I feel that marketing is most effective when you have a personal story to relate to or, better yet, a personal stake. It makes you understand the challenges deeper and you almost become part of the audience you’re targeting. Such was the case with ISAC’s “Shock of College” campaign.
Here we are asked to sell contracts for a pre-paid college tuition program where you lock in the cost of higher education in today’s dollars. This is our second go around with this client – they awarded us the contract in 2013 and again in 2016. But this time, we had a bigger challenge.
Not only had costs kept going up double-digits, but the program was in jeopardy of being frozen. Talk in the news and lack of a state budget made it nearly impossible to overcome the backlash in the media. Our plan was to be everywhere.
We started out with a strong campaign that put the target’s target front and center: a baby who, in my opinion, looked more like a grumpy OAP than a cherubic offspring.