ABOUT

The Client:

Instructure, Inc. is an educational technology company based in Utah, USA. Founded in 2008, it is the developer of Canvas, a web-based distance learning management system that, at the start of 2019, was used by more than 3,000 universities, school districts, and institutions around the world, making it the most popular learning management system (LMS) in Higher Education.

The Brief:

The brief was relatively simple: Instructure wanted Sherlock Communications to educate and generate brand awareness of its product Canvas across four Latin American countries: Colombia, Mexico, Chile, and especially Brazil. It wanted to drive awareness, engagement and new business leads from educational institutions, while positioning Canvas as one of the world’s most innovative distance learning products.

Above all, it wanted to educate the public on the value and potential impact of high-quality distance learning. The target audience included CIOs, CTOs, course coordinators, professionals from the education sector, senior teachers, and students.

Challenges and Solutions

For the general public and non-specialist journalists, distance learning can appear to be an abstract, technical and even boring subject. A larger issue, however, is that for several years there has existed deep cynicism about the quality and effectiveness of distance learning in Latin America, particularly in Brazil, where the new government had frequently spoken about its perceived flaws. This misperception would need to be constantly disproven and the public educated on distance learning’s true potential. It was imperative that we connected the Canvas brand to high-quality, innovative distance learning, but without political or ideological ties.

Regardless of the region, writing about the nuts and bolts of distance learning platforms rarely attracts many column inches in mainstream media. Yet in Latin America, where newsrooms are cutting back on education specialists and the same journalists cover everything from economics to the environment, we were faced with a stern challenge.

Most column inches given to educational issues in the region are dedicated to public policies and government announcements. Our content would need to be delivered in a clear way so non-specialist media could understand it and publish without needing many clarifications. The easiest way to achieve this would be to create engaging, human-interest content surrounding creative and unusual implementations of Canvas and wider educational pieces on the benefits of quality distance learning.

To achieve this, we first developed compelling content focusing on angles such as how people are using smartphones — and the Canvas app — to study; how universities now offer gamified courses in partnership with Canvas; and how students are benefiting from a competency-based education.

We then emphasised that distance learning has been adopted in some of the world’s best universities and ensured our content explicitly showed the value of effective distance learning, particularly to countries as large as Brazil and Mexico where it can aid the development of the state and its citizens. Throughout the campaign, we made it clear that distance learning in itself is not a panacea — it needs to be high-quality distance learning.

OUR FLAGSHIP ACTION

As part of our planning process, we conducted a series of in-depth interviews and consultations with students and professors from different universities, to gain an understanding of their experiences and perceptions of distance learning. From these interviews, we learned that university rankings have fundamentally changed the way students across the globe choose their courses.

Today, students can make informed choices based on external judgments regarding the quality and value of their courses. However, until 2019, no such ranking had existed for distance learning courses, leaving prospective students with a dizzying array of options yet seemingly no way of judging how to choose their course beyond sales descriptions written by the course providers.

In order to change that reality and educate students on how to evaluate distance courses, and position Instructure at the forefront of this space, we conceived and developed the Canvas Ensino a Distancia Ranking, Latin America’s first — and possibly the world’s first — independent ranking for distance learning courses. It would prove an extremely ambitious, but highly successful initiative.

To ensure the ranking would be considered credible and robust, we partnered with specialist academics with experience in working on some of the world’s most prestigious Higher Education rankings from the University of Sao Paulo and Rede Rankintacs. Together, we developed a bespoke methodology for evaluating distance courses, thus reducing the potential for criticism of the ranking.

The methodology for evaluating a course was based on four data points: peer review from education professionals, student:teacher ratios, technological capacity, and a course’s impact on the job market.

We then built a customised website that could receive data inputs from course coordinators, peers and HR professionals. This data, gathered via questionnaire, was clean and enabled us to quickly calculate and display the ultimate ranking order.

To give us access to the peers and HR professionals we needed to assess different courses, we also established unpaid partnerships with trade associations such as the Brazilian Distance Learning Association (ABED), the Brazilian Training and Development Association (ABTD), and the media outlet Gestão RH, which specialises in human resource management and provided direct access to course organisers nationwide.

We ran email and social media campaigns to these target audiences, drawing interest and submissions through our specially self-designed website. Each registered course received a ranking, while Instructure’s contacts book for potential new leads grew exponentially.

The final “Canvas EaD Ranking” ranked more than 600 courses and, as well as raising awareness and generating 600 potential leads for Instructure and Canvas, it also ultimately drove home the importance of high-quality distance learning drawing widespread attention in the educational community and national media, generating more than 370 pieces of press coverage.

The EAD Ranking campaign generated 370 articles across all regions of Brazil, including in Exame and Istoé Dinheiro magazines, regional newspapers such as Correio Braziliense and Estado de Minas, and the hugely popular websites R7 and Quero Bolsa. Instructure spokespeople were also interviewed on TV Brasil (Brazilian national public broadcast channel) and Band Paraná, while interviews ran on more than 200 radio stations, the most effective means of reaching the whole continent-sized country.

Execution

One of our key methods for building brand awareness was ‘partner stories’. Through speaking with universities that had implemented Canvas in a successful way across the four targeted countries, we sourced real-life narratives demonstrating how Canvas helped spur innovation among institutions and enabled students to benefit from the platform’s responsive design.

We developed a content calendar listing the most interesting topics that could be explored throughout the year using these partner stories. This included items such as the use of smartphones for distance learning courses, the increasing importance of big data in education, the rise of competency-based education, and the use of blended education in graduate courses — a major trend in Latin American countries. We then gradually distributed those stories throughout the year, often linking them with events such as Teachers’ Day in Colombia.

This newsjacking strategy enabled us to successfully pitch interviews with Instructure spokespeople to Tier One media. The Teachers’ Day example alone led to three articles in El Espectador, the most influential newspaper in Colombia, including two in the printed version of Revista de Postgrados (Postgraduate Review) that carried quotes from Instructure’s VP for Latin America.

We also commissioned an independent survey of 1,000 Brazilians looking to reveal insights on distance learning trends. The results led us to create stories such as “Smartphones are at the frontline of online education,” which generated coverage in more than 30 target media outlets.

Results

By the end of the campaign and with more than 600 courses registered for inclusion in the Canvas EaD Ranking, we were able to supply Instructure’s sales team and CRM with a large pool of potential leads while the client also enjoyed a significant increase in organic enquiries. Establishing Canvas as synonymous with the rankings, the product, became a national reference for — and a champion of — proven, high-quality distance learning. It allowed Instructure to connect and directly engage with its key target audience in a way it had never previously been able.

In terms of media coverage, the EAD Ranking alone generated more than 370 articles in publications across all regions of Brazil. In Mexico, coverage appeared in Publimetro while Chile’s MBA América Economia covered the campaign. In Colombia, as well as El Espectador’s three stories, Semana Educación also provided coverage.

In total, in 2019, Sherlock generated 523 pieces of coverage, with an estimated two million estimated views and 3,576 social shares. And, as mentioned, arguably most importantly, generated more than 600 business leads of educational institutions for the client.