2021 Silver Best Customer Acquisition Campaign

Agency: Havas CX helia

Client: The Open University

Campaign Name: Your ambition. Our mission.

Campaign Overview

A much-loved institution, the ‘OU’ is known for its unique distance learning approach.

For 50 years it's served its audience well, but many still misunderstood and underestimated it. Now it needed prospective students to see the university as the enabler for all people's educational pursuits.

Strategy

To appeal to a wider, diverse set of prospects, the OU shifted emphasis from what's holding people back to what's pushing them forward, by addressing the one thing that unites them all - an ambition to achieve more in life.

Ambition was a territory the organisation felt it could credibly own given its 'open to all' mission which ensures it can help anyone, anywhere achieve their goals, whatever they may be. This idea became the launching pad for the 'Ambition' campaign.

The communications strategy involved studying prospects' decision making and identifying key questions and concerns.

This ensured the initiative did more than just heighten brand awareness, providing the essential inspiration and information to successfully nudge people through the process and achieve their student acquisition targets.

This meant building a campaign platform that had the scale and flexibility to leverage across a suite of channels and messages. To do all this, the campaign featured three key tiers that mirrored prospective students' decision-making journey: Inspire, Explain, Act.

Creativity

The campaign introduced to a mass audience with 'Inspire' TV, OOH and Radio communications, inviting people to awaken their inner ambitions.

This was followed with targeted 'Explain' social and digital communications that helped people better understand how the OU works, address questions, and dispel misperceptions about the OU and distance learning that were getting in their way of seeing the OU as the true enabler that it is.

The campaign leveraged one of the OU's greatest assets - their students – with a fresh approach to testimonials with animation and actual student stories in our Stories of Ambition digital and social assets.

Specific audiences were approached with more targeted communications:

· The needs of Black and Asian prospects were tackled with OOH, radio and direct mail, focusing on the OU's credentials to help them gain the OU advantage

· Younger audiences were engaged with creative designed for Snapchat, Spotify and UCAS partnership channels to see the OU as a smart university alternative

Results

The integrated campaign was hugely successful at engaging new prospects and providing them with the inspiration and information needed throughout their journey to make the leap and begin their OU studies.

It led to significant year-on-year increases of student enquiries, new student registrations, and a younger, more diverse generation of students.

Student acquisitions went 15% above targets, with significant increases year on year in both enquiries and new student registrations.

The 'Inspire' creative made a big impact, reaching most of the adult population and becoming a widely recognisable campaign for the OU.

'Explain' proved to be engaging and informative, as seen from strong performance metrics that showed the suite of social and digital ads held viewers' attention well beyond industry benchmarks.

'Act' creative helped drive prospects to the website in the lead-up to key registration deadlines, where they could explore possibilities and take key actions towards achieving it.

The Team

Havas CX helia - James Hough, Business Director - Kristin Cowper, Strategy Partner - Stuart Peddie, Executive Creative Director - Dan Scott, Senior Creative - Libby Clay, Senior Art Director - Rachel Heathfield, Senior Copywriter - Leo Baker, Senior Strategist - Olivia Honigsbaum, Senior Strategist - Amy Scott, Head of Production - Sophie Knight, Senior Account Manager

The Open University - Rachel Cully, Senior Marketing Manager - Steven Fairey, Senior Marketing Manager - Clare Charlton, Head of Brand and Campaigns - Claudia Church, Former Head of Acquisition - Emma Fleckney, Former Marketing Manager - Louise Hunter, Marketing Manager - Sam McDonald, Marketing - Liz Davies, Senior Marketing Manager - Joe Griffin, Marketing Manager - Khaleel Ahmad, Marketing Executive

Havas Media - Jess Smallman, Mx Associate Director - Alex Boniface, Client Partner - Abby Legg, Media Executive - Eleanor Corcoran, Mx Manager - Rob Breese, Managing Partner - Sophia Perrett, Mx Manager - Leila King, Mx Manager - Tom Lacey, Integrated Production Manager

Contributors

Havas Media, Havas Studios, Ivan Bird, The Nursery, Buffmotion, Jungle Studios, Big Bouy, Matrix