4. • AdLab is Boston University’s student-run advertising agency
• We are the largest full service agency in the country
• Our AT&T team is seven people strong, with two joining from BU’s PRLab
Think. Rethink. Create. Repeat.
What is AdLab?
5. AT&T is one of the largest technology companies in the world, and continues to accelerate innovation for
their customers by hiring talented employees and running the fastest, most reliable network. AT&T would
like to be promoted as an employer of choice and attract the best and brightest of current students and
recent graduates to their College Development Programs.
The Situation
6. You want to hire top talent from the Boston market, but students currently view your company as corporate
and dated. We were asked to change this image and position AT&T as an employer of choice that is both
innovative and nimble.
The Problem
7. Our campaign had the following objectives:
• Increase awareness on BU’s campus of AT&T’s College Development Programs
• Increase the number of applicants to AT&T’s College Development Programs
• Increase awareness on BU’s campus of AT&T’s 10% student discount
• Increase the Net Promoter Score for AT&T by addressing key issues and misconceptions
Additionally, we sought to:
• Generate positive press coverage of our campaign in local and campus media outlets
• Run a successful campus event to promote AT&T’s core values
• Activate our audience via social media and other nontraditional channels
Advertising Objectives
9. Currently, Millennials have negative perceptions of a sales position, both in retail and business. Millennials
are also unaware of the many innovative training programs AT&T provides in order to advance their
careers. AT&T wants to position themselves as a highly attractive employer and raise awareness of their
College Development Programs in order to change the perceptions of their target audience.
In order to accomplish this, we needed to:
• Gain insight on the target audience’s opinions on career paths and identify key drivers in Millennial ideal employer selection considerations.
• Get feedback from the target audience about their knowledge of AT&T as an employer and AT&T’s College Development Programs.
• Gain insight on the relationship between AT&T as a brand with the target audience.
Research Objectives
10. Qualitative Research
• Three focus groups were held (two discussing ideal careers, one discussing impressions of AT&T)
• Total of 21 participants (18 BU undergrads, 3 BU grad students)
Quantitative Research
• Survey was distributed via Facebook, Reddit and e-mail and received 512 responses
• Asked students about their opinions on careers, their interaction with brands on social media, and their
opinions of AT&T and awareness of the College Development Programs
Pre-Campaign Research
11. Key Findings
Our target feels unprepared for
working in the professional
environment due to a lack of
experience with soft skills, yet they
understand the importance of
having soft skills.
Our target audience is
apprehensive about the
internship and job
application process.
Our target finds the idea
of training programs
appealing.
Our target audience is
cause-driven and socially /
environmentally concerned.
Our target audience found price
and rate plans the most
important driver when deciding
on a mobile service provider.
Our target audience
spends a significant time
on social media.
Our target
audience has an
entrepreneurial
spirit.
13. Boston-area young Millennial students, ages 18-25. They are a group of entrepreneurial problem-solvers
and though many are unemployed, they are the largest and most educated demographic in American
history. They value experiences over possessions and consider socially-conscious practices a business
imperative. Because of this, they aspire to work for companies that share their socially-conscious,
innovative drive.
Understanding the Target Audience
14. Jason is a highly motivated and involved student in the School of
Management at Boston University. He is active in his classes and
participates in several extracurricular activities, including the BU
Marketing Club and Entrepreneurship Club. He enjoys the atmosphere
of this highly competitive environment at a top-tier school. However,
Jason is already thinking about his life after his undergraduate studies
and he’s having trouble trying to stand out from his similarly
competitive, academically active peers. In searching for internships,
Jason has had a difficult time with the application and interview process,
and feels stranded in a pool of applicants. He’s already questioning
applying for and working in a large corporation when he graduates,
however he wants to work for a company with a larger impact on the
world.
Meet Jason (21, student)
15. Brand Positioning Statement
To the entrepreneurial, tech-savvy college student living in Boston, AT&T is both an innovative company
and an employer of choice. Their College Development Programs provide an exceptional way to kickstart
one’s career and their Labs and Foundry create an innovative environment in which amazing things can
happen.
Message
AT&T is an innovative company and an exciting place to start your career
Slogan
Innovate Possible
Position, Message, Slogan
17. Product/Service
AT&T is one of the largest technology companies in the world, and continues to accelerate innovation for their customers by hiring talented
employees and running the fastest most reliable network. AT&T would like to be promoted as an employer of choice and attract the best and
brightest of current students and recent graduates to AT&T’s college development programs. They would also like to raise awareness of the
student discount.
Challenge
To establish AT&T as the employer of choice and industry leader in the mind of the target audience and encourage Boston-area students to
get involved. To achieve this, several goals needed to be met:
• Raise awareness of AT&T’s full time and internship College Development Programs in business sales, retail management, and technology.
• Dispel myths about sales and AT&T.
• Develop an innovative solution to capture diverse applicants to the College Recruiting team.
• Raise awareness of available student discounts.
Creative Strategy
18. Role of Communication
Communication with the target audience was vital to our campaign’s success. We encouraged audience engagement at every stage of our
campaign and through every communication medium. By creating a dialogue (and thus word of mouth buzz) through social media and
interactive ads that encouraged audience participation via hashtags and Instagram competitions, we extended reach of our communication
and awareness of our campaign.
Target Audience
Boston-area Millennial students, ages 18-25. They are a group of entrepreneurial problem-solvers and though many are unemployed, they are
the largest and most educated demographic in American history. They value experiences over possessions and consider socially-conscious
practices a business imperative. Because of this, they aspire to work for companies that share their socially-conscious, innovative drive.
Creative Strategy
19. Current Beliefs
College students view AT&T solely as a mobile service provider. Boston-area students never considered AT&T as an innovative company, or an
employer of choice, simply because they were not blatantly exposed to that information. Millennials have negative perceptions of a sales
position, both in retail and business.
Desired Beliefs
We want the best and brightest college students to pair Boston and AT&T’s innovative spirit together in their minds. Boston-area college
students will view AT&T as an innovator, an employer of choice and a place where they can develop and grow within their career path.
What Makes This Believable?
AT&T’s College Development programs feature tracks in management, corporate, technology and sales and provide trainees with challenging
work in order to advance them to their ideal careers. AT&T also runs the AT&T Foundry and Labs Research in order to develop innovative
technology to benefit their consumers and improve the future.
Creative Strategy
20. What is the Desired Brand Personality?
The AT&T brand is innovative, inspiring, and passionate. The brand is caring both because of its Research Labs and Foundry that work to make
technological advancements for consumers and its dedication to customer service.
Campaign Theme & Message
Based on insights found during pre-campaign research, our campaign revolved around a personalized, aspirational approach. We
emphasized the power of the individual and importance of working for a company that embraces that power. Our strategy was that AT&T
provides meaningful and exciting work opportunities for driven Millennials because of its company values (socially conscious, always
innovative, constantly improving) and college development programs.
Executional Considerations
The team must organize an event in order to raise awareness and consideration of AT&T as a potential employer. The event will feature a
competitive component in order to attract the brightest and most innovative students and reflect the innovative attitude of AT&T. During the
event, the team will promote AT&T as a potential employer and the College Development Programs, the AT&T Foundry and Research Labs,
and the AT&T Student Discount. The event will be promoted using a mix of traditional advertising, including posters, digital, including social
media, and experiential outdoor advertising.
Creative Strategy
21. APRIL 19TH
11:00 am - 3:00 pm
{ }
REGISTERTODAY
775CommonwealthAve,Boston,MA02215
innovatepossible.com
S A T U R D A Y
WICKEDSMAHT?
Tweet us a selfie of your lightbulb moment.
Tag @ATT_InnoBoston with #InnovatePossible
and be entered to win a Starbucks gift card.
RegisterforInnovatePossible
<<SELFIEHERE
Interactive Poster
• This poster was displayed on campus and at
our Innovate Possible campus event.
• We teased our audience to take a “selfie”
with our poster. In return they were entered
to win a Starbucks gift card.
22.
23. BU Shuttle Advertisement
• This poster was displayed on the BU shuttle
busses for two weeks leading up to our
Innovate Possible campus event.
• Estimated 20,000 impressions.
24. Event Flyer
This was handed to students at the following Boston schools, as well as
placed in strategic high-volume locations around Boston University.
• Boston University
• Boston College
• Harvard
• MIT
• Northeastern
• Emerson
25. Event Stickers
These were printed and handed out to students on campus
and posted in acceptable locations around Boston University.
26. Social Media
Our social interactions were focused on innovation and technology news within Boston. From our ATT_InnoBoston Twitter account, we
remained active in the conversation with news outlets tweeting about technology or related matters. We joined the the discussion to generate
awareness and publicize our event. We retweeted relevant articles and actively searched for keywords and/or hashtags to participate in
relevant ongoing conversations and to stay relevant.
We created a number of infographics and other vector-based art that was posted to social media (see images on next page). These graphics
had creative messaging in order to raise awareness about the various aspects of our campaign, staying colloquial and relevant to our target
audience
Creative Strategy
27.
28. Facebook Campaign
Over the course of 50 days we were able to
achieve the following:
• 1,299,015 impressions
• 18,867 viral impressions
• 232,196 daily reach
• 9,570 daily viral reach
• 112 total page likes
• 58 total likes on posts
• 28 total shares
29.
30. Twitter Campaign
Our most popular Tweet was clicked 61 times:
French could be the official language of the
future according to @Forbes. Maybe it’s time to
start practicing? http://ow.ly/v1qpj
• 103 total followers
• 28 total retweets
• 53 total favorites
31. Digital
We created a microsite to hold information about Innovate Possible, our campus event. The site also served as a landing page for us to
promote AT&T’s College Development Programs. We leveraged various other digital platforms such as HootSuite, ScoreMyPitch and
MailChimp to help manage our digital footprint.
Creative Strategy
35. Awareness Goal
In order to generate awareness for our campaign we had to rely on word of mouth and earned media. To get the word out, our PR team
contacted professors and student groups at various schools throughout Boston to tell them what we were up to. Many professors got back to
us and were thrilled to hear about our competition.
Public Relations Strategy
36.
37. Media Coverage
The first media coverage we received was from WTBU Radio, a Boston University student-run radio station. We gave them a five-minute
interview during which we promoted our event and AT&T’s mission. That interview played during their Tuesday, April 15th show at 6:15pm.
Our second coverage came from Her Campus, a Boston College blog aimed at college students.
http://www.hercampus.com/school/bc/innovate-possible
The third media outlet to cover our AT&T Innovate Possible Campus Challenge was BostInno PRLab Blog. They allowed us to publish our own
blog via their channel to promote our event. This went live on Friday April 18th, the night before Innovate Possible.
http://bostinno.streetwise.co/channels/att-innovate-possible-campus-challenge/
Our fourth coverage came from The Heights, the Boston College newspaper. They covered post-event happenings to report on our results.
The article was a feature about Innovate Possible that came out on Wednesday April 23rd, the week after the event.
http://www.bcheights.com/metro/at-t-brings-innovation-challenge-to-boston-university-1.3163682#.U2a4BSh7F38
Public Relations Strategy
38. Media Coverage
Our fifth and final media outlet coverage came from the Boston University graduate student podcast, COMUGrad. This coverage was also a
post-event report that talked of our results from Innovate Possible. Since this was a podcast about COM graduate students, Chris Hurlbert was
interviewed. https://audioboo.fm/boos/2122834-bucomgrad-podcast-adlab-with-chris-hurlbert
Public Relations Strategy
39. Improvements
While we are very proud with the amount of media coverage we received, we believe that there could have been more attention if we had
planned the event on a different weekend. April 19th was a weekend that included not only Passover and Easter, both of which are holidays
that many students leave the city for, but also the Boston Marathon bombings one-year anniversary. We believe that had it not been for those
reasons, we may received more interest from the media in covering our event.
Public Relations Strategy
41. College students in Boston are unique. They push themselves in all aspects of life and are driven to succeed by an entrepreneurial spirit that
seems to thrive in this city. While this is true, collaboration and networking between the city’s 250,000 students is surprisingly uncommon.
Innovate Possible, our campus event, aimed to change this.
Through primary and secondary research, we know that Millennials are willing to engage with a brand that understands them and makes an
effort to organically connect with them. We also know that Millennials will accept brand messaging when it is exposed to them in an
experiential setting.
Innovate Possible created an engaging and potentially ongoing experience for everyone involved and worked to position AT&T as the
innovative company that it truly is. In order to get Millennials excited about a potential career at AT&T, we had to convince them that the
company has shed it’s corporate, dated image.
We invited students from Boston’s many colleges and universities to compete at Innovate Possible. At the event they were given information
about AT&T’s College Development Programs and many opted to receive more information via Talent Catch (an app used to capture personal
data). Many students also asked if the event was going to take place again next year, which shows that there was genuine excitement about the
event and for AT&T.
Innovate Possible
51. Score My Pitch
A local startup reached out to us with and asked if we’d like to demo their innovative software in our
competition. We eagerly said yes, and with the help of Score My Pitch we were able to tabulate
scores live and instantly announce winners at Innovate Possible.
Uber
The upscale taxicab service company Uber partnered with us and offered participants in our event a
free ride. They gave new users a $25 credit, which is more than enough to get around the city of
Boston.
Handybook
This startup reached out to us to offer one hour of free cleaning service to our participants.
Local AT&T Stores
We reached out to local retail stores and were able to have a few people on site for our event. This
team showcased the new and innovative technology that AT&T has to offer.
Strategic Partnerships
53. Our Innovate Possible campaign leveraged paid, owned and earned media, along with corporate donations to achieve an ROI of 363%.
With a cost of $2321.98 we were able to achieve $10,768.20 in value earned assets.
Our campaign was also $691.02 under budget, resulting in a 23% savings for our client.
Financial Report
56. With Innovate Possible and its accompanying campaign, our team was able to raise awareness of the College Development Programs by 10%.
When asked about their interest in the Programs, our survey findings showed a 5% increase in those being extremely interested.
Our Innovate Possible intercollegiate challenge worked to reposition the AT&T brand in Boston among Millennial college students. These
students were able to experience the innovative spirit of AT&T and were engaged with branded content through the duration of the event.
These students then shared the story of our event with their friends and family, which will help build the AT&T brand organically.
We were able to generate 194 hot leads for AT&T talent recruiters through both of our events, and many participants were enthusiastic about
possible careers with AT&T in the future.
We established a Net Promoter Score of 4.60 at Boston University.
Additionally, our campaign resulted in a 3% raise in awareness of the student discount offered by AT&T.
Post-Campaign Survey Results
57. Would you consider working for AT&T?
Have you heard of AT&T’s College Development
Programs?
58. How interested are you in applying for one of AT&T’s College Development Programs?
61. Parting Words & Analysis
While we consider Innovate Possible a tremendous success with those who participated, we
recognize that the numbers don’t quite speak to that belief. Because of our elevated thinking
and wish to do something a little outside of the box, we did not reach as many students as we
had hoped. We encountered many obstacles on our journey, and learned that although a
great strategic idea, this campaign was hard to pull off given our bandwidth, resources and
budget. However, the idea is strong. And we believe that this type of campaign would truly
resonate with students if executed on a larger scale.
