PROJECT 7

Take One Tips & Tricks

A soft offering rather than a hard sell.

The Perfect Self-Tape

Social Media

Secrets of Film Noir

Failure as an Asset

Challenge

Facing a pandemic summer prohibiting in person engagement and a likely year ahead of a full online education, Hussian College, a four year school offering particularly vulnerable degree programs in performing arts and filmmaking, was facing the likely possibility of losing a significant percentage of its projected returning student body, its ability to generate future leads, and cultivate and capture prospective students through in-person summer camps.

Objective

To remind existing and prospective students and school stakeholders that, though online for the summer and likely the upcoming school year due to the pandemic, the school remained an open, active, viable resource for dynamic arts and entertainment industry education. The HCLA academic and production teams, demonstrating a school core value of collaboration, together would conceptualize, write, shoot, perform, and edit an online content series. Take One Tips & Tricks, would deliver complimentary educational insight while introducing/showcasing HCLA faculty, physical space, equipment, production know-how, and industry knowledge and promote topics to be workshopped in a free follow-up synchronous summer camp. The series would provide the school’s marketing team with lead-generating content for social media, the school’s admissions team with the tools they’d need to l register and engage high-value prospects, and the academic team the opportunity to connect with existing students on summer break. shoring-up retention.

Result

During a summer that for many schools and organizations represented significant loss and set-back, with the release of its series and virtual camp, HCLA saw a significant increase in social media followers, registered more students for its virtual camp than for any its previous in-person versions, and retained nearly 90% of its returning student body. Additionally, though not it’s largest historically, the school sat an incoming freshmen class comprised mostly of participating campers and series followers only 10% smaller than the year before. Thanks in part to the innovative approach to the online summer, the school remains open and on a steady pathway toward full pandemic recovery.