Massachusetts Maritime Academy CTV

Client Background

In our many years working with Massachusetts Maritime Academy, campaigns have included brand strategy and visual brand refinement, messaging/positioning work to support diversity & inclusion for enrollment, and general undergraduate enrollment campaigns via multiple media channels such as social media and paid search. This work example showcases some work we did in CTV/OTT advertising to aid brand awareness.

Challenge

MMA was looking to build its brand awareness among prospective students within Massachusetts. A major goal of the campaign was to address the false perception that MMA was a military or prep school that produces literal on-the-water mariners. Instead, they wanted to get prospective cadets and their families excited about exploring, applying to and attending MMA.

Strategy

Strategic work highlighted a need to evolve messaging as MMA introduced land-based majors and broadened their preferred cadets. MMA was able to position themselves as a University that develops leaders on both sea and land.

Solution

Through our strategic review and planning of MMA’s campaign goals, in-market data and audience modeling revealed that TV would be the best medium for this specific campaign component. CTV/OTT proved the most cost efficient and effective TV placement method due to its granular targeting.

CTV/OTT allowed us to reach households with teenagers interested in pursuing college, the military, and/or engineering–MMA’s core audience–within a defined geographic location

Execution

Zozimus created the TV commercial on a tight budget using existing footage and some stock video, eliminating the cost of custom shooting.

The campaign targeted households in the Greater Boston area as well as coastal Virginia, a target growth market for MMA. The CTV spot was supported by a paid digital campaign targeting devices in the same households that had received the ad and/or visited MMA’s website after being exposed to a TV commercial.

Results

The CTV/OTT campaign ran from May to August, 2020 to support Fall 2020 enrollment efforts.

Results included more than 1.2 Million campaign impressions, directly tracked to more than 3,900 unique website visits.

Overall brand lift, benchmarked pre and post campaign, showed an increase of 49% YoY.

The 60 second spot can be viewed HERE.