Northern Arizona University Case Study
With a full slate of athletic programs, alumni relations, rambunctious fans, athlete recruitment, tournament celebrations, and more, the branding and specifically the messaging campaigns for a major conference athletics program like Northern Arizona University are crucial!
Advertising | Graphic Design | Logos & Branding
Photography | Videography
Summary
Strengthening the brand of the NAUA and Skyjacks Alumni efforts.
We were an extension of the athletic department’s marketing team collaboratively creating a tremendous amount of collateral for the growing programs that had the most national championships in their conference for the last 4 years running! Although the program has multiple sports, the NAUA team wanted complete brand cohesion regardless of the sport or athlete. We went to work acquiring all pre-existing assets, all the way back to the ’50s, in order to best understand the legacy of the past players and programs. Once we better understood the mission and vision of the programs, including the new direction being rolled out by the new AD, we started on messaging alignment and potential new slogans. The slogans were agreed upon and sent over to the design team for hundreds of new designs to be created for everything from the alumni VIP boxes, to concessions, billboards, tickets, and more.
Graphic Design
Streamlined, creative, reliable content for all projects big and small.
Once the themes for the new season were chosen, the design team went to work redesigning and branding EVERYTHING. We designed a new truck wrap for the equipment folks, redesigned the interior of the dome from concessions to sidelines to VIP boxes and elevator shafts, then we worked on specific program needs including a full rebrand of their alumni relations ( The Skyjacks) outreach efforts, football recruitment pieces, schedules, maps, seating charts, you name it, we put the new feel on it!
Pay-Per-Click
Supporting the Athletics program by driving more fans to the stadium for game day.
After a year of doing design and branding for the program, we were asked to roll out and monitor Google display ads for 5 of the university’s sports’ seasons. Targeted markets included northern Arizona, southern California, and 5 specific regions where our conference foes reside. This pay-per-click campaign was one of our fastest-growing campaigns of all time and besides the efficacy of reach and traffic to the ticketing pages, we were also able to clearly translate individual efforts through our reporting which was delivered to the NAUA team on a monthly basis.
The Scoreboard:
- Clicks increased by 1261% compared to the previous year
- Over 8 Million impressions over the course of the year.
Photography
With encouragement from the recruitment staff, we were asked to shoot the All Sports Media Day that included basketball, cross country, football, swim, golf, and football players which eventually were used for ticket designs, schedule posters, promotional booklets, billboards, recruitment packages, and most importantly to show Mom!
Working in collaboration with One AZ Credit Union, a major contributor to the program, we were lucky enough to shoot some promotional videos focused on the students, the players, pre game, the band, and all other aspects of football gameday. These videos were used for Google Ads, social ads, and in newsletters and landing pages.
