Latest Work: Grand Canyon University
With high school seniors everywhere beginning to make their college commitments, we thought now would be a good to time to show some of the work we’ve been doing for Grand Canyon University. Few industries are more competitive than secondary education. There are thousands of colleges a high school student could consider, and making it to the final consideration set can be a challenge for any institution of higher learning. You’ve probably seen our television spot if you live in the southwest or in southern California, but that’s only a small part of how we’re helping this private christian higher education stay top of mind for graduating students and parents. (Just in case you’ve missed it, here’s our :60 Spirit spot below.)
One of the more dynamic projects we have undertaken was a personalized digital site for potential freshman. Instead of simply providing a form to fill out, we took the opportunity to build an authentic GCU experience catered to that student, that also demonstrated a bit of GCU’s personality. Yes, it lead the student to ask for more information, but we wanted it to be more. We included a multimedia introduction to the school, a campus tour, downloadable content, and a chance to further customize their experience via an interactive dorm room mini-fridge where they could load their own Instagram photos from their feed. Students could then share their creation on their Facebook news feed, which in turn invited their friends to initiate their own look into GCU. When it was all said and done the site saw a 13% form conversion rate and helped turn interested students into advocates for the GCU experience.
Digitally speaking we built the site initially as a parallax site (which ‘fakes’ dimension and movement by letting the mouse scroll mimic a change in the viewer’s perspective.) This has been a pretty hot trend in development over the last few years, but we ended up adding enough substance and narrative to it that the effect took a back seat to the content. In other words, it wasn’t a shallow experience. By showing them a taste of what the university is all about and connecting that to them as individuals, we didn’t need to ask the students to fill out a form. The experience was so engaging it convinced them to seek out a relationship with the school of their own accord.
You can try it out by typing this url: FirstName.LastName.futurelope.com
8 Semesters
On the more traditional side, we also concepted, designed and produce two separate viewbooks for Grand Canyon University. Acting as the proverbial first impression, these viewbooks needed to transport potential students into picturing themselves at GCU. While the parent viewbook needed to give enough information about the GCU school experience that they would feel comfortable sending off their precious offspring. For the students we decided to walk them through a whirlwind tour of what 8 Semesters of student life would look, feel and be like at GCU.
For the parents, we wanted to show them what college life would be like for them too, as well as provide them with all the information they would need to make a sound decision for their young student. These books are sent to any interested student by mail, to hundreds of high schools, and handed out personally during campus tours. One can’t overestimate their importance, especially when they have to stand out from the crowd. Every school produces a viewbook, we had create a compelling way to share the Canyon story and facilitate a student’s vision of becoming a ‘Lope.
GCU Outdoor Campaign
Phoenix is in the middle of becoming a college town and GCU is becoming the city’s university. In an effort to paint the town purple, we’ve developed an outdoor campaign that utilizes the look of the 8 Semesters piece above and shares a little message about the university along the way. These outdoor boards were done in both traditional and digital formats, and are all rotated around the city, so that a resident will gradually see almost all of the creative. They are big, bold and if you live in Phoenix—you can’t miss them.
These are just a few of the projects we’ve been partnering with GCU on; there are plenty more in the works. And if you have a high school student in your home, we believe we’ve made a strong case why Grand Canyon University should be one of the school’s you consider visiting this year.
‘Lopes Up!
