Students may sometimes roll their eyes at their university’s marketing efforts, but Brock University has found a way to get their students actively involved. Using their distinctive “Both Sides of the Brain” campaign, the university has invited students to discover their own “other side” with a special photo booth and through an online Facebook contest.
The university’s marketing campaign, created by Target Marketing & Communications of St. John’s and rolled out last spring, includes a series of striking ads that pair one-half of a professor’s face with an image representing his or her research interests.
Brock extended the campaign in October by installing a special photo booth at the Ontario Universities’ Fair in Toronto. Inside the booth, prospective students could select a Brock program that interested them, with each program represented by a specific image. The students could then match up one half of their face with the other half of the image and print the result, complete with a program description on the back.
The booth now resides in the university’s recruitment office and will be used for future campus functions and student fairs, says Martha Nelson, associate vice-president, marketing and communications.
The Facebook contest is similar, except participants can match their faces to any image of their choosing, not just from a pre-selected list. The contest runs until Jan. 13 and is open to high school students and all Brock students, alumni, faculty and staff. Top prizes are two MacBook Pro computers.
Ms. Nelson says the challenge with any branding exercise is “making sure everybody embraces this positioning… and how do you get everybody communicating it in their own way?” The booth and Facebook campaign “make the brand come alive in so many ways. Everybody’s having fun.”