Nicholls has recently started using broadcast and online advertisement as part of its recruitment campaign, according to Courtney Cassard, director of enrollment services.Cassard said that so far there is a commercial airing on WWL Channel 4, and there were advertisement banners on New Orleans Web sites such as WWL.com and WDSU.com.
“There were also print ads in the Times Picayune, the Advocate and some other local newspapers,” Cassard said. “The next part of the campaign is that we’re going to get some billboards up in some strategic areas.”
The University also took recruitment to the malls. Tables were set up in the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge and at Southland Mall in Houma every weekend in November and December beginning the Friday after Thanksgiving, according to Cassard. That is no longer taking place.
“Of course that was during the holiday shopping season,” Cassard said. “That’s when the people were in the malls. There’s just not enough traffic in the malls now. Staffing is also a concern.”
According to Cassard, this strategy received good feedback at both locations.
“After the people got shoes from Finish Line, they’d come and ask questions about concerns they were having, and we were able to help them,” Cassard said. “People that maybe had not considered Nicholls before are now looking at us because of the literature and information we were able to provide.”
The University was looking into renting a space in the Southland Mall to have a Nicholls presence there, according to Cassard; however, the legal department for both the state and its holding company could not come to terms with the lease.
“We wanted to use the front part on weekends and holidays for recruitment where it would be kind of a lobby where people could go get information about Nicholls,” Cassard said.
The University was also interested in running continuing education non-credit classes, tutoring and possibly some alumni functions in this space, according to Cassard.
“It could have been used for a wide variety of things,” Cassard said. “It wasn’t an admissions recruitment thing exclusively. However, we would have gone on the weekends.”
Cassard said that there is a whole recruitment plan that the University executes during the year strategically for admissions purposes.
“We’re trying to target students who are eligible here with the new admissions requirements,” Cassard said.
The only new aspect of the recruitment campaign is, according to Cassard, the advertisements.
“There are a lot of recruitment activities that are always on-going,” Cassard said. “That’s part of what the admissions office mission is for recruiting.
