From our initial research, we discovered that clearing is the first crossroads moment in the life of most 17–18-year-olds and the fear of making a bad decision and feeling stuck with the wrong choice can lead to decision paralysis.

Our campaign concept ‘Switch It Up’ tackled this by reframing the clearing process as a positive experience. It focused on the idea that the University of Suffolk was offering something very different to students – a distinctly more personal and supportive university experience, a community with students at the heart.

We identified that there were three stages of the clearing campaign: pre-clearing, ‘apply now’ and ‘it’s not too late’. We then developed a messaging framework that allowed the University to select the right message for each channel, based on the audience they were looking to target. We also carefully selected imagery to include landscape, lifestyle and aspirational images to help shape the messaging to each of the different audience segments.

Working in partnership with the University’s digital advertising agency, we created over 15 types of assets for digital and OOH, ensuring they were accessible to WCAG 2.0 AA. We also included QR codes on each of the OOH assets to make it easy for the audience to access the University’s website – an innovative way of using technology to connect offline and digital spaces.