Flatiron School came to One Four for help with a cross-Atlantic campaign to market their coding bootcamp courses to young people. Their goal? Enroll students in their newly launched UX/UI Design & Data Science Immersive programs in London and across the U.S.
The Challenge
The client faced stiff competition. Their target audience—young people between the ages of 18 and 24—has a lot of options when it comes to education and work training opportunities. Flatiron School needed to build its brand in tight markets where big universities and tech companies dominated.
The SOLUTION
They came to us for help. Their campaign was complex—not all campuses offered classes at the same time, and their recruitment and registration cycles varied by market. A full-out media blitz wouldn’t work. They needed a highly targeted, customized approach to each of the eleven markets so they could reach exactly the right audience at exactly the right time.
Our team of experts brought our extensive knowledge in transit media to quickly saturate their target markets and reach their audience of commuting adults where they were—on the Tube and riding public transit across the U.S.
A Cookie-Cutter Approach Wouldn’t Get the Job Done
This campaign might have been global, but our approach started local. A cookie-cutter, cut-and-paste approach to media buying wouldn’t work. One Four’s team of experts knows how to translate the campaign to different audiences and reach them where they are—whether they’re riding the Tube in London, driving on a freeway in Atlanta, or walking through Seattle’s downtown.
More than 10 million impressions delivered across billboards and transit over an 8-week campaign in Atlanta.
We took a deep dive into the data to pinpoint the best strategies to reach our specific audience, and our targeted strategy allowed us to saturate the market in key places. For example, in Seattle, the client had not had success in the past with outdoor advertising, but the ad placements were too spread out over the transit system to be effective.
We took a domination approach and branded entire train cars so that top and wall panels exclusively advertised Flatiron School. And it worked. The client reported a significant uptick in the number of potential students who said they saw their transit ads.
Capturing Attention While Waiting for the Tube
In London, the campaign focused on dominating ad space on the Tube. Whether you were on the station platforms waiting for your train to arrive or riding on the Tube to your destination, you saw our client’s ads.
More than 13 million impressions delivered over 4 weeks to London commuters on the Tube.
And because the cell service is poor, people have little to do while they’re waiting but look at the ads. That’s why we created high-quality, engaging digital motion videos to run on those station platform walls and capture our audience’s attention. The result? London was one of their best-selling markets.
The Results
More than 2.4 million ad plays on targeted LINK screens across NYC.
The campaign experienced tremendous success. The client had been struggling to sell out their courses, but after our media blitz, they sold out entire cohorts and had to open a monthslong waiting list. The campaign was so successful they continued to fully enroll across all their courses and cohorts even after the campaign ended. They even opened up new courses in additional markets to help meet growing demand.
Anu PatelSenior Marketing Mngr., Flatiron School
“One Four Media streamlined the process, understood the different market landscapes and applied it to how to best reach our target audience. Each market was viewed through a unique lens to ensure the right platforms and channels were being used. Brooke and her team absolutely blew our expectations out of the water. We went from struggling to max out cohorts to adding new disciplines and additional cohorts because demand rose so much.”