Higher ed marketing is always a challenge with a myriad of different audiences and messages. For Temple University, we created a campaign that united admissions, advancement, athletics, and more under one simple idea: Temple Made. By drawing inspiration from Temple's hardworking history, positioning a gritty urban location as an advantage, and being real with our audience, we made an entire community proud. We asked the Temple community to tag Instagram photos with #TempleMade. Then, we created custom software that allowed us to showcase all the photos online, in print, billboards, TV, and more. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/39153771/TempleMade_Instagram_CaseStudy.pdf When Temple wasn’t happy with the cookie cutter ideas and solutions their higher ed agency was bringing them, they reached out to us for help. We created a new campaign for Temple’s undergraduate admissions website that demonstrates what it means to be a Temple student, that stands out in the sea of sameness that is higher ed marketing. The centerpiece is a website that does not rely on that stereotypical shot of ethnically diverse friends studying under a tree. Instead, we tapped into the Instagram API and pulled photos that showed real campus life and what it really means to be a Temple student (and whatever major they’re interested in, from the Arts to Business). We added video testimonials, hosted on YouTube, that allow students to talk about what Temple Made means to them personally. We also tapped into LinkedIn so that students could connect with Alumni. It’s one of the first websites in the higher ed space to be deemed as user-generated, by students, for students. A campus launch event generated enough social activity to propel Temple Made to trending status, with a tweet every 6 seconds. News programs and alumni nationwide took notice. And web traffic from prospective students jumped 36% just one month into the campaign. #TempleMade has been fully embraced by the Temple University community as a rallying cry. The Instagram count has reached 7,000 and continues to climb, and on Twitter it's nearly a real-time feed. Temple Made has provided a way for the next generation of Temple students to filter through the clutter and get a real glimpse of how special the Temple community is. Temple Made was designed for Millennials, but its impact reaches farther. It connects student to student. Alumni to alumni. Local community to the world.
