ABOUT

Concept

The University of Law (ULaw) has been offering online courses for over ten years. We wanted to harness the change in appetite for online study, as a result of COVID-19 and position ULaw as a leader in online learning. Our challenge was to attract prospective students in the UK and bring a sense of community to the online realm.

SMART Objectives

- To create a campaign that would stand out from competitors and resonate with a broad audience across 6 months, demonstrated by an increase in website traffic to our campaign page from paid and organic media and an increase in student enrolments.
- To reinforce the existing pillars of the ULaw Online brand: community and flexibility being key.
- To integrate UGC content by encouraging current online students to share their own study experiences on social media.
- To ‘own’ the conversation around online study to position ULaw as a leader in the field.

Execution

We took an unorthodox approach to a typical law campaign, bringing a smile to students and prospects during the pandemic. ULaw Online needed to stand out amongst its competitors in the newly saturated online learning market, whilst simultaneously conveying the core pillars of the brand. We developed a social campaign divided into two phases to ensure the campaign remained fresh, aligning each phase with its brand pillars.

In phase one, we promoted the flexibility of studying online to appeal to a broad audience, through the lead message - ‘Learn your way’. As the appetite for online study soared due to COVID-19, we created a sense of advocacy for the ULaw Online brand through the use of high-impact visuals with fun images and headlines such as ‘Lecture on a lilo?’ or ‘Tutorial on a tractor?’. We included the hashtag #generationonline as a social motivator, engaging users all around online learning on social media platforms.

We also ran a competition on Instagram to encourage students to share images of their study lives, to create a sense of community, and to add to the feel-good aspect using the #generationonline. We integrated the best UGC into the second phase of the paid and organic campaign, championing students choosing to study online. These assets showcased students studying at home with their pets, and study set-ups, enabling students to share tips on how they get motivated and organised. This competition was vital to create a sense of inclusion for those studying at home. We were then able to share these with prospects to showcase the diversity of the ULaw Online community.

Results

With our online campaign, we championed a whole new generation - the #generationonline. This sentiment became not only a rallying cry for prospective students, it also fundamentally changed the way the ULaw Online faculty worked and presents itself.