Admissions materials for the "We Cardinal" campaign at SVSU

Let’s be honest: higher ed is a difficult market right now. Every institution is looking for quantifiable data that tells them the best way to connect with students and their parents: Should we be on TikTok? Is print dead? What are students looking for from an institution in a post-COVID world?

But before you answer any of those questions, your primary job is to help a university craft a unique and authentic message. Every school claims to have great community and job placement rates, but in order to attract the right students and retain those students, you have to help a university dig a bit deeper into their DNA. You have to help them identify the aspects of their culture that no one else can claim. And to do that, you have to spend a lot of time with the current students themselves.

When the agency I work for started our relationship with Saginaw Valley State University, that’s exactly what we did. Like most college students, the students at SVSU valued success. However, what made them unique was how much they valued teamwork with each other and personal relationship with their professors. Their emphasis on relationship inspired us to launch the “We Cardinal” campaign across video, print, radio, web and social media.

Through “We Cardinal”, my job was to reestablish the SVSU brand in the mind of Michigan high schoolers and completely retool the school’s admissions funnel. After two years, the results of the campaign started to show, with SVSU breaking it's all-time record for applications (7,200+) and achieving over a 40% climb in enrollment from the previous year. During that time, the school also tracked an increase in visits, advertising recall, and favorability ratings among high schoolers at rates seen nowhere else in the state.

Telling a specific story, one that doesn’t appeal to every student but attracts the right student, is critical to positioning an institution for long-term success.

Work pulled from SVSU’s “We Cardinal” Campaign
Creative Director: Tim Hackney
Copywriter: Katy Stafford
Art Director: Scott Kramer

Writing for higher education.

To the stars.

Reflections from a zombie girl.