Launched in August 2020, the Emmy Award-winning National University “Home” campaign honors the brave men and women who build, serve, and support our communities and call National University home. From teachers and nurses to business leaders and first responders, our students and alumni strive to make an impact in the lives of those around them each and every day. The goal of this campaign is to celebrate these everyday heroes and announce NU’s $30 million investment in student scholarships, an initiative designed to make higher education more affordable for hard-working adults!
I served as associate creative director of copy for this campaign, leading a team of talented creatives during concept brainstorms, managing the casting process (all real students and alumni!), and overseeing and contributing to copy development. In addition, I led the pre-production process, including building out storyboards, creating shot lists, and collaborating with our production partners.
During production, I traveled with our crew to Wilmington, North Carolina, and throughout Utah to capture beautiful photography and footage for our commercials. I provided on-set creative direction, assisted with wardrobe selection, and helped wrangle our amazing cast!
After the shoot, we worked super hard over three weeks to produce hundreds of paid social ads, videos, billboards, bus wraps, transit signs, web pages, and more. In the end, we created a meaningful, heart-felt campaign that I’m so proud to have been a part of.
The concept for our #My30 campaign was born out of a desire to capitalize on the prior year’s rebrand of National University and a long, over-caffeinated concept session with my creative partner Alicia Rousseau. Our goal was to highlight the multi-faceted lives of our students and alumni while communicating our most valuable value prop: one-month classes. I led copy development, while my partner led design.
Once we received approval to develop the campaign, I developed a casting survey that went out to 90,000 students and alumni to ask if they wanted to be part of our marketing campaign. I then read over 1,000 submissions and selected 150 students and alumni to interview. From there, I narrowed down the “cast” to 30 students and alumni, who we filmed during a 30-day production shoot around the country.
During our shoot, I was provided creative direction on set, learned the complexities of commercial shoots, met some of our amazing students and alumni, and worked with incredibly talented crews.
After our shoot, my creative team and I built out campaign assets, such as paid social ads, digital videos, print ads, event collateral, and more. I also developed the two :30 broadcast scripts and digital video script, with the :30 Anthem spot earning us three Emmy nominations, including one for Short Form Writing — a career highlight!
The #My30 Anthem commercial won an Emmy Award for photography and an AVA Digital Gold Award. I also received an Emmy nomination for short-form writing!
During pre-production for the campaign, my creative partner and I led development of shot lists, wardrobe specs, and prop selection.
The #My30 campaign microsite was designed to tell the story of our campaign and our students and alumni, while featuring our two broadcast spots and digital video. I developed the webpage copy and student bios. View the full site at https://www.nu.edu/my30/
To coincide with our campaign launch, our agency redesigned the university website, which included rewriting all content — including over 180 program pages. I managed content development, working with freelance and staff copywriters to create the updated program pages, while simultaneously writing content for the non-program pages, collaborating with our amazing web team, and traveling across the country to shoot the campaign. View the full site at https://www.nu.edu/
City University of Seattle needed a fresh, new look, so in January 2019, my design partner and I tackled concepting for a rebrand. The client wanted to showcase the supportive CityU student and alumni community and showcase their home, the city of Seattle.
In the 11th hour of concepting, we came up with a line that we knew would resonate with our client: A City Where You Achieve. From there, I developed the messaging hierarchy, value prop messaging, and pitch deck copy. And the client loved it!
Once we received approval, I began casting for the photo and video shoot, interviewing hundreds of students and alumni and culling down the cast to about 20 students. From there, I build a shot list and pre-pro deck and collaborated with our external production team to bring our campaign to life.
During the April production shoot, I provided on-set creative direction. After the shoot, I wrote, edited, and managed development of all campaign assets, from website content, paid social ads, print materials, and digital videos.
The CityU website redesign won a 2020 AVA Digital Gold Award. For the redesign, I wrote over 30 webpages and managed and edited content written by three other writers. View the full website at www.CityU.edu.
Rebranding National University was my first major campaign for National University System in 2017.
Our goal was differentiate NU from our competitors and take back market share in the overcrowded marketplace by positioning its four-week class structure as the most accessible, achievable way for prospective students to earn a degree and change their lives, one 30-day class at a time.
Creatively, my main focus was to strip out the lofty, flowery language of the previous brand and focus on communicating our main value props and using simple, straightforward, and action-oriented language. I also wanted to feature real students and alumni instead of stock photos or models/actors in order to make the brand real, relatable, and reputable.
For this campaign, I led copy development for all assets, which included web, digital, broadcast, social, print, and out of home. I also managed the casting process by emailing 90,000 students and alumni, interviewing 180, and selecting 30 final cast members.
Major League Soccer goalkeeper Tim Howard became an SNHU online student in January 2017. I served as copywriter on all campaign elements, including broadcast, print and digital banner ads.
As part of the creative team, I wrote scripts for the broadcast spot based on Tim's background and his letter to SNHU about why he wants to go back to school. It was nerve wracking to write scripts for someone else about their own life — especially a total superstar like Tim Howard. The scripts ultimately served as a framework for the broadcast spot (see scripts below), which featured Tim's interview sound bites.
As the official education partner of Major League Soccer, SNHU supports MLS soccer players and staff in pursuing their online education. To promote our partnership and reach avid soccer fans, I concept and write various marketing pieces, including broadcast spots, radio, in-stadium signage and print ads.
In Spring 2015, I rewrote and reoptimized approximately 600 landing pages, program pages and category pages for the SNHU Redesign project. It was a huge undertaking, but I really enjoyed just putting my head down and busting out these pages quickly and accurately, streamlining the process and collaborating with our web, marketing and digital teams. The site ultimately launched July 2015.
"Dear Excuses" was a social media and digital campaign for Fall 2016. I concepted and wrote copy for the campaign assets, including digital video, bumper ads, organic and paid social media, banner ads and print ads.
