Brief Explanation

We wanted to promote our new campus as well as SUTD’s pedagogy and culture. Bearing this in mind, we came out with the “SUTD on Wheels” Campaign. For this campaign, pop-up trucks and buses were our key promotional elements. On top of that, using the vehicles, we brought along current SUTD students to help promote the university as well. The reason for doing so is because we wanted to differentiate ourselves from the competitors and not go through the usual advertisements and events that were largely informative and impersonal that our competitors have been doing. Thus, we decided to bring SUTD to the pre-university students as we felt that promoting the school through current SUTD students would be more effective compared to having advertisements. These pop-up trucks and buses gave us the opportunity to promote SUTD’s pedagogy and culture through the conduct of mini-workshops and the showcase of SUTD projects.

The Brief

Pre-university students are bombarded with numerous advertisements from different tertiary institutions. To differentiate itself from the competition, SUTD needed to utilise a unique communications strategy to reach out to these prospective students. We have to overcome the prevailing sentiments of SUTD being a new (and comparably less established) university. In addition, many prospective students were unfamiliar with SUTD’s pedagogy and unaware that SUTD's new campus is in the east. We decided to combine the two by creating this campaign to not only announce its move to the new campus but also to "bring" SUTD to the prospective students.

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

Our campaign received an overwhelming response for SUTD’s Open House held in March 2015. The school recorded the highest number of visitors, 3110, for their open house, which was a 55.5% increase from their previous one. The unanticipated demand led SUTD to run out of goody bags. The 9 schools that we reached out to were impressed by the workshops that were conducted such that they have invited SUTD to be part of their exhibition and conduct similar workshops for the students. This campaign was well received that it was featured in various local news platforms such as Channel News Asia, The Straits Times, etc. Not only did this campaign increase awareness of SUTD newly located campus in the East, this campaign also gave prospective students a better understanding of SUTD’s pedagogy and culture through the showcase of their projects, mini-workshops and interaction with current SUTD students.

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

This campaign consisted of 3 different pop-up trucks and 3 open-top double-decker buses. As we wanted to not only inform people of SUTD’s move to the new campus, the pop-up trucks were designed in such a way that allowed people on the outside to view the workshops conducted inside, creating intrigue and stimulating excitement. As we wanted to bring SUTD to the prospective students, we designed the interior of the pop-up trucks with SUTD posters. These trucks also showcased projects done by SUTD students. Furthermore, workshops were conducted, giving students the opportunity to gain a better understanding of SUTD’s pedagogy and culture. Prospective students were also encouraged by the SUTD students to attend SUTD’s Open House 2015. The trucks and buses travelled to the 9 different schools and ended its journey at the new campus in the east.