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HUNDREDS OF IU STUDENTS STAR IN NEW UNIVERSITY ADS;
$1 MILLION RECRUITMENT CAMPAIGN OPENS THIS WEEK
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EDITORS AND NEWS DIRECTORS: Several photographs of students used in the campaign are available in digital format and can be accessed at the end of this release. You also are welcome to request photos from the IU Office of Communications and Marketing at 812-855-3911.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Quick: picture a television commercial for a college or university. If you conjured up an attractive couple strolling through some tree-lined campus or a staged group of coeds sitting by a stream in front of an ivy-covered building, you've been watching too much TV.
But the higher education advertising mold is being dramatically broken this week with the debut of an upbeat, colorful, rapid-fire television advertising campaign produced by and for Indiana University. The university will spend about $1 million to create and air the commercials -- about 25 percent less than it spent last year for a campaign that helped generate $3.9 million in net revenue from increased enrollment university-wide.
"Clearly, there are students out there who are responding to our messages about our institution and everything it has to offer," said IU President Myles Brand. "These new ads are designed to help even more of those students, their families and our state's opinion leaders learn about IU's academic quality and all it provides to the students who learn here and the Indiana businesses that put them to work."
Four new 30-second ads sport a contemporary drum-solo soundtrack written and performed by Smashing Pumpkins drummer and IU music instructor Kenny Aronoff. An IU graduate, Aronoff is best known as the former longtime drummer for Indiana musician John Mellencamp.
Each ad features a fast-paced sequence of student portraits taken at all eight IU campuses. The portraits are interspersed with hard-hitting statistics that tout IU's academic prowess, its strong position with employers, the national honors its students and faculty have won, and its wide choice of campuses and course offerings.
One ad, called "Quality Education," points out that 90 IU degree programs rank among the top 20 nationally. Another, called "Degrees with Clout," says employers conduct 30,000 interviews with IU students annually. Still another, called "Choices," mentions the 12,000 classes offered each fall and spring on IU's eight campuses and degrees ranging from two-year programs to doctorates.
A fourth ad, called "Many Kinds of Champions," will be shown at halftime during IU basketball and football telecasts. It features quick-cut portraits of IU athletes, but surprisingly, the copy doesn't mention IU's five NCAA basketball titles. Rather, it cites the academic and arts awards the university's students, graduates and faculty have won, including Grammy awards, Pulitzer prizes and Rhodes scholarships.
IU was the first comprehensive research university in the country to conduct an integrated marketing campaign. Integrated marketing is the coordination of all communications strategies and tactics to advance unified messages and to facilitate clear measurement of results. The most recent campaign resulted in a 10 percent increase in new freshman enrollment on the IU Bloomington campus this fall, at a time when the state is experiencing less than a 2 percent increase in high school graduates.
"Last year's integrated marketing campaign, coupled with our strong recruitment programs and faculty, helped generate a 3-to-1 return on our marketing investment, and resulted in the largest freshman class in history at Bloomington and significant increases at other IU campuses," said Christopher Simpson, IU vice president of Public Affairs and Government Relations. "With the strong creative concepts we're using and the team effort we've developed statewide, we expect to sustain our impact while spending less on TV advertising."
Compared with most commercials, the IU spots cost relatively little to produce. Because of the unique approach -- Aronoff donated his music, no film crews were required and there were no actors to pay -- the creative and production budget for all four ads was less than the $100,000 it often costs to produce a single television commercial.
Indianapolis-based Perkins-Nichols Media has purchased $900,000 worth of television time on stations statewide and in Chicago and Louisville to broadcast the campaign between now and August 1999. That's about 25 percent less than the university spent for air time last year.
The new campaign was created by two communications consulting firms, Chicago-based Essex Two Inc. and Indianapolis-based Hetrick Communications Inc. Indianapolis photographer Jim Barnett photographed more than 600 IU students at campuses statewide. Production was handled in-house by the university's Office of Communications and Marketing, which used computer technology to mix the sound and images together into a set of four TV commercials that premiere this week.
(George Vlahakis, 812-855-0846, gvlahaki@indiana.edu)
We have provided large image files suitable for publication purposes at the links below.
To download the photos click on the person's name of the photo you want to view. Then