Social Media Marketing in #highered: A student video worth $40,000 at The University of Dayton

Following in the footsteps of Tuft University that started to accept videos in place of traditional essays last year, the University of Dayton has decided to offer to its prospective students the opportunity to make an “audiovisual” impression as part of their college application and… get a chance to win a $40,000 scholarship over 4 years at the same time.

This scholarship contest, embedded in the college application process, is an original twist on recent social media campaigns conducted by different institutions. Video contests are not new in higher education, but what’s different this time is the fact that the winning prize is significant to say the least.

Here’s the video that the University of Dayton used to promote the contest and explain its rules.

As explained in the news story posted by the University of Dayton, this is actually the second time they run a video contest. Last year’s contest resulted in 42 entries and over 10,000 votes.

Kevin Schultz, Assistant Director for University Marketing & Digital Innovation at the University of Dayton, was kind enough to answer a few questions via email so we can learn from this social media marketing campaign.

1) You ran a similar scholarship contest last year. What were the main lessons learned from this marketing campaign?

There are a couple of angles I’d like to take on this question. First, from a technical standpoint we learned it was a much better idea to use a hosted service for the contest. Last year we built our own system in-house for the video collection and voting. It was a hassle to maintain for our developers who don’t typically work on projects of this nature, and caused some real struggles during the competition. This year, we’re using a hosted solution through our Facebook page and the process is 300x times better. From the contest overall, we learned that for it to be very effective, the concept must include several levels of prizes. Last year, our prize tiers only included scholarship money for the 1st place winner (the 2nd and 3rd place prizes were cash & a camera, last year’s concept was a little different). Both the 2nd and 3rd place winners chose to convert their cash prize to a scholarship (an option we offered in part so the students could avoid being taxed on the cash prize), so this year we offered several levels of scholarship since that’s definitely what seems to motivate people to enter.

2) The college essay is viewed as a staple of the traditional college application. Why has the University of Dayton decided to let students submit videos – if they prefer – instead of essays? What are your goals?

We hear from many students that our traditional application process doesn’t let them express themselves in a full manner. Students are more than just a test score, grades and a GPA. A written essay helps us expand that view slightly, but a video takes it even farther. Students frequently submit all manner of non-required supplemental materials like a resumes, etc. – we’ve even had students send us scrapbooks showcasing themselves! Our goal with the video essay is to allow students who are interested to show us a fuller view of themselves. The author of this article did a nice compare/contrast on this very issue that also has some good quotes from me on the topic.

3) How do you plan to measure the success of this campaign?

Success will be measured in several ways: first, I’m curious to see the final number of students who choose to enter the contest in place of the traditional written essay. They can of course just enter separately (last year’s contest was totally separate) but I’m am very curious to see how students respond to this idea that changes the scope of the sacred sacred application essay. Right now we’re at just about 20 students who have selected the option on their application. Second, I’m hoping to notice an increase in the activity of accepted students on our Facebook page. We’re like-gating the entry form, and we’ve seen our number of likes almost triple at this point, which means I know we’ll have some ripe opportunities to engage with accepted students. Finally, we’ll look closely at the number of total applications/accepts from a specific set of about 300 high schools that we’re trying to build relationships with across the country. We targeted them with specific materials about the contest as part of an overall awareness campaign that has included offering guidance counselors the chance to award our scholarship money to their students and also sending iPads pre-loaded with our applications to select high schools.

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