A smart campaign for Avantage Ontario

September 28th, 2020

Avantage Ontario (AO) is a consortium of post-secondary institutions, colleges, and universities that offer programs in French, or in both French and English. They assist with the recruitment of international students from abroad to come study in French, while being immersed in a truly bilingual, and amazingly diverse Canadian experience. When AO and Blackiron started working together early this year, we could never have predicted the seismic shift that was about to take place. In the midst of a global pandemic — and the challenges that brought to our process — the team and client chose to forge ahead with optimism, teamwork, and flexibility.

Blackiron needed to get both parents and students excited about studying in Ontario. That means speaking to two different targets and perspectives, while communicating to both in an authentic way. We put our creative problem-solving caps on and developed a campaign that spoke to real experiences that our targets could genuinely connect with. Blackiron conducted virtual interviews with international students from their homes and compiled video content over Google Hangouts and Zoom. All of the video content was created without leaving our residences. Not only did we shoot our students’ interviews but we captured them chatting with family members and friends who were all over the globe! Time zones never felt so real!

Thanks to an open and collaborative client relationship and a strong vision from the team here at the agency, the process was a fulfilling, first-of-its-kind experience. Blackiron built a strategy and the creative team conceived a concept that underscored a new brand look and feel that included a new logo, a bilingual website refresh, a digital campaign, and other assets — all from our own homes. The fresh, authentic creative puts students up front and centre. We wanted to celebrate the advantages of studying in Ontario, while highlighting real students’ experiences in a genuine way that would resonate with parents and pupils alike. It was a fulfilling, educational process in more ways than one.


“It has been a real pleasure working with the Blackiron team. They delivered a product that exceeds our expectations and is, quite honestly, better than we asked for. They were able to adapt and be creative to cope with the constraints imposed during the Covid-19 confinement so that our project could continue to move forward.”

Patrick Arsenault

Director
Consortium Avantage Ontario