UM-Flint Creative Update | September 2011

After a long summer of redesigning a large portion of the Undergraduate Admissions and Graduate Programs recruitment and marketing materials, we’re now in full recruitment/marketing mode trying to get all of these wonderful pieces out to all the right audiences. You may see some of our hard work showing up by way of ads in local newspapers, community events programs, or even in a few of the area shopping malls.

Recently, we were fortunate enough to conduct a two-day photo shoot,  updating our marketing photo library. In the next month or so, you will be able to find the fruits of our labor in MediaBin. A big “thank you” goes out to all the faculty and departments who were willing to let us into their classrooms or meet us out in the community to take a few snapshots of students showcasing “academics in action.”

Our next focus is going to be on measuring the success of all the hard work we did over the summer by conducting focus groups with high school students across the state of Michigan and possibly beyond. High schools we plan to visit include Oxford, Davison, Utica, Hartland, Fenton, Millington, and Kearsley. We plan to talk with students from the Flint area high schools as well. We’re also hoping to get into a school on the west side of the state,  and perhaps set up an online focus group with high school students in a Las Vegas high school. We want to find out how this year’s marketing materials rate compared to those in years past. In particular, we want to know what high school students think of color photography versus black and white, if the additional personal stories resonate with them or if they can’t relate, and what they think about messages like “Opening Minds” and “Academics in Action.”

We’re also working hard on updating our two main recruitment websites, as they have been neglected for far too long. Look for updated content and looks in the very near future.

Graphics report for September 2011