42pointSEVEN: ComArtSci Case Study

Newsflash: COVID-19 changed everything … and summer semester at MSU was no exception. Enrollment in summer courses across the entirety of The College of Communication Arts & Sciences dropped dramatically in 2020 and 2021, and with the return to campus for Fall semester in 2021, there was renewed focus to rebuild  both momentum and revenue for summer semester at CAS beginning with US22 (that’s college speak for Summer Semester 2022).

We started from scratch … in late fall 2021 we conducted focus groups with students across all CAS majors and our take-away was that if CAS wanted to “make summer a thing”, well, they needed to “make summer a thing” and promote courses that students would want to take rather than courses they needed to take. It was clear that summer semester needed a entirely new look, tone and voice. So, we built the campaign using “Make Summer a Thing” as the platform, and “Summer@CAS” as the branding element.  And to ensure we captured the students’ voice and sentiment toward summer semester, we cast our talent from the university’s Improv Club and collaborated with our performing artists to co-create the “Summer@CAS” 2022 campaign.

Working with CAS administration, we developed a matrix of priority courses by CAS department (i.e., Journalism, Media Information, Communications, etc.) and used this information to develop “course specific” messaging featuring our performing artists to meet both college and revenue objectives. And the good news, the “Summer@CAS” campaign was the highest performing College summer enrollment campaign at Michigan State.

Back to the case studies page