Seton Hill University Increases Presence in Local Community with Advertisements
Over the past year, Seton Hill University (SHU) has worked to increase the amount of advertising they conduct in Western Pennsylvania.
By Andrew Wichrowski
Contributor
Seton Hill University Increases Presence in Local Community with Advertisements
Over the past year, Seton Hill University (SHU) has worked to increase the amount of advertising they conduct in Western Pennsylvania.
This influx of advertising is part of a strategy created this year by various members of the Seton Hill community, including administration, staff, faculty, and students, which was then approved by the SHU Board of Trustees.
Called Strategic Plan 2009-2012 – Seeking Opportunites, Achieving Excellence (available on the Seton Hill’s Griffin Gate Intranet site); the plan is aimed at improving the university, and outlines tasks such as creating new majors to improving student walkways.
Advertising is also included in the report, and is part of the movement at SHU to attract new students, as well as maintain the image of the school.
“To distinguish Seton Hill from our competitors and to use limited financial resources wisely. The strategic plan currently calls for marketing focus on our signature programs in the visual and performing arts and the health sciences,” said Christine Mueseler, Vice President for Institutional Advancement & Marketing.
Similar to the process in which SHU created the Strategic Plan 2009-2012; members of the university also helped develop the advertisements.
“The creation and development for advertisements is a collaborative effort among the members of the marketing committee which is comprised of representatives from admissions (both undergraduate and graduate and adult studies), faculty, media relations, web management, and institutional advancement,” explained Mueseler. “The draft materials are then reviewed, tweaked, and approved by first the faculty member who heads that particular program, and then by the Provost, the Dean Graduate and external programs, and the vice president of enrollment services as appropriate.”
SHU’s marketing committee collaborates with Apple Box Studio Incorporated, an advertising agency located in downtown Pittsburgh, to create the final product.
One of the ad campaigns is for the new Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) at SHU. The original online and print advertisement featured a model.
“The male ad was a stop-gap ad created to promote the pre-medical LECOM program prior to admittance of any SHU students,” Mueseler said.
Another ad, created more recently, features a SHU student, and first student admitted into the LECOM program, Alexandria Cisowski.
“I was orginially contacted about doing the ad for LECOM after being initially interviewed about the LECOM program after being accepted,” says Cisowski. “I was very privledged to be asked to model for this program. I was happy to participate since it would help to promote this great, new program.”
However, the ad campaign created by SHU is not limited to the online LECOM advertisements. SHU advertisements can be found on billboards, buses, newspaper inserts, local magazines, and television.
Color newspaper inserts advertising SHU reached nearly 70,000 people on the week of September 1, in communities such as Jeannette, Irwin, Harrison City, and Greensburg.
Television commercials featuring SHU can be found on cable television channels such as ESPN, HGTV, Fox News, CNN, and the Food Network. Just this spring, commercials for SHU ran 480 times, and more than double that number will be airing this fall.
While the President of Seton Hill University, JoAnne Boyle, thought that it would be best to leave the Institutional Advancement & Marketing Department to comment on the University’s advertising, she was not reserved about her impressions of the advertisements.
“I think they are great!” she said.