Meet challenge, make change: a brand campaign for the reskilling era

The brief asked the creative to do four jobs at once: build brand awareness, expose prospects to the ANU brand story, drive website traffic to create high-intent retargeting audiences, and lift brand alignment across every platform, all while riding a moment when prospective students were rethinking what their work should mean.

ANU asked for two creative concepts to choose from. People trust real people responded to research showing declining trust in big institutions, using testimonials from current students to build confidence with future ones. Meet challenge, make change was inspired by the difficult years just passed, from the pandemic to floods and bushfires, and positioned ANU postgraduate study as the way to be part of the answer.

Both concepts were built to promote ANU as the top choice for postgraduate study and convert that preference into applications, leaning into the strong performance of video.

The final creative was unique to the ANU brand and a first for the university: an original campaign tuned to the national sentiment of the moment, with video assets that went on to outperform ANU’s own benchmarks.