Everyone Loves Maps!

Situation

The Office of Military-Connected Students at a large public regional university invited administrative offices throughout the campus to sponsor their annual graduation dinner. This funding effort was critical to the success of the event. As is often standard, the sponsorship package included space for an ad within the program. This is a natural marketing model for companies looking to grow their business, but makes less sense in a setting like this. Still, every sponsor made a submission. Consequently the program was replete with “ads” that all literally said the same thing, some version of “Congratulations graduates!” and “We are proud of you!” along with the name of the sponsoring office and minimal artwork.

We worked with a division that was committed to sponsorship but wanted to do something different with their space, something valuable. Something that made people smarter.

Solution

The city of Indianapolis where this university is located has an extraordinary identity for military-connected people and veterans. Indianapolis has more monuments and memorials than any other city in the US other than Washington DC. While this is a generally known fact, less well known is where all of these memorials are located. A few of them are very high profile and well known, but many of them are not. We recognized this as an opportunity to offer real value to those attending the dinner.

We worked with the staff in the Office of Military-Connected Students as well as with the city to identify the memorials and other destinations connected to veterans throughout the city, and then we mapped those on an artistic, stylized map of the city. Our map led with a far more substantive version of the “congratulations graduates” message, saying instead “[We] join the city of Indianapolis in honoring and memorializing our veterans.” The map included 12 locations throughout the city anchored around the university, including the memorial at which the event actually took place. We were literally showing viewers how closely packed these destinations were around them, and giving them a destination list.

Success

The real success of this effort was evident in the number of programs that people kept! The first year we did this the program was primarily physical, and we were delighted to note how many programs people left with: fewer left behind for trash or recycling, and a greater longevity as people kept the program and our logo and identity with them as long as they intended to use the map. The following year the program moved to digital only, and our goal was for attendees to save the image so they could return to it. We were so pleased with the beauty and utility of the map that we actually printed a few copies of it. We actually changed this part of the program from a momentary and discarded glance to something with real staying power, and in subsequent years we turned this one “ad” into something so valuable that we found value in printing and distributing copies of it alone without detracting from the intent of the event. Further, the artwork we developed for the program was so well done that we incorporated it into other recruitment materials for the admissions office.