The Nicholls advertising campaign, which has resumed this month, features students and faculty, focuses on excellence in the different colleges and targets young adults 18 to 24 years old and adults 25 to 54, including parents of potential students. The advertisements include 30-second commercials, which were developed in June and highlight each college and student life. Television commercials were first aired before the fall 2005 semester.
“Our message strategy was developed after research into our primary target of high school students and parents was conducted,” Courtney Cassard, director of enrollment services, said.
Cassard said the advertisements are concentrated in Nicholls’ primary market area of southeast Louisiana including metro New Orleans, Baton Rouge, the Houma-Thibodaux area and two counties in southwest Mississippi.
Nicholls worked with Morgan Joanen, a media strategy and placement agency in New Orleans. The Creative Services department of WWL television produced the advertisements.
Cassard said it is too early to assess the success of the advertisements, but she said there are more students showing interest in Nicholls.
“The number of qualified students expressing an interest in Nicholls and the number of hits to the Web site has increased,” Cassard said.
She said she feels the commercials have positively affected fall enrollment, and she said she hopes for the same success for spring enrollment.
The advertisements represent all colleges except University College, which is a starting point for all students, Richard Reso, associate director of development, said.
The commercials address the strengths in each college, such as biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, the nursing program in the college of Nursing and Allied Health, the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute and the state-of-the-art classrooms in the College of Business.
Nicholls chose television advertising because it is the most powerful medium, according to Reso.
“Television advertising utilizes all the senses and provides our target market a view of Nicholls similar to what they are used to, the television,” Reso said.
Nicholls has also created radio advertisements, which are similar to the commercials but are 60 seconds long.
The radio advertisements will air in the tri-parish area on KCIL, KLRZ and KXOR until Dec. 16.
There will be advertisements on Google.com, which push Nicholls higher in the search list based on selected key words.
The campaign also includes an eight-week schedule of banners and large tile “story ads” on MySpace.com.
The online campaign geographically targets young adults 16 to 21 in the southeast Louisiana market.
The commercials will air until Sunday and will resume Dec. 4 to the 17.
