceboook banner ads. They will also be featured on network ads, which mean the commercials will show up on a network of websites.
The marketing and public relations office said the goal of the commercials is to attract more prospective students. Longwood currently has its largest freshman class, which has been a factor in creating this new marketing plan. Sallie McMullin, interim dean of admissions, said, "It's always so hard to identify exactly what makes a seventeen or eighteen-year-old make a decision."
McMullin explained she has found students choose to attend Longwood due to a combination of reasons, including the campus environment, academic influences and increased interaction with faculty while visiting Longwood during an open house event.
The "Discover the Power in You" slogan has helped market and advertise the school, encouraging students to discover how Longwood can build strong students and citizen leaders. The slogan is just one way to grab prospective students' attention and make them more interested in the university as one of their top choices. The slogan is still used in the commercials, portraying one of the university's key messages. In one of the new commercials, the slogan appears as a bumper sticker.
Another key component of this year's recruiting campaign is the new feature profile stories on the Longwood website of students, faculty, alumni and recent graduates. These profiles first appeared earlier in October and Caldwell said, "[The profiles] are helpful in a way to show prospective students what faculty are working on, how they work with students with their research, and also to show what young alumni are doing with their degrees."
The university also relies on word of mouth communication from current and former students who promote the school through their testimonials and personal experiences. According to McMullin, this year 15.2 percent of the freshmen class has a relative who attends or attended Longwood.
When the fall recruiting campaign ends in November, Longwood and CRT/tanaka will evaluate the success of the campaign in order to improve all marketing strategies. Hooper said, "We're excited to see the response we get from prospective students, some of that will be seeing increase in visits to the website, increase in application downloads, and increasing visits [to the university]."
