The Brief and Context

Choosing a course to study after year 12 is hard. Every university collates their curriculum in an overwhelming course guide, generally deemed as the epicenter of the institution’s marketing communications strategy. These course guides spout claims of industry connections, world-class alumni, and state-of-the-art courses. However the last thing students want is a 150 page PDF course guide to scroll through, which is exactly what every university in the country gives them, including Billy Blue. So when it came to launching the 2020/21 Course Guide at Billy Blue College of Design at Torrens University Australia, we decided to do things differently.

We set out to:

●   Connect with our audience in a fresh, unexpected, and exciting way

●   Reposition Billy Blue as the place to study our newly launched design and creative technology curriculum

●   Showcase the depth of our industry connections and the talent of our students and alumni from across the globe

In collaboration with SomeOne, VCCP and Torrens University we undertook a CX deep dive to uncover the most compelling insights that would shape our solution.

We learnt:

●   43% of high school students don’t know what they want to study when they leave school

●   Future creatives want us to show, not tell - they want snackable visual content

●   Students are heavily outcome focussed i.e.”If I study X, what will I become, create or achieve?”

●   The ultimate source of inspiration is from ‘people like me’ - real peers, not the typical ‘influencer’

With an ambitious enrolment target across 2020/2021 and with the University’s mass lead-driving activities and events not possible due to COVID, Billy Blue needed to reimagine how they could connect with prospective students to help them ‘start their adventure’ into the world of design and creative technology.

Creative Solution and Execution

In May 2020 we formed a working group of strategists, technologists, current students, alumni, and the Torrens University marketing team to audit the competition, workshop and shortlist over 20 potential creative routes. 

The creative strategy centred around students choosing their path and ‘starting their adventure’ into creative technology and design. As the university was now teaching these new immersive technology courses, it made sense to showcase the technology itself as part of the advertising to show students what could be achieved and inspire them. The idea was born to create an immersive webAR experience containing a series of abstract worlds that represented the new Design and Technology courses on offer from Billy Blue. Each world showcased real students' work and iconic industry cues, and contained a call to action for students to enrol.

The tap-to-place experience built using Zappar webAR began with a wayfinding signpost to guide students towards courses of interest. Our trusty comrade and namesake Billy Blue himself guided students to explore the five unique ‘worlds’ of fashion, digital media design, creative technology, graphic & communication design and interior design.

Potential students could explore a landscape of digital media, step inside a fashion studio, see an interior design concept showroom come to life, and witness the skills honed in graphic design. Each world was inspired by and features the work of our current students and alumni, our most prominent industry connections and, most importantly, a look into the companies and places of where an education with Billy Blue could lead them. We gamified the experience to encourage exploration resulting in one of only a few webAR experiences to date that feature this level of interactivity that would usually require a native AR app download.

The integrated campaign launched in December 2020 running for 9-weeks across the Christmas holiday period, a crucial time in our audience’s journey as they finish exams and make their choice about where to study. The campaign touchpoints included:

• 6-weeks OOH across Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne CBD, each placement featuring a unique QR code to track geographical attribution

• 10 TikTok influencer posts

• TikTok paid advertising campaign

• Campus event activations for on-site Open Day

• Organic digital and social

• An AR marker on the front of the course guide itself to trigger the experience 

• A dedicated campaign microsite

When restrictions eased and we welcomed prospective students back on campus, we built a physical 3m tall version of the signpost – now on tour across the country to be featured at high school career expos attended by thousands of next generation designers, creators, and innovators.

The experience was built using Zappar webAR, integrated in a webGL environment using the ThreeJS javascript library.

Results

This was a campaign and project of many ‘firsts’ for Billy Blue – AR course guides, trackable OOH and paid TikTok campaigns were all uncharted territory.