Microsoft and Canadian Students -- A love affair?

Who's targeting Canadian students?
Microsoft is working with Youthography, the leading Canadian 'youth marketing' agency, to market their full Microsoft Office package of 9 products at a very advantageous price. Microsoft Ultimate Steal offers all their products at a 91% discount to Canadian students, the product sells itself.

Is Microsoft trying to recapture their dropping market share on university campuses?

Postering and Un-postering
I'm currently working with them as a brand ambassador at my university to execute their integrated marketing campaign over the course of a few weeks. We do everything from online viral marketing, postering and promotional item distribution. Check Adjoke's post for an example of one of the online viral material that we spread across canadian college student communities.
So we plackareded the university with the posters that we were provided with. The idea was to tease students for a week with the following poster and then release the website address on a sticker the following week.
However, a week later all canadian brand ambassadors had a new task: to take the posters down!


The poster


The sticker



So what's wrong with it?

• The kid on it looks very young and many university students may have problems relating with him.
• The two-step campaign did not create suspense, it created frustration because the advantageous deal was put out there without the site to access it.

What's your take on it?


I'll receive the new poster in a week, so stay tuned to find out what it will look like...

Award Winning Guerrilla Marketing -- Toilet Plungers as Ad Medium

Toilet Plungers?
At the Marketing Magazine 2008 Innovation Awards, Colour Creative Persuasion Inc. received the gold prize in the "targeted marketing: young adults" category for the work they did for student-geared Landlord Lou.

The Campaign
It consisted of placing 3,000 toilet plungers around Halifax, Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John in New Brunswick which all had the website's URL. To leverage the effectiveness and buzz of the campaign, Colour Creative put up posters and took up a few ads in urban weeklies encouraging students to find the plungers -- treasure hunt style. The clear purpose of the campaign was to draw students to their website which had a link to their extensive number of apartment listings as well as some viral videos to help brand themselves as the best landlord in town.

Posters


Microwave


Sex Feens

My Thoughts
The campaign got some buzz on Facebook, Kijiji as well as 7000 hits on their website. So clearly, their objective was attained and their brand image very likely increased as well. Moreover, I admire campaigns targeting students that make smart uses of various media to increase the overall efficacy of it.

But seriously, was it worth putting that much effort into it?

Chewing-Gum Guerrilla Marketing -- Cast you vote with gum.

This might not be the most democratic way to vote, but it is an incredible way to conduct cost-efficient polls ;D
I found the idea very creative and, even though its a little past the US elections, I could very well see its effectiveness on college campuses for:

• Student body elections
• Polling peers on any issues
• Raising awareness about virtually anything in the form of a vote
  

Picture taken in South Beach, Miami by berggam. Check out out Gum Election 2008 for more.

Anyone notice how the two anti-Obama supporters did not dare put gum on his face...

Creating Buzz with Posters. Example of a Successful Recruitment and Branding campaign.

Unless you are a recognized company, students won't go out of their way to find out who you are and what your company has to offer .

That's when advertising can do some good: helping the smart yet creative underdog make a name for himself.

In September 2008, ConocoPhillips Canada, a small oil and gas company has launched a university campus branding and recruitment campaign in several universities such as U of Saskatchewan, U of Calgary, U of Alberta, U of Regina and Memorial University.
It's a three phase campaign which gradually introduces the students to 'Phil' and the site workwithphil.com in light of attracting qualified students to the recruitment interviews. The secret of this campaign is Karo's use of the contrast principle: by keeping the amount of text to a minimum, the bright red posters' message stands out!
According to Marketing Magazine, the expected buzz has been created as a result on the targeted campuses.


courtesy of Marketing Mag


How is this for a cheap yet effective alternative?


Thought: to add value to any company's recruitment efforts, small and large firms should make better use of employee referral programs to recruit students straight from college. Dr. John Sullivan highlighted that the use of such cost-efficient tools lack in college recruitment. He makes reference to two successful cases in this post.

Who wouldn't like to work with an acquaintance and get rewarded for it?