New college promotional campaign aimed at telling its story

By Melissa Murray

In the next week and a half, Loyalist will be launching a new series of promotional campaigns to better tell the college’s story.

Using 30-second radio spots, quarter page ads and a Facebook marketing campaign, Bill Walsh, vice-president of enrolment management and student services, said he hopes this strategy will better promote the school’s brand.

The first-stage of the new campaign starts with the promotion of skills, media and post-graduate programs and if successful, it will be extended to the entire college.

“It is part of an overall approach of trying to position the college as that intimate, highly-skilled experience that students have,” said Walsh.

The college reached out to advertising agencies last year and hired They Integrated, a Belleville-based company, to do the ad campaigns for the school of media. The promotions fit within the couple hundred thousand dollar budget the school spends on advertising and promotions every year, said Walsh.

“They has been helping us to develop a campaign to look at media studies and promote the media school and their programs in a more comprehensive way than we have done in the past.

“They completed some research with students and faculty prior to Christmas and they brought back some campaign ideas, which we are getting ready to launch in the next little while,” said Walsh.

Founder and President of They Integrated, Shawn Patriquin, said the campaign will incorporate interactive microsites for certain programs that can be shared on Facebook. Those that do share the page, will be entered to win an iPad or a MacBook.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said Patriquin. “The real intent is to create an awareness and give the media school its own identity,” he added. “The school is doing amazing things and some don’t know the quality of it.”

Jane Harrison, dean of media studies, said she was delighted to learn that the media school would be part of the initial stages of the new branding campaigns. The promotions were supposed to be launched in the fall, but the work stoppage in early September, put the process behind.

“We know that in terms of the short-term campaign, it isn’t going to be as effective as if it were launched in November or late October, when the original target was supposed to be. The idea is to do a two-month campaign for March and April,” said Harrison.

“I have been saying, and the faculty and the students have been saying as well, that no one knows what is going on here and how do we tell that story?” she said.

Part of the research, that has been taking place for the past year on brand strategies and promotions has been looking at Loyalist’s position within the marketplace, said Walsh.

“There are really two elements here we can have great programs and great faculty but if nobody knows about it, then obviously we won’t be successful as a college.”

The campaign comes at a convenient time for the media school, as it works with an industry that is in a time of upheaval and cutbacks. Some media programs saw a drop in enrolment last year, said Harrison.

“The only traditionally waitlisted programs are animation, photojournalism and television,” said Harrison.

“None of them were waitlisted last year. Were they full? Almost. So it’s one of those things. Do we have healthy programs? Well yes, yes we do, but what was that slippage about? And how do we rebound and get as close to capacity as we can,” she added.

The goal of the new strategy is to put Loyalist in the forefront and to fill classes.

“We are always trying to increase enrolment as we are funded per student. Obviously we want to try to maximize the funding we get from government to do programming, so we are always trying to make sure that our enrolment is increasing and that we have growth,” said Walsh.

“This is an everyday practice for the college. This year we have taken a slightly different approach, but we still need to spend more time examining our customers and doing more research to fine tune the messaging we do,” he added.