Recruitment Focus
Texas A&M Video Campaign Shows New Face of Marketing
In a move that will certainly be echoed by other institutions if it hasn't been already,
Texas A&M University
just launched a new microsite specifically to let students post YouTube-style videos showing what life as an Aggie is all about. The site, along with a new
Facebook profile
, is part of a university marketing campaign called "Do You Wonder?"
The campaign also uses more traditional marketing means, such as TV spots, print ads, and online banners, but incorporates the microsite and its student-generated video content. The aim, according to Olga G. West, executive director of marketing and communications at Texas A&M, is to "let our 48,000 student body population--and our faculty and staff--tell the Texas A&M story from their own perspective and show the outside world what it's like to be an Aggie."
Students and others can access the microsite and videos directly at
doyouwonder.tamu.edu
, or in other ways, including through the Texas A&M Web site, on
iTunes U
, and through Facebook, where the new Texas A&M page is also part of the campaign.
Student videos are vetted for appropriateness by West's student interns; most productions follow what has become a common style on YouTube--hand-held cameras, no script, and simple subjects and staging. The campaign started just about a month ago with some 80 videos about Texas A&M, many of them gleaned straight from YouTube. The university also contributed some videos, included some that West arranged to have produced, along with professional TV spots the institution uses in other venues. Since the launch, students have contributed more content, and student productions are now beginning to outweigh the original content.
The marketing approach of using student-made videos along with a page on Facebook to show off the university makes sense, West said, because "we all know that social media is where it is right now." Current and prospective students "are very used to brochures and direct mail. They've been marketed to since they were born.... They're also used to conversing peer-to-peer."