During a time of year when most people are consumed with the stress involved with finding the perfect present for that persnickety aunt, attending holiday parties, booking travel and arranging for time off, the team was charged with a challenge. We were tasked with encouraging prospective Charter College students — the post-high school, undecided 18-24 year-olds — to request information about something totally unrelated to holiday stress: returning to school.
The objective put forward to the team was to generate a 100% increase in leads from the school’s online RFI (Request for Information) forms that month compared to the same time period the year prior.
The enrollment start date – traditionally in January, post holidays – was December 28th that year (2015), right in the thick of the holiday bustle, making this a particularly daunting challenge.
Working with our partners at the Estipona Group, our strategy involved developing digital creative assets impactful enough to cut through the clutter of the busy retail season, ultimately making an impression that inspired action. The campaign was intended to run right after Thanksgiving through December 28 (see results for reason for shortened campaign run), a short but intensive campaign. The creative sought to connect through humor and also relatability, as it spoke to those who were dreading family get-togethers — which typically come with a heaping helping of endless questions about what the post-high school individual is doing with their lives.
Tactics
A website unique to the campaign was developed with the fun, memorable and provoking URL: ShutThemUp.com. The simple, one-page site had a holiday theme.
The site visitor was immediately rewarded with the full :60 commercial, a pay-off to the :30 broadcast tease commercial (details below).
Right below the commercial was a prominent request for information form — the conversion mechanism for the site, turning viewers into student prospects.
To drive engagement, short character videos on the site offered a mechanism for users to vote to “shut up” the family member they found most annoying.
Broadcast television:
• Television ads were created, telling the story of a particularly uncomfortable holiday dinner where family members are focused on what one young family member is doing or rather, not doing —with his life. Interspersed between the clanking of utensils and chewing on the holiday turkey came a barrage of questions, comparisons and teasing from every corner until our young hero manages to, miraculously, shut them all up by revealing his enrollment at Charter College.
• Book-end :30 spots (other commercials played in between the two :30 halves of the Shut Them Up commercial) were created to engage viewers and get them to visit a website, one with a unique URL so that we could accurately assess metrics. The first :30 was designed as a full tease with no brand identity, compelling viewers to “stay tuned” to get the rest of the story. Charter College was identified at the end of the second :30.
• A :60 spot was also created for times when the book-end buy was not available during the busy retail TV season. TV ran regionally where the college operated ground campuses: Anchorage and Wasilla, Alaska; Vancouver, Pasco, Yakima and Seattle, Washington; Oxnard, Lancaster and Canyon Country, California.
Online video:
A :30 version of the spot was created specifically for YouTube, where an aggressive buy drove users to the website for the rest of the story.
Teaser videos:
Supporting the spots were teaser videos introducing the characters in the family. These were used in social media (Facebook, Instagram and live streaming in the digital remarketing buy) to drive traffic to the website and were hosted on the site to increase engagement and time-on-site.
Online banners:
Banners introducing the characters in the spot were used to drive traffic to the website through Facebook and the Spectrum Reach Ad Network.
Results
Prospective student leads - those who filled out the form or called the number on the site - exceeded our goal increase of 100% by almost two times the goal amount, resulting in a 292% increase of prospective students compared to the same time the previous year.
Enrolled students – those who started class – achieved 139% of goal.
Even though we were not issued a goal in comparison to other months, Charter was able to compare the month of December 2015 (the campaign month) against January and September of 2015 (the college’s highest lead volume months for the year), Request for Information (RFI) forms completed on the chartercollege.edu website — linked from ShutThemUp.com — were up 15% compared to these months, meaning our campaign bested the college’s other two traditionally high- volume months.
ShutThemUp.com
During the month-long campaign: 16,808 sessions, 20,637 page views
Month after campaign termination: 1,035 sessions, 1,351 page views (a decrease of 94% for sessions, 93% for page views)
61% of visitors 18-34
Chartercollege.edu
Site visits increased by 500/day during TV run
1,100 leads/week during TV run
520 leads/week when they went off air 12/21 (a drop of more than 100%)
The tactical methodology for tracking the buys
ShutThemUp.com was a custom URL we created specifically for this campaign and was only up for the duration of the campaign. The site has been recreated in a development environment for the purposes of this case study. We used specific URLs on different television ads to track traffic from those sources. Pixels were used on site to measure live streaming traffic and brand lift.
The campaign was deemed so successful that the broadcast TV run was cut short — terminating 12/21 instead of 12/27 to enable admissions reps to catch up on leads.
