Today: Mar 28, 2024

Students featured in new advertisements

Jeniece RomanNews Writer

Southern Connecticut State University is in the process of releasing new video advertisements that feature students in order to promote the university and drive students to Southern through video, according to Patrick Dilger, director of Integrated Communications and Marketing.

“It’s image and it’s also recruitment driven. We try to make them do both,” said Dilger. “[We] want to be consistent in [our] message but also want [the ads] to be different so that people don’t glaze over them.”

The video campaign is comprised of a three part series of ads, the first featured university president Joe Bertolino, the second featured nursing major Edrienne Arroyo, and the last one will feature Michael Mallory, senior captain and guard of the Southern’s basketball team.

“We’ll look at new video angles to show the university off but I think the real strength of the place is its people,” said Dilger. “It’s students and the people that work here, the people who teach here. That’s what we want to build on. That’s the story we want to tell.”

Edrienne Arroyo, junior nursing major and works in the Institutional Advancement office, said she received and email from the office asking if she would like to be featured in the ad.

“I was a little hesitant at first because I had such a busy schedule,” said Arroyo, “But it would be great to kind of be the face of the campus and just show everyone that Southern is a great university to be involved in.”

Cesar Martinez, videographer for the ads, said the entire process from planning, filming, and editing takes one month. He said filming for one ad could last for a week.

“It’s [the ad] thirty seconds but it’s really intense. You need to take care of every single detail,” said Martinez. “I would say for those thirty seconds we have about maybe twenty five minutes of video.”

Arroyo said that the marketing team initially prepared the script but asked her for some feedback to make it sound informal, not as rehearsed and like it was her own voice.

The video, which featured Arroyo, was posted on Southern’s website the first week of classes and now has more than 40 thousand views, according to Dilger. He said though there is a budget to air the ad on the television station WTNH and other cable channels, they will also be posted across on Southern’s social media accounts.

“I think the main idea was to create something that was targeted to young people,” said Martinez.

Southern has hired Simpson Scarborough, Dilger said, to the research demographics and opinions of the people that view these as and from that information build marketing and branding campaigns. By looking at key words and themes they can understand how effective each ad is.

“We have kind of a comprehensive marketing plan and the TV ads are just part of it,” said Dilger.

According to Dilger, the video advertisements are one series of several different media campaigns that with boost the image of Southern and promote the university. These include TV, radio, wrapped and banner buses, billboards—both digital and static—and promotion through social media.

Dilger said the video production cost to make one ad was $200 but that the price of viewing the ad online was $.30 per one thousand people. Dilger said he would like to continue to feature students in video ads.

“If we were to do these in the future, it’s a great way to showcase various parts of Southern,” said Dilger. “Maybe next time we could feature a theater student, we could feature a science student, we could feature a business student. There are so many different things.”

Photo Courtesy – Cesar Martinez – Special to the Southern News

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