After creatively guiding NCUK to get their message out to students around the world through an award-winning brand refresh, they asked us to take the campaign one step further and produce a digital toolkit of assets their global study centre partners could deploy in their own local markets.

Brief

The challenge was to make everything unmistakably NCUK whilst flexing the messaging to what mattered most to local audiences. The easy-to-use campaign toolkit needed to achieve brand consistency globally and help NCUK study centres boost student recruitment locally. It should be designed to work across different markets, audiences and channels with everything from social carousels and statics to a 25-second portrait video and PowerPoint template.

Solution

We immersed ourselves in NCUK insight reports to gain a real understanding of our audiences in four key territories – Asia, China, MEA, and the UK, Europe and Americas. We also spoke to NCUK Regional Directors to understand the motivations, mindsets and priorities shaping student decision-making in each market.

This enabled us to turn one global campaign into multiple local conversations. The messaging matrix combined NCUK’s core global selling points with the themes that mattered most in each territory from family and university rankings to regional statistics and the most popular courses. We also developed local alumni stories to make the campaign feel more personal and adapted the imagery so prospective students could imagine themselves starting an exciting journey with NCUK.

Results

We delivered a downloadable digital toolkit packed with ready-to-use and editable campaign assets, giving hundreds of NCUK study centres around the world everything they needed to take #DareToDream into their own markets with a regional twist. One global campaign. Hundreds of local possibilities.

“Working with Waterfall gave us a campaign that felt genuinely tailored to each region, rather than one message stretched across very different audiences. The insight-led approach to messaging and creative made it easy for our Study Centres to see themselves in the campaign, and that local relevance has been key to its success.”

Anna Zvagule, Head of Communications and External Affairs, NCUK