Produced a Cohesive Video Campaign for Increased Enrollment

North Idaho College came to Bahlr Media with a goal of increasing new student enrollment for the Fall semester.

North Idaho College is a comprehensive community college based in Coeur d’Alene with outreach branches in St. Maries, Sandpoint, Kellogg, Bonners Ferry, and Rathdrum. NIC has approximately 6,000 students enrolled in credit classes and more the 4,400 who participate in non-credit classes annually.

The team at Bahlr Media met multiple times with North Idaho College to come up with a strategy that would meet their needs and accomplish the goal of increased enrollment. Our goal was to come up with a tagline for the campaign that set a foundation for the strategy, which was heavily focused on video production.

The basis of the slogan was to grab the attention of the target demographic to realize anyone could start a new career with North Idaho College. With video production playing a big part in storytelling, we focused on a series of videos highlighting students who had unconventional situations from the normal student who goes to college right after high school. We highlighted people who went to college later in life, who have changed careers, and even students that graduated from a university and transferred to NIC for a degree they could use to further their careers. We also wanted to focus on more tradesman careers like Welding, Nursing, Engineering, Aerospace, and Collision Repair.

Each video focused on the story of each student, giving hope to those who needed that little extra push to enroll and make a career change, hence, "Your Future, Within Reach."

North Idaho College came to Bahlr Media with a goal of increased enrollment for the Fall Semester. NIC already had a target in mind: non-traditional students; those over usual college-attending age, or those attending as a form of secondary education. We met multiple times to come up with a target demographic, as well as specific programs to promote to the surrounding areas to Coeur d’Alene, ID. NIC didn’t want to focus on the tradition of marketing the campus and beautiful lake Coeur d’Alene the campus sits on. There are about 10 different colleges around the area, so we knew we had to find something people could relate to in a small town.

We knew we wanted the main focus to be on video storytelling and highlighting other non-traditional students. This would, in turn, motivate prospective students to take the little extra step and enroll in a trade-focused program where they could start a new career in as little as nine months. We also utilized billboards in the area surrounding campus, so that people who saw the videos on Facebook and Instagram would also have the campaign reinforced outside of social media. It was about consistently being on the top of someone’s mind to make the decision to finally enroll.

Using interview strategies, voiceovers, on-site video shoots, and animation proved to be effective methods in serving NIC’s vision for increased enrollment. Highlighting unconventional student stories in a fairly short video, is not only inspiring for others to take action, but can tell an entire story to give hope to those who needed that little extra push. Focusing on the outreach programs also ensured that we were getting the attention each branch needed around North Idaho to further spread awareness to all of the different, yet popular, programs like Welding, Nursing, Collision Repair, Engineering and Computer-Aided Design (CAD).