UiO: The things we are proud of
We were given the task of creating a student recruitment campaign on behalf of the University of Oslo for the admission in the spring of 2020. There is fierce competition among educational institutions to attract the best students and one must dare to think differently to reach the right candidates. The students of tomorrow do not use traditional information channels, have zero tolerance for irrelevant content and have the “ad blocker” turned on at all times.
The insights from the annual applicant survey show that the University of Oslo scores consistently high on most of the rational parameters that students find interesting. The quality of education and teachers, good opportunities for exchange and bright prospects are some of the parameters.
Learning more about our target group
We conducted focus groups with potential applicants and received confirmation that UiO appears serious and academically solid. They do however receive low scores regarding more emotional parameters. These are the arguments that may contribute to students being excited to start at a particular university.
Students convey that they are mostly influenced by their personal meeting with UiO. However, they experience that UiO is not present in the channels they use.
The campaign’s goal was to attract motivated applicants in the age group 18-22 who are engaged by, and who have the prerequisites for a course of study at the country’s best university, as well as their parents.
Colour and positivity
UiO’s breadth and size are what make it unique in Norway, but it is also a challenge if you are to communicate the more close and personal aspects. We treated the feedback from the students seriously and decided on a campaign where we focused on a selection of the little things that make it extra good to be a student at UiO.
The “Things we are proud of” campaign is a series of fun, colorful and stylized “video teasers” about the people and the opportunities that make it extra good to be a student at UiO. The videos have a visual style, length and format designed specifically for social media, and a dramaturgy that hits a target audience with an extremely short attention span.
The campaign is based on eight selected focus areas that show some of the best you can experience and become a part of at UiO. Engaging teachers, meaningful learning, research that can change the world and students who learn in exciting and passionate ways.
We developed a visual profile based on the colorful and positive style that is often used on Instagram and Snapchat by people showing off something they are especially proud of. We made 32 platform-adapted films that within 10 seconds give a taste of the best experiences you can get at UiO. The films were developed with a dramaturgy and length designed to arouse curiosity and clicks. All movies also come in 6-second versions that bypass ad-skipping on platforms like YouTube. Through collaboration with the media agency the films are distributed through targeted video ads on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
The content of each film was cross-checked against the interests of different parts of the target group in order to find potential students with the right field of interest. Each film leads to a landing page on UiO.no where the applicants can read more about the people and the possibilities, as well as finding information about relevant admissions and courses.
96 % coverage in the target group
The campaign was very successful with over 4,5 million video views, 96 % coverage in the target group and 30.000 visits to UiO.no. Most importantly the campaign resulted in a 16 % increase in applicants. This is almost double the national average. The growth is biggest among the youngest applicants, where nationally the increase was 11,5 %, while UiO had 19,1 % more applicants than the year before. These are record-high numbers for the University of Oslo.