Edge Hill University have been inspiring minds and changing futures since 1885. Although they’re regularly awarded for their teaching excellence, fantastic student support and beautiful countryside campus, they can often be overlooked for other city based universities nearby.
Following the challenges faced in 2020, Edge Hill understood that it was even more important to stand out in an extremely crowded marketplace. After successfully winning a 4-way tender, we were commissioned to work on the 2022 student recruitment campaign which expanded on their mission to create opportunity from knowledge.
By providing high quality teaching and a wider range of opportunities, Edge Hill pride themselves in having a positive effect on their students. But their impact goes much further than the campus boundaries. Their approach means that their alumni are perfectly placed to go into the world and have an even bigger effect, not just in their own lives but others around them. We call this the Edge Hill effect.
Our ‘Expand your opportunities’ campaign is centred around the ripple effect that Edge Hill creates. Messaging was created to reflect this idea, from the start of a students university journey, through to them having a bigger impact on the world. To amplify the idea we also created a ripple graphic device which animates and gets larger with each message.
At the heart of the campaign we placed real Edge Hill students. We knew from the initial concepts we needed striking and aspirational photography, and that it was important to emphasise the high quality and human nature of Edge Hill. We were also intent on capturing one of the key selling points of the university, their award-winning and picturesque campus.
We took the opportunity to introduce a contemporary and confident art directional style that would stand out amongst other student recruitment campaigns. The glowing gradient colour palette takes its inspiration from the beautiful campus. We also introduced a new campaign headline typeface that reflects the university’s mixture of modern and traditional.
The campaign rollout began with brand awareness, initially promoting the ‘Expand your opportunities’ message across a variety of print and digital channels. Beyond the initial launch, we created a flexible campaign that can be adapted throughout the student recruitment cycle, delivering targeted messaging and creative that is focused on specific subjects and key selling points of the university.
The ability to work more collaboratively with the Edge Hill marketing team was an integral part of our initial pitch. Campaign templates were created to guide their in-house team throughout the campaign roll-out and this was delivered in a comprehensive and engaging campaign toolkit.
