A Real Life Pitch – Part 2

It’s fun to get an inside look at what an agency goes through when pitching a new client, isn’t it? Perhaps more fun though, is seeing all the great ideas that are created for a pitch, many of which never see the light of day.

In our first post, we shared just some of the work developed for CaroMont Health, in our (successful!) efforts to win their business.

Next we would like to share some work we did as part of an RFP for UNC Pembroke, back in early 2010.

The main goal of the RFP was to create a recruitment campaign that would increase inquiries, applications and enrollment. This was a really fun RFP, because the school had fully embraced social media (still new to some smaller schools at that point in time), so we were able to come up with lots of integrated ideas to try and attract students. One idea you’ll see in the creative asked prospective students to personalize a mini cooper online and share with their friends, for a chance to win a real mini cooper of their own.

It was also really important that we positioned UNCP in the right way. The university offers an extremely attractive college experience for many students: small class size, personal attention from faculty, low cost and cultural diversity; yet it is often a “back-up” choice for many students. Our goal was to try and make UNCP a “first choice” school by highlighting the personalized nature of the education and positioning UNCP as a university that offered high quality education in an easy to manage environment.

One challenge for us was that Pembroke had introduced a completely new positioning in 2009, after 12 years of their very successful, “Where Learning Gets Personal,” campaign. We knew they would not have much tolerance for yet another new campaign, so we came up with an evolution strategy that utilized what we thought worked from previous efforts, and dismissed what wasn’t strong in our view. Our suggestion was to go to market with this “evolution” campaign and then move into a new direction the following year.

The RFP was ultimately cancelled due to budget concerns, but we’re still proud of our efforts! Enjoy the work and let us know what you think!