NYU Meyers needed a new, bold and engaging campaign to empower the next generation of nursing leaders to step up to any challenge.
Nursing has never been more in the spotlight. Nurses have led us through a global pandemic, working tirelessly to get us through the most challenging public health issue in generations. NYU Meyers knew that in order to drive awareness, inquiries, and subsequent enrollments to their graduate school of nursing, they would need a fresh campaign with vigorous creative, bold messaging, and on-the-nose targeting geared towards diverse candidates. Our approach was to hero those nurses – the people behind the profession, and empower a new generation to take up the mantle.
While NYU Meyers’ intake is traditionally more diverse than competitors, we wanted to appeal to even more diverse groups. For creatives, showcasing that in photography was essential. For strategists, using Akero to discover what has worked in past campaigns and what hasn’t proved to be a crucial first step.
With a KPI of 3.5 million impressions, 295 leads, and a few resulting applications, Net Natives’ media strategists needed to make every penny count.
- Creative Strategy
- Advertising
- Enrollment Attribution
Solution and Rationale
To execute a polished campaign with a staggering ROI, Net Natives’ strategists and creative team banded together. We executed new creative strategy and production, programmatic advertising, and enrollment attribution to find that NYU Meyers exceeded previous performance for the 4th year in a row.
First, we reinvigorated creative. Our campaign strapline - ‘Where Nurses Rise Up’ - is matter of fact. It speaks to the reputation of the Meyers brand, and to the career trajectory available to nurses there as they prepare for leadership positions within the profession. It also speaks to nurses’ ability to rise to any challenge, overcome unimaginable odds, and remain one of the most trusted professions for the past 15+ years.
We wanted to create a visual language that breaks through the usual style often seen in nursing school advertising. NYU Meyers is located in the center of NYC, so we created something that reflects its high energy, but that feels fresh and achievable.
We led the photography treatment to create epic shots of the protagonist, putting the student first and tapping into the diversity of the student cohort. It was important that the campaign fit within the rest of the NYU brand as a whole, and this was achieved by using bright purple as the highlight color throughout the campaign.
With technology solutions, having all of Meyers' performance data in one place made it easy to check what worked well in the past and what did not. We simply just leaned more on the channels that performed well at each stage of the funnel and siphoned budget away to those that did not.
And the results?
Using our creative imagery and empowering strapline, Net Natives’ campaign far surpassed NYU Meyers KPI targets. This year saw an 11% improvement in CPL over last. Even with a small budget, we generated over 6 million impressions, 16K clicks, 525 leads, 79 applications and 11 admissions. With an estimated $3,605 cost per admission and ROI of 1,867%. In the end, our two search tactics generated a CPL of $50.5 and $58, compared to $85 and $110 the previous year – improvements of 41% and 47%.