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Destination 

The objective of the YBC spring campaign in 2008 was to recruit students to this new high school and create awareness in the target group since the YBC brand was all new.

Among the challenges was the fact that YBC had an extremely limited budget to work with in a segment with very high competition. During 2008, the competition consisted of almost 120 schools fighting for their "clients" and that with a product that was rather similar. It was therefore of utmost importance to emphasise on the uniqueness of YBC in the recruitment campaign and to communicate with the very restricted target group, the potential students, in a relevant way that could strengthen YBC's message. Core values such as creativity and entrepreneurialism as well as the feeling of being able to affect your own school situation had to be reflected in the media solution.

Platform 

As YBC had not even opened its doors at the time of the campaign period and as the communicated image of the school was all that existed, it was essential that visual expression and the approach of the media solution were exciting. It was simply desirable that the campaign became enough interesting to create a buzz among the potential students. A true challenge in a target group that is experiencing advertising fatigue!

Another useful insight was the fact that the questions that a student might have when choosing a high school are personal and can be experienced as difficult to raise in public.

Age was of course a very important factor in the media strategy. Behavioral patterns on the Internet, and especially, the love for communities, were also very central.

The strategy for the YBC recruitment campaign consisted of the following elements.

1) Use the possibilities of the Internet to speak to an extremely limited target group. Create a dialogue and an interaction by being visible in the possible students' favourite environments. Try to add value by engaging them in a playful way and communicating on their own level. Make sure that the media solutions are permeated by core values
2) Use the anonymity of the Internet, in order to get these young people to interact with such an authority as YBC and dare to ask questions.
3) Use Internet's search functionality.

Design and Delivery 

 The activation for the YBC recruitment campaign consisted of the following elements.

1) An intergrated microsite with a potential viral spread was created for YBC on the biggest youth community in the target group, playahead.com. There, they could design their own class room and choose the characteristics that best reflected their dream school scenario. You could also express what core value that was most important for a school. The campaign was 100% targeted towards 15-16 year olds through a fixed banner that was only visible by the target group. After having created your ultimate school scenario, you could show it to your friends through a "tip-a-friend" function.
2) There was also a chat solution on playahead.com where the potential students could ask the tough, personal questions to its blogging prinicipal and do so on their own terms.
3) YBC also had a presence on relevant search engines in order to reach those that are actively looking for high school info on the Internet. We also used an expanding YBC banner solution on msn messenger.

Effectivity

Beyond their expectations, YBC managed reach its recruitment objectives for year three as early as launch day.

The playahead.com media solution was cost effective with its precise targeting and the connection to the core values creativity and innovation was highly relevant. The campaign was successful in involving the target group in a playful game that well reflected the feeling of being able to affect your own school situation. 22,040 individuals surfed into the YBC microsite. 2,974 class rooms were created and as many as 278,800 friends were virally tipped about this function.

The principal appreciated his two chat occasions on playahead.com where he felt that he experienced a genuine, prestigeless contact with his end-consumers, ninth-graders, who dared to ask questions in a natural and positive way without being shy for his authority.

A number of the attributes that were found important in the playahead.com solution have been realized in reality.