William & Mary recognized for excellence in educational advertising
The Higher Education Marketing Report recently named William & Mary a winner in three categories of the 28th annual Educational Advertising Awards.
The College received gold awards in both the video viewbook and magazine advertising/single ad categories for the 2012 Charter Day video and a Miss America ad respectively. The Admit It! blog used by the Undergraduate Admission Office received bronze recognition in the competitive social media category.
“We were excited to learn William & Mary had been recognized with two gold awards and one bronze award this year. Every year, we sit down and brainstorm about some of the best work that Creative Services produced the previous year then whittle that list down to a few submissions,” said Tina Coleman, director of Creative Services.
“It’s a tough process because we have very talented folks on our team that turn out great work.”
{{youtube:medium:left|HLDvJTqS_ow, Charter Day 2012}}
The Charter Day video was used to open the 319th Charter Day ceremony with the theme “There is only one William & Mary.”
The Miss America ad was produced for the Miss America magazine in honor of Rosemary Willis ’13, who was crowned Miss Virginia last year and went on to compete in the Miss America pageant.
The Admit It! blog is one of the primary communication tools for the Undergraduate Admission Office as they write about everything prospective students and their parents need to know about admission to William & Mary.
“It was incredibly rewarding to have the Admit It! blog recognized as a bronze award,” said Wendy Livingston, associate dean of admission. “We do all we can to meet students wherever they are; the Admit It! blog is just one of those outreach efforts. The conversations the blog allows us to have with prospective students and families really helps to clarify our process and, we hope, makes us that more approachable to future members of the Tribe.”
What separated William & Mary’s entries from many others is that they were created using only College resources with no outside vendors. William & Mary’s Office of Creative Services designed both the Charter Day video and the Miss America ad, and collaborated with the Office of Undergraduate Admission on the Admit It! blog.
“Collaboration was key with all of the projects we submitted this year and there is no one person that can be credited for each of the winners,” Coleman said. “It took a slew of folks contributing to photography, illustration, content, design, CSS, audio and video. “It’s especially gratifying to win these kind of awards amongst other higher education submissions that were created by external marketing and design agencies. William & Mary didn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on these projects as the university is fortunate to have talented folks that can produce creative work in-house.”
According to the Higher Education Marketing Report, the Educational Advertising Awards is the largest competition of its kind in the country. Over 1,000 institutions from all 50 states and several foreign countries submitted over 3,000 entries. Only 167 institutions received gold awards.
