Marketing via Events

We worked with a private Catholic university in the Midwest that had a strong religious identity but wanted to strengthen that identity with respect to its religion programs and become better known for those programs. This represented a challenge because their religion majors were a highly distinct population. They had plenty of marketing materials promoting the programs but they wanted something else to help set them apart.

We conceived an event series that we helped them implement. This university lecture series was centered around the themes of faith, religion, and Catholicism. We worked with the faculty in the Department of Theology to create three separate lecture events that would take place over the course of the year. Each lecture featured a topic of faith and a speaker from the faculty followed by a reception for those in attendance. The lectures were on:

• Historically significant events for Christianity

• Scripture scholars

• The first seven Ecumenical Counsels

We grounded each of the lectures in a historical setting and built a common timeline framework for them. To promote the series we used all of the traditional methods: announcements, flyers, ads, social media, etc. We also wanted to create an ever-growing word-of-mouth buzz. To do so we created a large poster with the title of the lecture series and a brief summary. The poster then featured a blank spot for each of the timelines that would be explored over the course of the year. Within that blank spot we teased the dates for the lecture event.

At each lecture we published and distributed a single, smaller timeline poster that showed the important dates that were discussed in each lecture. Each separate timeline poster fit perfectly on top of the main poster so that over the course of the year attendees could build the full poster in real time. At each lecture, we provided copies not only of the new timeline poster but also of the blank poster on which to put it, as well as timeline posters for any of the lectures that had already taken place.

At the final lecture we followed this pattern by providing the third timeline poster as well again as blank posters and previous timeline posters, but this time we also published a single, completed poster with all three full timelines already printed on it. This was a beautiful work with lasting value that had staying power throughout the communities of faith where the university was building a reputation. It also helped the university build a presence in new communities of faith, and really helped establish and cement the Catholic and faith identity of the university.