ABOUT

Developing a new positioning, design system and communications platform for HARPER ADAMS UNIVERSITY, which has seen the university win a series of accolades including multiple ‘Best Modern University‘ awards.

There were two key sets of objectives for the campaign. Overall, we needed multiple audiences – prospective students, schools and parents, the wider academic community, influencers and opinion formers in and around higher education, business and commercial partners, government and more – to recognize what Harpers stood for, worked towards, and the goals that it was setting out to deliver. And this needed to happen both here and internationally, with Harpers playing a key role in establishing the UK’s reputation as a leader in global Agri tech, food security and sustainability. We needed the sector to completely re-evaluate their view of Harper Adams.

But more than that we needed new and quite different prospective students to actively consider Harper Adams as a university choice – one they had probably either previously dismissed as ‘not available to them’ or one they had not even registered. To date most of Harper’s recruitment had been amongst young people from rural farming backgrounds. They were already familiar with HAU and students are often not the first in their family to attend the university – it has become something of a tradition. And talking to alumni who were now parents and thinking of sending their own children to Harper Adams was a vital part of the communication mix. However, with the seismic changes in the higher education market, HAU needed to look further afield for students, both in the UK and globally for their student recruitment. This is also a generation hugely concerned about their employment prospects after undertaking an expensive period of study. We were sure they might be intrigued to discover the breadth of career paths connected to agri-food production, the animal sciences, engineering and more that you get to study at Harpers. HAU offers a genuinely unique set of subjects - from entomology to robotics - to ensure we are developing the skills base needed for a changing and challenged world.

So essentially the KPIs for the campaign were:

· Get Harper recognized by the sector.
· Start attracting students from urban environments who have never considered a university like Harper Adams before.

We delivered a robust research programme to gather insight into what made Harper Adams special talking to multiple stakeholders, influencers across the university, alumni, and current students. In addition we also delivered detailed desk research looking at both the broader market and competitive set which Harper Adams competed with and insights into the youth audience, current challenging issues, and reviewing research from youth organisations to see what topics really engaged 16-18 year olds, and considering how the Harpers offer to students could appeal to them.

Project deliverables were:

Market insight, research and strategy.
A new brand manifesto that needed to be developed with multiple stakeholders across the university.
A new design system for everything the university delivered that met brand guidelines but needed to encourage a revaluation of the university.
A new organising thought for Harper Adams – we created ‘A Degree that Matters”.
A new prospectus design – in fact we developed multiple prospectuses for Harper Adams over several years, to an agreed design system and layout.
Proofreading and artwork of all prospectuses and similar brochures and papers
Multiple other pieces of marketing collateral and print.
Experiential design for Fairs and exhibition design.
Illustration.
Infographics and data design
Copywriting
Multiple digital advertising campaigns covering display, native, retargeting campaigns and native advertising.
Social media cards and content
Presentation templates.
Web Assets
Motion Graphics, animation, GIF design and delivery
Brand Video – including shoot, editing.
Photography – commissioning and curation, plus development of a new digital image bank for the university.
Content curation and video edits

In addition, the university commissioned us to develop new identities, programmes and projects for a number of partner organisations connected to the university, like the School of Sustainable Food and Farming, and the UKRI’s Agri-EPI Centre.

SECTOR RECOGNITION - Since the launch of our campaign, the university has been Runner Up in the Times/Sunday Times University of the Year, been named Best Modern University in the same rankings 5 times in succession, rose from 84th to 27th in the Complete University Guide rankings, and broke into the Times Higher Education ‘table of tables’ top 30 for the first time. We could go on – there have been multiple accolades. But we can confidently assert that our work repositioning Harper Adams, codifying its mission and achievements and delivering multiple campaigns had a measurable effect in getting the sector to re-evaluate the university.

RECRUITMENT – working in collaboration with Harper’s media partner (Space and Time) we developed a campaign structure of awareness-engagement-application-acceptance-clearing, developing appropriate copy and content for all agreed channels. Media choices were tailored both to reflect core current recruitment but then to steadily increase the geographic footprint where Harpers advertised to attract new recruitments from fresh urban areas. We measured effectiveness by Click Through Rate (CTR) by channel; we also track CPM, CPC, and CPA, CTR by ad size and space (again, also tracking CPM, CPC and CPA). Plus we ran A/B Copy Tests, measuring CTR by Copy Content. Both Whistlejacket and Space and Time jointly agreed KPIs with the Harper Adams team and then made specific decisions about budget levels and channel choices based around these responses. Typical recruitment campaigns covered PPC, programmatic ad buys, retargeting, precision hyperlocal, paid search, social media buys, and Native. Similarly, we changed content according to direct response levels, measuring what type of content and core message students found most motivating at each part of the 18-month recruitment cycle. We also measured KPIs for specific events and campaigns – for example Open Day sign ups, and then attendances at the event (both of which are currently at record levels). We ran precision hyperlocal campaigns in specific urban locations and measured CTRs and sign ups here also, to ensure we were stretching the geographic footprint of interested students. We compared specific campaigns for courses or faculties with more general awareness campaigns to measure effectiveness of copy. And we developed specific copy and flex media spend against courses or faculties that need support to ensure applications are spread across the University, and helping individual departments and courses reach their application targets and acceptance of offers. We worked closely with the marketing team to ensure recruitment numbers – and just as importantly recruitment from the right places – were being delivered.

We also developed new copy and content according to effectiveness – for example we have found motion graphics and break out animation is especially effective in paid for social media and programmatic campaigns, and we have developed new and engaging copy to increase the effectiveness of these campaigns moving forward.