Valencia College Creating an Inspiring Push for Future Pumas

Going into the 2024-25 academic year, Valencia College had new enrollment targets, a new president and a new Agency of Record in Starmark. And for prospective students, we needed to create a campaign to answer the needs of the post-pandemic era with an attitude to make Valencia College the go-to choice for students of all ages and life stages.

Together, we created a multichannel ad campaign to address the real, current emotional motivators for older students looking for training, traditional students who doubt their capabilities and parents who have an outsized voice in education decisions.

The Assignment: Show That Valencia College is the Answer

Located in Central Florida, Valencia College is dedicated to offering Associate-level and some Bachelor’s-level degrees, Accelerated Skills Training and high-quality language learning programs. It’s a model for the future of college education where a 100% acceptance rate gives every student a chance to be successful, regardless of financial support, time or family encouragement. In addition to the typical college student just out of high school, much of the Valencia College student population are working adults, busy parents or the first in their family to go to college.

Understanding Different Student Mindsets

Valencia College had years of enrollment statistics and first-hand accounts from students to help the Starmark team understand the demographic makeup of this unique population. We wanted to create a concept in which all these incredibly diverse students could see themselves succeeding. The concept needed to embrace the ethnic diversity of the student body and the surrounding community. It needed to address students at different life stages — as well as parents. It also needed to be versioned for the school’s three main offerings: degree-seeking (credit) programs, CEL (continuing education language) programs and AST (Accelerated Skills Training) programs.

Benefit Testing

But beyond the demographic differences between prospects — characteristics like age, race and primary language — the Starmark team wanted to understand the varying mindsets and barriers that would influence decision-making for different students.

Across the board, we found anxieties played a much larger part in student decisions to attend or not attend college than before the pandemic. Additionally, there were marked differences between first-generation college aspirants and those whose parents went to college. In particular the top concerns and level of concern were different — with first-gen students reporting a greater degree of anxiety around college preparedness.

This project is a great example of how important it is to know what your audience is thinking, rather than guess. As student attitudes constantly evolve, testing allows us to stay in line with what the people we serve are dealing with at this moment.

— Brett Circe, Starmark Chief Digital Officer

Real-Time Emotional Testing

We also performed real-time emotional feedback testing with a variety of previous Valencia College videos. These tests helped Starmark understand, second-by-second how engaged viewers were in previous video storylines. It also showed how and where emotional responses to the footage differed. In particular, we looked for differences between male and female viewers — and also for overall trends related to what best held viewers’ attention and created positive sentiment.

Being True to Yourself. Becoming Something Even Greater.

What emerged from weeks of research, brainstorming and testing is what we call the “Being–Becoming” campaign. Knowing we needed to address the core emotional barrier — anxiety about readiness — before we would have a chance to talk about everything else a student could gain at Valencia College, we created a concept framework that is inherently uplifting, while also allowing us to meet today’s students where they are emotionally. It centered the entire effort on the student as the hero and cast Valencia College’s faculty, staff and community in the role of supporting that student’s personal success.

Part of the nuance here is avoiding ungrounded, grandiose statements. What we found is that having a world of possibilities and options is actually pretty overwhelming to today’s students. That’s why we found a better way to get the feel-good in there with this campaign.

— Jacob Edenfield, Starmark Group Creative Director

The structure of the ads allows the campaign to talk about the prospect as well as the unique benefits to her of attending Valencia College. For example, “Be one of a few. Become one in a million.” has a payoff about small class sizes. “Be smart about tuition. Become a worry-free grad.” speaks to affordability. And “Be supported. Become inspired.” highlights tutoring and other support programs.

The versatility of Being-Becoming works for the school’s Accelerated Skills Training programs as well, which quickly prepare students for in-demand careers that don’t require formal degrees. The headline framework gives us a chance to speak to both the direct and indirect aspirations of the student — both what he wants out of his career and out of himself as a person.

New Messages, New Faces, and a New Typeface

The campaign has materialized into a multichannel marketing program including digital ads, billboards, bus ads, radio, video, in-game ads, and social media ads for Meta, Reddit, Snap and Twitch. After a direct competitive roundup, a broader industry advertising overview and a specific in-market review of major advertisers to validate the selection of the Being-Becoming campaign, the Starmark team also shared recommendations for amping up the uniqueness and flexibility of the overall design approach.

Introducing our custom typeface POUNCE

This campaign and its audiences demanded a headline approach that felt personal, hand-wrought, approachable and utterly unique in every encounter. The goal was to create consistency without the work ever becoming monotonous. And the only way to achieve that effect was to commission a custom type system.

Working with famed type designer and illustrator Alex Rhodes, the Starmark and Valencia College teams developed two distinct type weights, a huge number of letter glyph variations, Spanish and Portuguese glyphs and a custom-set instance of the word Puma (the Valencia College mascot). Alex started by developing a hand-drawn proof of concept for the uppercase bold weight. We used this as a collective scratch-pad to dial in the amount of variance in letterforms, the amount of texture in letter borders and the overall structure of the new type in relation to the Gotham font it would be used with.

We love Valencia College for how entirely one-of-a-kind they are. And it was such a pleasure to help create a type approach as unique as their students. How cool is that?

— Dale Baron, Starmark Executive Creative Director

Those hand-inked original letterforms were vectorized and turned into a working beta version in record time to allow the Starmark team to develop proofs of concept for print pieces and video storyboards to inform the fast-approaching shoot. While storyboards, comps and shoot prep were underway, Alex developed and refined the lowercase bold letterforms and a book weight with all the same inclusions as the bold.

In parallel, both Starmark and Valencia College artists collaborated on custom marginalia illustrations and brush styles for illustration. The campaign has a library of several dozen illustrations, including stars, lightning bolts, a crown, arrows and gears to enhance the storytelling and add notes of fun in each piece.

A Shoot That Married Technical Mastery With Authenticity

Our goal was to capture something real about the Valencia College student body — and we needed an experienced production partner to do that. We worked with Waymack and Crew, partners with a specialization in capturing interesting perspectives and authenticity. And those two qualities were especially important for this effort. Not only that, the signature visual effect for the campaign — moving from motion footage to a wash of Valencia College gold — created a unique technical challenge.

Every single face you see in an ad for Valencia College is a member of the student body, faculty or staff. Starmark and Valencia College worked together to create a broad internal casting call based on more than two dozen different scripts and storyboards, collecting and screening hundreds of prospects to assign roles. Together with Waymack and Crew, we created a schedule to capture 26 different storylines — both video and photo — cross seven different locations and five shoot days. The director developed a rapport with and teased out the beautiful performances you see from a group of almost entirely first-time actors.

To achieve the gold background animation effect we used a portable green screen to separate foreground and background in key scenes. Everything you see in the finals was lit and shot on the same set, using that folding chroma key as the separation. The result is performances and moves that feel authentic — because they actually happened as shot.

The first photo and video shoot covered storylines supporting Valencia College’s credit degree and many AST program areas. A future shoot will cover additional AST programs and CEL programs.

A Launch With Longevity

The campaign, launched in May 2024, is already showing strong returns in student enrollment across both AST and traditional degree-seeking credit programs. And while reporting is still preliminary, we are seeing higher engagement with video content. Future tests are scheduled to gauge memorability, intent and other important factors for success that will inform our future efforts.

But one other important thing the campaign is already delivering on is making sure the concept will still feel fresh and compelling at the end of a three-year run. That’s why the initial shoot included 20+ storylines with another dozen slated to shoot in early 2025.

But based on the first set of master videos and photos, Starmark and Waymack and Crew have already created several hundred variations for display, social, broadcast video, radio, print, out-of-home placements and transit advertising — all of which feel like a cohesive effort with individual merit and flare.