Passaic County Community College: PCCC100 Campaign

Visit the Website: PCCC100.com

Background : Passaic County Community College, in Paterson New Jersey, engaged Second Melody to develop, administer and analyze online surveys, in person surveys and focus groups. Upon analyzing the data, Second Melody was to develop a new campaign that would rally internal and external audiences while increasing enrollments and changing perceptions about the school.

Objective : The purpose of this campaign was to discover how PCCC is viewed – both perceptions and realities – in order to best craft a new marketing message that appeals to prospective students in order to continually increase applications and enrollments at PCCC.

How : Surveys were sent out to about 9,000 individuals, whose email addresses were provided by PCCC, and included various age, geographic, gender and employment statuses. The survey instrument survey questions and protocols were all developed and deployed by Second Melody. In line with the project goals, the survey asked respondents about the marketing positions and strategies, their self-perceived image of PCCC before they attended, and their views of PCCC now that they are current students. The survey respondents and focus group participants were also asked to consider different taglines and images, and to rate them regarding their ability to engage the audience and facilitate an interest in PCCC.

Results : The read rate of the deployed survey was 12.1 percent (higher than the industry average of 10 percent) and the click-through rate to open the email was 5.2 percent (higher than the B2C rate of 2 percent), and the total number of valid survey responses was 265 (3 percent response rate).

As a result of the research, Second Melody developed and launched the “PCCC 100” campaign based around 100 unique and truthful reasons why Passaic County Community College was an ideal place to attend school. The project deliverables to PCCC where logos, brand standards, taglines, a website landing page, various communication pieces and of course, all 100 reasons. The reasons consisted of classes, professors and even specific students that make PCCC a unique place to attend college and were structured in a way that would resonate both with the students (both current and prospective) and faculty as well as the surrounding community that the College is such a big part of.