APPA Platinum Award for Overall Excellence – 2022

APPA Platinum Award Winner – Overall Excellence – 2022

APPA Gold Award Winner – Event Merchandise – 2022

Client’s Objective

The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) is a recognised leader in online and blended education, renowned for their supportive environment and student-focused commitment to learning and teaching. USQ offer over 700 specialised professional courses with 27,563 students around the world. The primary objective for USQ was their Student Engagement Strategy.

This consisted of two components:

• Increase student engagement at Open Day Events.
• Welcome students to USQ community & foster ongoing engagement.

Challenge

USQ Open Days provide students with an opportunity to experience campus facilities and student life, and to gain a sense of the student experience and overall ‘vibe’ of the university. These new products needed to wholeheartedly support and reinforce USQ values, whilst still remaining fashionable and fun.

• For Open Day events – develop products that were practical for students, custom designed to highlight the USQ colours/branding and bring a sense of fun to the students Open Day experience.
• For USQ Community ongoing engagement activities – develop a low-cost product that could be mailed out to students via Post, as many students study remotely. The product needed to be eye-catching, feature strong USQ branding, be useful, practical and a funky design so they became a talking point amongst students and generate social media activity. Develop a range of designs for students to collect.

Results

Open Day Event Merchandise – Custom Beanie:

• The beanie contributed to visitors rating their experience of USQ Open Day a total of 4.16 out of 5. Over 85% of visitors gave an above neutral rating. Students proudly donned the beanies from the moment they received them and lots of great photos were taken at the events.
• As this was a custom product with a 6–8-week lead time, our team managed the complete logistics of delivering them to campus sites, on time and under budget.

Community Engagement Merchandise – Custom Socks:

• Three eye-catching and aspirational designs were created with USQ ordering all three, to continue student engagement and encourage students to seek out the next style.
• The new design socks were launched online with a competition held to win a pair of these exclusive-to-students item, resulting in outstanding Social Media engagement.
• The Product met budgetary constraints. The price per unit was achieved – well below the target. The product quality and packaging exceeded client’s expectations and enabled USQ to distribute these to students easily and at low cost via post.
• The Beanies and Socks complemented the existing range of USQ merchandise we produce.