University of Pittsburgh

We gave prospective students a new way to look at themselves as undeclared majors. How? By engaging with them directly and addressing them as individuals. With owned media, paid media, and sponsored ads and articles, we drove prospects to a microsite. There, an interactive quiz enabled Pitt to connect with prospective students and track their engagement. Participants swiped right on subjects of interest categories. Then, once they were accepted by Pitt, they received a customized kit in the mail, with contents determined by their quiz answers. This gave students an idea of what the university and the city had to offer them specifically.

The microsite not only allowed Pitt to engage with students more meaningfully, but also gave them metrics for measuring their progress — which we used to adjust the tactics and improve return from a more engaged audience.

As one of the nation’s great universities, The University of Pittsburgh is a state-related research institution, founded as the Pittsburgh Academy in 1787. Pitt is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), which comprises 62 preeminent doctorate-granting research institutions in North America. Current enrollment of both graduate and undergraduate students is over 30,000 and the University has almost 325,000 living alumni.

In the summer of 2019 Pitt publicly launched a comprehensive effort that redefined its institutional brand. While this point marked a beginning of new ways to see the Pitt brand, it’s identity and most importantly its story, the work began about 18 months earlier and included rigorous research with internal and external stakeholders, collaborative strategy development and a new creative platform that included both a new visual identity as well as a new narrative for telling the Pitt story.