The University of Notre Dame. South Bend, Indiana. Fighting Irish. Winning tradition. Top 20 ranking. Quad. Grotto. Basilica. Touchdown Jesus. Prestigious academics. How do you capture all these things in one video and craft a story out of it?
Over the span of a few months, we produced an admissions video that immerses you into the Notre Dame experience – and demonstrates that there is no “typical” day at Notre Dame. The video is authentic, true to life, and all encompassing (featuring academics, sports, extra-curricular activities, and a powerful tradition).
We chose to partner with a local Philly film company, The Neighborhood Film Company (NFC) to help create the video. NFC’s mission is “to mentor and employ individuals recovering from homelessness, mental-illness, or addictions through the process of film-making.” As you would expect for a Catholic university like Notre Dame, this was a match made in heaven (pun intended).
Helicopters were flown, cameras were slid on ice, the “Dougie” was performed in a physics lab – all while an indie electronic duo provided the soundtrack (typical of Notre Dame right?).
We were able to leverage the Notre Dame football brand to launch a teaser version of the video during the NBC-aired Notre Dame vs. Navy football game in Ireland. This was the first college football game ever played in Ireland and naturally; a lot of eyes were on Notre Dame. During halftime, audiences visited all of Notre Dame’s social media outlets, .edu homepage, admissions site, and blogs. Likes, comments, shares, tweets, retweets, favorites all ensued soon after.
This was a great opportunity (and learning experience) to carefully balance creativity, story telling, and tradition to appeal to a wide and diverse audience. I hope you enjoy watching this video as much as we do here at 160over90. Go Irish.
As a staffer (not Admissions) and an alum, I was blown away. Terrific video.