Quizlet is an educational app that helps students break down complex study material into digital flashcards. 90% of students who use the Quizlet study app report getting higher marks.
But, while Quizlet is an essential tool for many students in the US, the UK is still a developing market. So, as students went back to university in September, Quizlet wanted to drive awareness and sign-ups through paid social, backed up by on-campus digital media.
Quizlet needed a campaign creative that stood out in students’ busy social feeds and in on-campus digital screens. Since UK students might be hearing about Quizlet for the very first time, we had to make sure the value proposition of the app came across – taking complex university subjects and breaking them down into smaller pieces to memorise. The idea had to make sense to students studying quite different subjects. In addition, videos had to work with both sound on for platforms like TikTok and YouTube, and sound off for on-campus screens. All of this in less than 15 seconds.
Our research showed many students are trying not to be overwhelmed by coursework and tests. With mounting pressures on their time, and a big step up in complexity from high school material, a key concern is how to get a vast amount of study material into their heads in a way that sticks.
This insight led us to ‘Feed Your Brain’: like preparing food to eat, Quizlet helps students slice and dice their coursework to make it easily digestible.
The core campaign creative was 6 surreal and eye-catching stop-motion animations using pixilated hand models. We were inspired by the recent TikTok trend in which meals are shown being made in rapid, quick cut videos. But in our world, rather than food prep, we have textbooks and study material being chopped with knives, blended, sliced from a kebab skewer, and rolled out into sushi.
The art direction used arresting visuals set in Quizlet’s bright colour palette to make sure the spots caught the attention of students when played silently in OOH campus placements. On YouTube and TikTok, they were set to a quirky and surprising soundtrack, mixing cooking foley with more unusual sounds.
Feed Your Brain came to life across university campuses and in students' feeds, through paid social on YouTube and TikTok, supported by digital out-of-home posters on 50 university campuses.
Students saw the creative and understood how Quizlet could help. The campaign exceeded targets, increasing sign-ups by 19% over forecast. Unaided awareness increased by almost 4%, and usage of the app leapfrogged competitor Duolingo amongst our target audience.
