Monash U has long-run student recruitment campaigns warning the end is nigh but smart young people with its degrees can stop it being nigher. It must have worked, new iterations of misery-marketing turned up year after year.
The campaigns reached peak seconds-to-midnight stuff in 2019 when the Clayton campus Open Day featured 17 Black Mirror-miserable scenarios that Monash grads could address. For conceit it is hard to beat, but with a brand as strong for as long as Monash the marketers do not need to run “have fun and do a degree that will get you a job” campaigns.
But the emphasis is different in the new campaign. Instead of presenting Monash as the last defence against doom, the sell is that the momentum is with MU.
“We have the knowledge, the capability and the will to create for future generations. We have been doing it for decades. Using research, education and collaboration to shape a world full of possibilities … We have momentum now, the momentum to change it.”
So why the switch to what it is dangerously close to optimism? Maybe the market is changing and post pandemic school-leaver focus groups think the worst may not be all it is crack of doomed up to be.
Deakin U certainly seems to think so, with a campaign focusing on graduates using their degrees to improve things, “see the wonderful possible” is the pitch.
La Trobe U has a different idea to both in a new campaign apparently based on the novel premise – that there should be something in study for students, other than moral self-satisfaction. LT U has a series of static out-of-home ads showing young people happily studying at home and on campus making the case that LT U will fit their lives. And none of them are wearing shining armour.