Building a runway to success in tech
Virginia Tech has long been regarded as a university that places innovation at the heart of their curriculum. But when they set out to expand their portfolio by opening a dedicated Innovation Campus in Washington D.C., they faced competition from countless colleges from across the country offering remote programs and a growing contingent of other universities setting up shop in the nation’s capital.
The university needed a way to persuade prospective grad students that the new Innovation Campus was their best bet for jumpstarting a career in tech. We partnered with Virginia Tech to create a recruitment campaign that gets students excited about the world of opportunity that awaits them at Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus.
Understanding a special kind of student
To build a strategy for the campaign, we first needed to understand what these computer engineering and computer science students were looking for in a graduate experience. We found that the students who the Innovation Campus is looking to attract are searching for a particular kind of experience: one where their peers are unlike them in origin but are united in their drive. These students are looking for a place where they can dive in and work hands-on from day one, a place that can act as a launchpad—connecting them with opportunity and access to companies and institutions leading the way in the tech space.
The Center of Next
From there, we painted a picture. The same one that informed Virginia Tech’s decision to establish the Innovation Campus, but this time through the eyes of its students. We developed a campaign concept along with advertising and marketing materials that brought our central idea to life. The Innovation Campus puts students within reach of policy makers, national institutions, and industry leaders with deep technological needs—all within a global city that attracts diverse voices from all over.
With a visual style that retains a connection to its institutional roots, our campaign channels the power and influence of America’s political nexus and the fervor of an expanding tech corridor, placing Virgina Tech’s Innovation Campus recruits at the heart of the next tech revolution.
