Home    About Us    Success Stories    Commitment and Partnership

success stories

The Importance of Commitment and Partnership between Client and Consultant
By Dell Fascione, Vice President
October 2010

Challenge
Schultz & Williams (S&W) began serving Delaware County Community College in spring 2006 as campaign consultants for the school’s $60 million STEM Complex, which opened in 2010. During this engagement, the College and S&W agreed that the College needed to:

• re-energize its brand identity in order to update and enhance the school’s image, and
• give the school a more competitive edge through its fundraising and marketing efforts.

With more than 88 colleges and universities in the region, Delaware County Community College is faced with heavy competition for new and returning students. Therefore, addressing the school’s outdated brand identity and current advertising became a top priority. As a result, S&W’s role with the school become an integrated partnership, serving as both campaign counsel and the College’s marketing agency of record.

S&W Strategy
Once the S&W team and College officials worked together to evaluate and thoroughly understand the school’s current marketing and branding situation, we were able to establish a vision to “refresh” the brand, improve the school’s image and develop a multi-channel marketing campaign.

To accomplish our goals, Schultz & Williams called upon three strategic partners—Allied Pixel (technical partner), Leapfrog Advancement Services (creative partner) and Mayo Seitz Media (mass media partner) – to help make the vision a reality. This gave S&W the ability to oversee and manage a strategic process ensuring a continuous and smooth overhaul of the College’s brand identity and a solid bridge to developing future marketing campaigns.

The newly structured team created a positioning statement, key messages, a revised “current” logo, a tagline and a “Graphic Style and Standards Users’ Guide.” In addition, all of the College’s publications were redesigned and an awareness-marketing campaign was executed; the campaign included TV commercials, direct mail, outdoor, place-based, online and display advertising.

Phase I of our efforts was designed to build “awareness” of the College as “all things to all people”—a perfect stepping stone to the next phase of our communications plan.

Because of the College’s commitment to maximize its rebranding investments, we were able to start planning Phase II of our marketing strategies while simultaneously executing the first phase of our plan. Phase II included building a new “branded” website and executing a call-to-action campaign targeted to the College’s bread and butter—traditional students.

The College’s new website, enhanced brand identity, strategic marketing campaigns and high communications standards ensure that prospective students and the public at large experience a very competitive higher education option for residents of Delaware and Chester counties.

Building a strategic and successful marketing campaign is a long process. In this case, it could not have been accomplished without the commitment and foresight of Delaware County Community College’s leaders to ensure their investments in rebranding and marketing are effective in the long-term. Too often organizations complete Phase I—the branding phase—and then change course, losing the continuity and momentum they need to realize enduring success.

Results
As each phase of the campaign is rolled out, Schultz & Williams and the College work together to measure our effectiveness and obtain the highest level of accountability possible. The College understands the full marketing cycle—research, creation, execution, measurement, refinement and re-deployment—and, as a result, is realizing the success of their ongoing efforts.

Since we executed our rebranding and marketing efforts in the summer of 2007, the College’s credit enrollment hours have increased steadily year over year by an average of 6.8%. To date, enrollment hours have increased 21.8% over the year prior to executing our long-term plan.

Schultz & Williams is a national consulting firm based in Philadelphia; providing management, fundraising and marketing consulting for nonprofit organizations, along with full-service direct marketing, database and creative/production services.