Project Details

UC San Diego’s office of Student Wellness asked us to increase the visibility and relevancy of “student wellness” as both a concept and as the brands of three university departments: Recreation, Student Health and Counseling & Psychological Services.  In order to deliver both a master marketing strategy and individually-tailored marketing strategies for each department, we first examined the premise itself.  Was “wellness” a concept about which UC San Diego students even cared?  Our hunch was confirmed by student focus groups that considered “wellness” to be more of a concern for older people.

We found the heart of our solution in the college prep forums.  Time and again, potential and current UC San Diego students differentiated the school from competitors like UC Berkeley and MIT by painting a picture of its laid back Southern California lifestyle. We translated that unusual mix of academic achievement and chill living into “The Good Life.”   Under this campaign, we are able to actively challenge students to define – often for the first time in their lives – what “the good life” really means to them.  And by uniting all of the wellness departments under one master campaign, we repositioned each of their brands as contributing to the achievement of these higher student goals.  Thus, we created relevance by pushing “wellness” to the background and pulling the student’s own goals to the forefront.

From there, we developed a campus-wide creative campaign, rebranded all of the departments, and provide marketing strategy and tactics for each team.  Our proposal, set for implementation in fall 2012, covered every last detail including a dorm laundry bag with the message “Air out your dirty laundry,” courtesy of Counseling & Psychological Services.

• Messaging
• Branding
• Marketing Strategy
• Creative Direction