Digital Samples Prepared for:

If you close your eyes and picture the classic American liberal arts college, that’s Miami University. Founded in 1809 in Oxford, Ohio, Miami is one of the oldest residential public universities in the country, esteemed in academic circles for possessing the educational rigor of an Ivy but the access of a public. This is supported by the University’s top national rankings, high-achieving alumni, and quintessential collegiate setting that has enchanted many [including poet Robert Frost].

While the institution has a sterling reputation in the greater Midwest, Miami faced a number of key challenges with national recognition and out-of-state student recruitment, including: strong regional competition; low familiarity outside of Ohio (plus some name confusion with the University of Miami in Florida); and lack of association with a singular, strong, positive attribute.

As far back as 2010, Miami turned to 160over90 to articulate a distinctive brand promise, inject new relevancy, and drive reputation. We created a “Have It All” brand platform where small town meets big ambition. Where prestige and irreverence co-mingle. Where the liberal arts tradition is enriched by modern STEM programming. And where love and honor are one.

In 2020, as the entire world was turning virtual, we embarked on a months-long MiamiOH.edu redesign, infusing new energy into a dated digital experience, and newly celebrating Miami’s longstanding commitment to providing the best undergraduate experience in the nation. The site went live in November of last year, and Miami subsequently asked 160 to overhaul its News subdomain, folding it into the university’s brand. The new News pages beautifully overcome a previously disjointed use experience, and create a more robust news offering that harmoniously features press releases, media coverage, and video content.

While working with UD for the second brand update since 2007, we recently redesigned their overarching .edu. We were able to establish the new brand message throughout all key areas of the University while bringing the functionality and content organization to current standards.

Rider University is a private institution in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, that boasts the resources of a comprehensive university and all the personal attention of a liberal arts college. With a commitment to high-quality teaching, scholarship, and experiential opportunities, Rider students truly sit at the center of a learning and living community.

At the onset of 160’s relationship with Rider, we met with key stakeholders across campus, administered a brand perception study to understand ownable attributes and top-of-mind associations, and conducted an analysis to gauge the University’s shared, earned, owned, and paid media efforts. We clued into strong institutional values, empathetic individuals, and an overall orientation toward hands-on learning and community service. All of this found its way into a new brand platform for Rider, “Wild As One,” that encourages personal exploration but affirms the idea of thriving together and supporting one another.

The new brand was quickly put to work to drive awareness, enrollment, and alumni engagement. 160over90 refreshed Rider’s undergraduate viewbook; ideated and implemented a paid media strategy, heavy on digital media placements; and, in true digital-first marketing fashion, redesigned Rider.edu in November 2020.

The new site features engaging storytelling, dynamic new photography and video, and interactive elements that reflect the University’s brand identity. And while delivering beautiful work is always a goal, 160’s digital experiences are designed to balance purpose, content, utility, and impact. So across hundreds of pages and tens of thousands of lines of code, we created a flexible design system that delivers improved usability and accessibility for users on all devices. The site follows best practices in web design/user experience and features enhanced search powered by Google, a user-friendly academic program finder tool, and multilingual translation. What’s even cooler is that 160 got to team up with Rider students in the web redesign process, offering them hands-on experience and affirming why we love this line of work.

Recently launched overarching .edu site redesign that focuses on delivering a consistent, polished presentation of content across all devices through a flexible, “open” design scheme.

The impact of COVID-19 has created a crucial need for creative thinking around providing virtual alternatives to the traditional campus visit in order to create a lasting impression and connection with prospective students.

In order to extend the physical reach of Engineering at Alberta, 160over90 developed a landing page experience that serves as a virtual lobby for prospective students and parents, guiding them to different key information necessary to aid the decision making process, while communicating the brand and serving as a recruitment tool.

Prospective students should feel a desire to be a part of the innovative program, which offers a wide variety of world class engineering programs in a setting that is both communal and inclusive with the understanding that engineering isn’t binary in Edmonton and opportunities after graduation are endless.

160over90 started our partnership with JHU with a full discovery, brand strategy, and brand concept specifically for undergraduate recruitment, as they sought to broaden the university’s appeal as a true liberal arts school while continuing to attract the highest caliber students possible. We needed to showcase the exceptional things happening at Hopkins while also making this educational experience feel accessible to everyone.

160over90 and Cascade Factory are currently partnering together to design and develop a new .edu for Linfield using Cascade as the preferred CMS. As part of a branding effort to pivot from “College” to “University” designation, the new website launched in November 2020.

Situation

How do you help a challenger brand break through a highly competitive category, and actually help athletes improve and reach their peak performance?

Under Armour’s brand mission is to make athletes better. The company achieves this mission through innovative products and physical workouts, but like other brands in the category, Under Armour has neglected an athlete’s most important tool: their mind.

Solution

With mental strength more culturally relevant than ever in 2021, 160over90 partnered with Under Armour to expand the organization’s offerings to include tools and exercises to help athletes train their minds. All of our marketing efforts are in service of the idea of making athletes better—providing true utility to consumers.

To achieve this, Under Armour engaged 160over90 to launch a global brand campaign centered around mental strength. The 2021 Under the Armour campaign extends to various marketing channels and touchpoints across TV, OOH, retail, social, and digital. Other components of the campaign will release on a rolling basis in Q1 2021, including social ads introducing exercise content, retail signage in Under Armour brand houses, streaming audio ads, UA.com digital assets, and more.

As part of this global campaign, 160over90 produced four launch films featuring Under Armour athletes like Michael Phelps, Anthony Joshua, Bella Alarie, and Zhu Ting. Each athlete takes viewers through a mind training exercise they’ve used to help them achieve success in their sport. All marketing drives to the Under Armour Performance Academy, a new platform providing content and exercises to help athletes train their minds to reach peak performance.

Results

160over90 is currently in the process of tracking initial KPIs as the global campaign just launched on January 25, 2021.

We began our partnership with the Philadelphia Zoo to develop a web landing page to promote Summer 2019 events/programming, as well as a longer-term initiative to redesign the Zoo’s website. 160over90 established new messaging and a creative look and feel to reshape the Zoo as a cultural entity and a neighborhood of its own within Philadelphia. Our efforts are helping drive visitation, memberships, and donations, as well as increase awareness and support of the Zoo.

Following the short-term launch of the Admissions Landing Page, 160over90 worked with Jefferson to launch Phase I of a newly designed .edu in January 2019. The new site redesign included the homepage and all top level navigation sections for admissions, academics, etc. The global navigation, header, and footer persist throughout the website creating a consistent user experience, while a wide variety of components provide each college and department the flexibility to craft a unique look and feel for their content.