PANAMA CITY — Gulf Coast State College’s latest marketing campaign features what officials pinpoint as the college’s best asset — its students and professors.
It’s a strategy that won first prize in the Comcast Spotlight Local Advertiser Multi-screen Performance (LAMP) Awards this year in the $25,000 and under annual media spend category.
The goal behind GCSC’s “Meet Gulf Coast” was to increase enrollment and promote brand awareness. The total campaign featured four advertisements that aired both on television and online, as well as billboard and print advertisements throughout the community.
“These are all real faces — they’re real students, real faculty members,” GCSC spokesman Chris Thomes said of the campaign. “There’s a really good interaction between the professors and the students on campus. That’s what we really wanted to show was that relationship.”
More than 200 organizations entered the competition and advertising professionals then narrowed the field to just nine finalists — three for each of the three spending categories. Comcast then opened voting to the public, which cast more than 6,000 votes in a 30-day period.
Laura Green, coordinator of marketing and communications for GCSC, said the idea for the campaign actually came from a brochure she saw at a dental office beckoning readers to “meet” different patients and learn about their dental profiles.
“I am a creative person, but I rely on other creative people to inspire me,” said Green, who took the idea and crafted a campaign that introduced the audience to Gulf Coast’s diverse student body. “The students that do attend here are a diverse group. Our primary demographic is 18-24 (year-olds), but we have people of all ages, of all ethnic backgrounds.”
In total, the campaign featured 18 GCSC students, each completing a different degree program.
“The students that were featured loved being featured,” said Green, adding that community support was a driving force behind the win. “We had so much support during the voting component of this competition. I got so many emails from people telling me they loved the campaign and were voting every day.”