Power of Possibilities Case Study
While working at UCCS, I led the team (which included our internal marketing team and our agency partner) as we launched a new marketing campaign in 2024. Our “UCCS Fuels Success” campaign had been in market for seven years and our student population was changing post COVID.
Every campaign starts with research. We spent 10 percent of our budget on research including community perception, focus groups and competitor analysis and secondary research on industry trends.
From our research, the Power of Possibility emerged as a theme for the campaign. While keeping our leadership team engaged with the process, we moved forward and created the foundation of the campaign which were messaging pillars. Our goal was to break through the sameness of all of our competitor’s ads.
With the pillars in hand, it was now time to build the creative around those five pillars. The campaign was designed around real stories of real people who found their place at UCCS. These stories included students and faculty. We featured students who represented our student population – military veterans, online students, non-traditional students, single parents, students from a rural community and students who were balancing school and life.
A robust media plan was developed to ensure these messages were in front of our prospective students and their parents during the time that they were making the key decision on where to attend college.
We continue to monitor the campaign through a custom dashboard and make strategic adjustments to optimize the campaign so it continues to help the organization reach it’s goal of increased enrollment.
Was the campaign successful? During the Fall 2024, Spring 2025 and Fall 2025 semesters, UCCS experienced growth in student enrollment over the previous year.
Beyond the Waiting Room Case Study
While working at Penrose-St. Francis in 2016, we were searching for a way to engage with potential patients and help them choose Penrose-St. Francis for their care. We already had a strong social media presence so we created a web series of documentaries to take our audience beyond the waiting room and show them the care that was happening everyday in our hospital.
The first video was a 30 minute documentary filmed in the Emergency Department at Penrose Hospital.
This video has more than 1.1 million views on YouTube.
We created additional episodes to develop a web series with shows filmed in the Children’s ER at St. Francis, in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the Rehabilitation Unit.
The campaign was a success as patient volume increased, patients commented that they had seen the doctors in the show and the staff felt a sense of pride that their work was featured in the video.
PPSC/UCCS Joint Campaign Case Study
Creating your future, TOGETHER.
During a meeting between leadership from both Pikes Peak State College and UCCS, the discussion went to “how can we work together?” As the marketing lead for UCCS, I suggested a joint marketing campaign that essentially said “start your education at PPSC, finish your degree at UCCS.”
Through close collaboration with our colleagues at PPSC, we worked closely to identify successful alum who had started at PPSC and finished at UCCS. We identified five outstanding people who were willing to be featured in the campaign.
The five commercials were filmed by our internal production team – no agency partners were involved in the creative for this campaign.
Our agency partner put together a robust traditional and digital media campaign that ran for three months – with the cost of media split equally between the two institutions.
The results of this campaign are hard to measure as both organizations are doing a lot to drive enrollment. The top result of this campaign was the demonstration within the community that the two institutions are working together. During the next joint leadership meeting, it was noted that the marketing collaboration was the only new collaboration that came from that first meeting.
Chris Valentine Portfolio 