When Ivy Tech Community College selected us as their new ad agency for a brand evolution, we knew that to succeed, we’d need to shift perceptions of Ivy Tech from affordable to valuable and refresh the school’s enormous website with respect to navigation, organization, consistency of style and overall aesthetic. To evolve Ivy Tech’s brand—positioning the college as the path to a valued and credible degree, one leading to high-paying, high-demand careers—we used the power of stories combined with large-scale data to communicate the value of an Ivy Tech degree. Seeing real-life Ivy Tech alumni enjoying successful post-grad careers and lives allows the audience to relate to the brand, while data proves that the highlighted alumni are not rarities, but rather part of a long list of students Ivy Tech helped to achieve a better life.

Research

In the first phase of our research, we traveled the state, talking to key stakeholders on each of Ivy Tech’s campuses and asking them to share their thoughts on the current state of the school’s brand and website. We received a wealth of valuable insights, but one particular message really resonated: “Make this for everyone.” In other words, reach out to the students with more educational challenges and let them know Ivy Tech would “meet them where they’re at.”

As we wrapped up internal stakeholder sessions, we began executing qualitative research in the form of numerous online focus groups. The research showed that Hoosiers knew an Ivy Tech tuition was less expensive than most schools’, but they needed to be shown the educational bang they were getting for their tuition buck.

Campaign

We developed a fully integrated campaign featuring well-performing outcome statistics, paired with real Ivy Tech graduates working for impressive Indiana employers such as Eli Lilly, IU Health, Parkview Health, plus law firms, architecture firms and early childhood education centers. The grads were featured in print, outdoor boards, display ads, and more, demonstrating how proud they are of their Ivy Tech degree …not to mention how proud their alma mater was of them.

One particular message really resonated:
Make this for everyone.

In the spirit of “making this for everyone,” we developed the campaign concept around the days in an Ivy Tech alumnus’ life, whether it’s the first day in their new career, the day they get a pay raise, or the fifth-day of a week-long paid vacation. In it, we pointed out that Ivy Tech’s biggest concern for their students was not just their graduation day, but rather every day after graduation, when their Ivy Tech degree or certificate would allow them access to a better-paying job and a more secure lifestyle for them and their families. Our broadcast and online video also featured real grads in IT, Business, Nursing, and Advanced Manufacturing/Robotics. Our alumni talents were filmed in workplace scenarios and in lifestyle settings enjoying time with their friends, family or significant others, to visually drive home the impact of their degrees, not only in their careers but in their personal lives as well. Seeing the real-life success stories of Ivy Tech grads onscreen lent legitimacy and weight to this message. The new campaign launched in the Summer of 2022. By Fall 2023, Ivy Tech enrollment had increased 6.88% over the previous year. What’s more, tracking showed that 31% of total applications were influenced by the campaign’s ads.

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Website

When it came to Ivy Tech’s website, we conducted a survey and live interviews of website users in addition to the research discussed above. The biggest challenges facing the site were hidden navigation that made it frustrating for potential and current students to find what they were looking for, duplicative content that led to inconsistency of information and poor SEO, and an outdated design style that didn’t reflect where the Ivy Tech brand is today. We balanced the need for fast, significant changes with the enormity of the task itself by rolling out incremental waves of updates to the website. Each wave contained a different substantive improvement to the school’s website, in order of the priority of the features changed, starting from the site navigation and progressing all the way through CMS integration and buildout. The new site is now a useful, and easy-to-use, tool full of helpful information for students and internal stakeholders alike, a change reflected by recent data. For example, in the year following the site redesign, the number of clicks to apply on the website increased +16.4%. What’s more, the click-rate of users visiting the site who applied to Ivy Tech increased by 5.7%, clearly demonstrating that the improved navigation and prominent calls-to-action included in the initial website launch began working immediately to drive conversions.

The Ivy Tech brand now truly represents them as the largest singly-accredited community college in the country – not just where they are today, but also where they’re going. We hope you see the campaign out in the community, whether you’re driving along the highway or browsing the new site.