The brief for the 2018 JCU Student Recruitment campaign was that it had to focus on digital channels first, but be adaptable for print, radio and TV, and cost effective due to a budget cutback from the previous year. The Director wanted a campaign that was simple, direct and focused on student employment aspirations, with the initial tagline of ‘Be a … (teacher, scientist, etc)’. The aim was to increase student enrolment and build the JCU brand awareness. The campaign was to last two years with the design flexible enough to be adapted for various sub campaigns to promote undersubscribed courses, JCU’s unique selling points, JCU key marketing messages, mature age students, non-school leavers, Change of Preferences, Tertiary Access Course promotion, interstate enrolment information sessions and promotion of new courses such as the Online Bachelor of Education and Master of Tourism and Hospitality.

The digital campaign material consisted of artwork for Facebook, Linkedin, some Instagram and Google Display Network advertising. Several also included Google AdWords and lead generation through marketing automation.

Campaigns included:

• Student Recruitment – enrolment campaigns for February and July each year. Focused on occupations, aspirations, etc predominantly through social media channels.

• JCU Branding – Two carousels of artwork used to promote JCU marketing statements and unique selling points.

• Promotion of specific undersubscribed courses and colleges

• Non School Leaver Campaign – Mature age and postgraduate students.

• Change of Preferences – Aimed at high school students who wanted to change their course enrolments.

• Enrolment information sessions

• Meet us in… – to advertise JCU roadshows held in Darwin, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

• New courses – Bachelor of Education Online, Master of Tourism.

• Tertiary Access Course campaign – advertising the TAC pathway to a full university degree for those who don’t qualify in a traditional way.

I developed the advertising copy in consultation with other stakeholders and made slight changes to each campaign iteration to help keep the content fresh (for example, ‘Be a geologist’ became ‘be an original rockstar’, ‘be a teacher’ became ‘be a life-changer, starting with yours’). The campaign commenced in January 2019 and while it officially ended at the end of 2020, the style has continued to be used and adapted (for example in the JCU Study Guides). In total I created 615 individual pieces of artwork for the campaign.