Case Study: Future Design Student Campaign 2024
A letter from current students, designed by current students, with work from current students, created for future students — you!
The Future Design Student Campaign was a direct marketing campaign with multiple touch points designed, written, and curated by our student design studio, PlusCo.
Context
For many years, the Department of Art+Design in the South Carolina School of the Arts (SCSA) has offered premier art and design programming within Anderson University (SC). Specifically, the Graphic Design program has been widely recognized not only by SCSA but also by the greater university as one of its top programs of choice. In keeping with program growth, the Department of Art+Design has recently transitioned the BA in Graphic Design to a BFA in Graphic Design. This is a significant leap forward, acknowledging the level of work students are producing as well as giving the opportunity to offer an even more robust design education within an industry-recognized professional degree.
With this transition, the new BFA program has adopted its own differing needs from the other programs offered throughout the department. One of those is a focused marketing effort communicating these recent changes while also expressing our unique culture. In short, the Graphic Design program required some specific marketing attention.
Brief
For this particular project, we needed to reach prospective design students who had been accepted by the university, but had not yet committed to coming in the upcoming year. Our primary goal was to provide relevant information to this particular audience in order for them to have the confidence to make an informed decision regarding our program. Additionally, our secondary goal was to externally communicate the culture and strengths of our program through an experience specifically curated towards them.
Process
Prior to designing this campaign, the Department of Art+Design surveyed current students to learn how they discovered the program, if they had previous experience in art and design, the strengths of their educational experience, gaps, and more. These findings informed an understanding of the student experience prior to their commitment. We were able to conclude that students desired the following information but had difficulty finding it: specific program details, student organization opportunities and activities, extracurricular design opportunities, study abroad programs, student life & culture, student work, alumni work, and testimonials from students and alumni. We also learned that our social media platforms have not been helpful to prospective students due to the difficulty of being discoverable. We found this problematic due to our intentional use of it to showcase many of the items prospective students could not find.
Furthermore, we gathered research on Gen Z students, allowing us to understand their values and decision-making process. We found that they want to be pursued but given autonomy and options, they want to know less about amenities and more about what support systems exist to help them succeed, and lastly, they want to know what they will get out of the program will help them be successful in their future careers.
With this in mind, we chose to create a tactile campaign that would be mailed directly to these prospective students who had not yet committed to the program, following up with a student-to-student text message touch point. To further curate the personal experience, we decided that the content, tone, and design should specifically speak to prospective Gen Z students and express the culture of our program by being handwritten.
We went about designing a package that both exhibited our culture in its look, feel, and tone, as well as making sure that it spoke to the desires of our prospective students. This package included the following touch points: a zine, inserts, a fold-out poster, and an address label.
The zine was the primary touch point in which it specifically expressed our culture and topics of interest. To make it more personable, the content was handwritten and designed by our own student designers. The zine would also include a call-to-action to commit to the university and/or follow-on social media. This was produced on newsprint to give a textural and tactile experience, again, speaking to an authentic tone.
Inside the zine, we created two forms of inserts. The first insert was an 11” x 3” cardstock slip that included each prospective student’s name designed in typefaces that were created by student designers in this program. The other side of the insert included a handwritten note from our student design team. A second insert included a list of featured alumni portfolios from various years and areas of design, encouraging further exploration for curious students.
The fold-out poster was an external side piece which included notable facts, public recognition, and quotes from Alumni about our program. The internal spread unfolded into a poster of student work with the word “DESIGN” set in student-designed typefaces. This was also produced on newsprint.
Lastly, our address label was yet another piece that included a handwritten name and address label. The internal side included a subtle, design challenge with the prompt, “You’re now a member of a band! Design your band’s t-shirt here, then tag us on Instagram: @scsa_ad,” to provide further purpose to each touch point.
Results
After sending out each package, our student team followed up with prospective students via text message, welcoming them to Anderson University and voicing their excitement to join the program. Quantitatively, we saw a 90% increase in commitments in the course of a month.
Qualitatively, those who responded personally communicated how much it assisted them in understanding the tone of our program along with what we have to offer. For students who had already committed by the time the package was received, they expressed their increased excitement for the program.
Furthermore, when current students in the program came into contact with this design package, they were amazed, indicating that if they had received this package, it would have been beneficial and it would have helped them commit to the school right away. They also wanted a copy for themselves, asking for any extras that were produced due to the personally-curated experience.
In addition, this project was recognized by AAF Greenville, winning a Silver Addy Award for Direct Marketing.
Overall, we found that this initiative was able to effectively begin communicating the key components of our authentic, relational, holistic, faith-oriented, and purpose-driven culture, offering prospective students better insight into who we are and what our program is all about.
Project Credits
Creative Direction: Luke Anspach
Designers: Tabby Lo, Knoxie le Roux, Isabelle Rigsbee, Sydney Welch, Ethan Wright
Copywriting: Sydney Welch
