Brief

To bring Deakin’s long-running ‘The Future Belongs to the Ready’ platform to life in an emotive brand recruitment campaign that is distinctive from other tertiary institutions.

Strategy

With Deakin’s core geographic recruitment pool (Melbourne) deep in one of the world’s toughest COVID lockdowns, uncertainty about the future was heightened. The hopes, dreams and lives of our core school leavers were turned on their heads by COVID-19 - their employment prospects skittled, travel-plans obliterated and many adulting rites of passage evaporated overnight. Yet, despite all the doom and gloom, this audience still felt motivated to make their mark on the world.

So, we set out to tap into their hopes for a brighter future and emotionally engage them in the idea that Deakin could help make them future ready. 

Idea

We recaptured the past, to give hope for the future. 

Performed by a First Nations/Jamaican poet, we reimagined the timeless words of Berton Braley’s 1919 post-WW1 poem, ‘Opportunity’, in a contemporary, mesmerising manner by using the ocean as a metaphor for life - turbulent and unpredictable one moment, beautiful and serene the next. 

Simple, but elegantly considered, our black & white visuals created an evocative film to inspire hopeful tertiary students setting out to find their place in a wholly changed world. 

Incorporating Deakin’s colour palette and brand shapes into the final brand line as a juxtaposition to our b&w visuals, we spoke to a brighter future and positioned Deakin as the university helping students prepare for it.

Results

Launched in May 2020, results are already showing record interest for Deakin amongst prospective 2022 students with 82.2% higher visits to its open day registration page versus 2020 and 25.3% higher registration numbers.

Performing in the top quintile of all education ads, ‘Opportunity’ has exceeded Luma Research benchmarks across Emotional Bonding, Attention, and Message Take-out delivering significant increases in key perception metrics:

“Deakin is a university I would be proud to get into” +29%

“Deakin is an innovative university” +45%

“Deakin is a leading university” +84%

And impressively, ‘Opportunity’ has delivered an 80% increase in Brand Reputation versus previous advertising, seeing Deakin jump past its competitors - Latrobe, RMIT and Monash - to claim second place in reputation ratings.

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