A new voice for Dalhousie's recruitment efforts

Since 1818, we’ve seen almost everything. (Almost.)
When you’re five minutes from the ocean, weekend getaways don’t have to wait for the weekend.
The good news is your professor is your neighbour. The bad news is your professor is your neighbour.

Dalhousie’s new recruitment marketing campaign certainly sounds different.

But as the team behind the campaign explains, the slightly irreverent approach is simply a new way of sharing with future students what sets Dalhousie apart: a world-class education fused with the friendly and fun culture of urban Halifax.

The campaign formally launches this week in advance of Friday’s Open House and this weekend’s Ontario Universities Fair. There, mobile bicycle ads will patrol outside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, playing Jackson Jha’s “See You In September” and offering the 80,000-100,000 students in attendance a different—and perhaps more laid-back—option than what they find inside: For a school that’s almost 200 years old, we’re surprisingly unstuffy. Must be the ocean air.

Those who have seen the new recruitment viewbook or academic handbook will have already gotten a sense of the campaign’s style—historic buildings mixed with playful text—and its website can be accessed from dal.ca, with four different faces each highlighting a different element of the Dalhousie experience (and each with its only mobile-friendly version as well, accessed via QR code). The web pages also feature new video testimonials from first-year students sharing their impression of life at the university.

New attention to Dal’s undergrad programs

Also key to the online recruitment effort are a series of rich, new undergraduate program microsites, the first ten of which have been launched; the remainder are working their way to completion through the combined efforts of the Registrar’s Office, departments across campus, ITS and Communications and Marketing. (The goal is to have microsites for all undergraduate programs live by the Christmas break, with graduates programs to follow in the new year.)

The first ten completed microsites are:

• Classics
• Creative Writing
• Earth Sciences
• English
• Environment, Sustainability and Society
• French
• International Development Studies 
• Management
• Diploma in Meteorology
• Sociology and Social Anthropology
  

Each microsite contains a detailed program overview, student and faculty profiles, career opportunities and more. It’s a new way to share the most vital information about Dalhousie’s program offerings with prospective and current students.

“The new BMgmt microsite is much crisper and cleaner than the old site, and significantly easier to navigate,” says Vivan Howard, associate dean (academic) in the Faculty of Management and the outgoing academic director of the Bachelor of Management program.

“The visuals are bigger, bolder and more current.  I particularly like the way the site focuses on key information prospective students are looking for:  why they should   consider the Management program at Dalhousie, what they will learn and what they can do with their degree. I think this site will really  help us attract new students to our program.”

Distinguishing Dalhousie

The microsites, in combination with the new marketing campaign, reflect the scope of the university’s recruitment strategy today, which increasingly casts its attention nationally – and internationally.  The university’s previous recruitment marketing campaign, introduced in 2005, was originally designed to appeal to students from Halifax (and later, Nova Scotia).

To come up with a new approach to sharing Dalhousie’s story, the university worked with Target Marketing & Communications, based out of St. John’s, Newfoundland. The effort involved research with students, recruiters and university staff as well as a competitive analysis of what other schools and companies are doing to reach the high school demographic.

“What we found was that, for many, what distinguished Dalhousie was its reputation for delivering a world-class education, combined with a beautiful campus and the chance to live and study in this funky, coastal city of Halifax,” says June Davidson, director of marketing at Dal. “Those elements, together, resonate strongly with prospective students and it’s a combination that no other university can claim the way we can.”

She adds that while Halifax has always been a key factor in why students come to study at Dalhousie, the university hasn’t combined that message with its academic credentials in quite this way before.

“It’s a new twist on our message, one that we’re working to deliver in a way that’s smart, clever and designed to speak directly to 17- and 18-year-olds.”

This winter, the campaign will be seen online and in bus shelters, shopping malls, transit and movie theatres.