The Brief

For over a decade, LASALLE College of the Arts has boasted a world-class faculty and alumni. Budding undergraduate artists in Asia had no knowledge of this. This meant that potential local arts students were looking abroad to study and international arts students were not considering LASALLE at all. In order to address this, the agency created a global call for art students, to the 2011 LASALLE open house by linking prominent LASALLE faculty and alumni to the College. This highlighted not only the internationality of the school but the world-class credentials of these artists.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

To implement a global call for artists and art students, 30 countdown posters were distributed across 30 countries. The countries which the posters were sent to represented links which LASALLE has to alumni and faculty members. Artists then mounted the posters in their respective countries, snapping photos of the poster, which were uploaded daily to the LASALLE Open House website and Facebook page. Concurrently, discussions were ignited on the website sparking off debates on art in Asia. The agency also created a photo exhibition and commissioned installation artwork as added touchpoints to complement media like print, SEO and web banners.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

As a result, the school experienced a 73% increase in footfall to the 2011 LASALLE Open House. There was an 82% increase in website traffic to the Open House website and a 230% increase in social media conversions and mentions about LASALLE's 2011 Open House. The school also experienced a 37% increase in the number of undergraduate international student applications vs local student applications. Also, the 2011 LASALLE Open House website became the single largest referrer of site traffic to the 2011 Admission page.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Traditionally, LASALLE relied on print and radio mediums to amplify their call for registrations. We wanted to tangibly demonstrate the internationality of the school through unconventional means. Through collaboration, we were able to garner visibility for LASALLE's call for artists across 30 countries, which LASALLE had not managed to do before. The campaign aimed to answer real questions from potential students about what it means to be an Asian artist. Hard questions were answered via open debates on the website. This was a bid to ensure higher quality of registrations, thus propagating a quality cycle for LASALLE for the future.