Advertising
The Harvard Crimson is the nation’s oldest continuously published daily college newspaper and the only daily publication of Cambridge, Massachusetts. We work with advertisers ranging from national companies to local businesses, from student recruiters to advertising agencies.
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The media and advertising industry is a constantly changing landscape, and our business team is focused on innovative advertising solutions to stay ahead of the curve and deliver results to our clients.
SUMMARY
Objective: Write an effective sponsored content article for companies recruiting on campus that will be promoted through Facebook campaigns.
Our research suggests that campus recruiters are finding it difficult to attract the right talent, provide a positive recruiting experience, and to maintain an altruistic, philanthropic reputation. Therefore, this sponsored content will seek to demonstrate the power and positivity of the advertised jobs. Our article will use real-world examples to demonstrate the global benefits of the client’s work, whether it be resurrecting a struggling industry or financing world-changing startups. Furthermore, we will highlight the role that interns play in creating these real-world solutions in order to demonstrate the incredible opportunity that interning with your company presents. This sponsored content will seek to connect top students to the firm.
PROFILE
The Client
The most prestigious firms tend to target prestigious schools (e.g. Ivy League, MIT, Stanford). They have talented employees but tend to lack socioeconomic diversity and diversity of majors.
Extremely respected and prestigious. They have very strong track records. However, they may be seen as lacking diversity and are typically regarded as only helping big business and richer individuals.
Success would be the attraction of a more diverse and talented recruitment class, as well as a way to convey the work that is being done by the firm in helping to create a better future for the world.
Demographic
Brand
Success
The Crimson
Our audience: Harvard students and alumni, which are target demographics for recruiters. This particular audience is likely to share our sponcon article with their friends at other prestigious schools.
Highly respected newspaper. As it is run by some top students at a top college, The Crimson is also a very trustworthy source of academic news and advice.
We know students best, so we will 1) be able to successfully present the opportunities to highly-talented and diverse students, and 2) help credibly transform their brand image.
VALUE PROP: Founded in 1873, The Crimson is the nation’s oldest continuously published college publication. With The Crimson’s newsprint on a hiatus, readers are now turning their attention entirely to our online presence, connecting with us on our website, social media, and the daily newsletter. With 2 million page views monthly and an impressive social media following, advertising through The Crimson is a great way to introduce your brand to our diverse audience. Our Facebook campaign + sponsored content package is rising in popularity because it attracts higher levels of reader interest than conventional advertising.
8x cheaper cost per click than traditional advertisements
70% of people learn about companies through sponsored content vs. banner ads
4x higher average CTR than traditional display ads in the U.S.
WHY SPONCON?
CHALLENGE
The client's image issue can be extrapolated to industry trends:
1. Competitive Talent Market
While overall interest from students for advertised jobs is increasing, the very best candidates are hard to attract and are competitive to retain.
2. Stressful Recruiting Process
Online reviews have led to more transparent reviews. It is difficult for firms to disassociate from the reputation of being intense, slow, and impersonal during recruiting.
3. Negative Reputation
Recruiters have struggled to appeal to applicants with diverse educational backgrounds partly because of the "greedy" stigma associated with Corporate America.
INSIGHTS
The sponsored content article is able to address the following solutions:
1. Targeted Recruiting
The article will spotlight past Harvard interns to show the unparalleled skills and impactful experience that students can attain, to be promoted regularly through Facebook.
2. Interactive Posts
The post will be interactive, such as having options to click into a specific industry to learn more and a timeline of important dates, which increases application rates.
3. Philanthropic Angle
The article will recount the positive impact the client has had on different industries — that diversity of background is welcomed. Purpose-driven firms attract students.
DESIGN TOOLBOX
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1. Color Palette
The article's main color will be white but will use red and blue for accenting.
Many firms that are recruiting for internships and new full-time positions have red and blue logos. In business branding, red is attention-grabbing and is associated with warmth and power. Blue is authoritative and secure, associating with confidence, loyalty, and trustworthiness.
2. Recurring Elements
We will be using angled shapes as recurring design elements. Studies have shown that using angles in design results in a judgment of the company’s services as more professional and durable.
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Modern styling reflects how the firms with an old-school/traditional image (e.g. consulting, banks) have new goals in mind and are striving to help the world move forward.
3. Photographs
We will be using photographs as opposed to illustrations as our visuals.
We are marketing the stories of past interns and customers to demonstrate the positive effects students can have on the world, so we want to show photos of smiling beneficiaries and the Harvard intern on the project to make the experience relatable and show how not everything is about the money. These photos are not the main focus though so they are edited into the recurring design element.
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SOLUTION
As current students, we know that college students, and especially Harvard students, want to have experiences that have already been proven to be fulfilling and beneficial. Thus, one of the ways in which we can most effectively convey the benefits of working at the client’s firm is by highlighting the experiences of student interns and/or alumni. Thus, this article will spotlight the work that a student and/or graduate - preferably a Harvard student/graduate - did while interning and/or working full-time with the client.
Given the importance of real student-based experiences in engaging the best candidates, our article will have 5 different student testimonials in which the students detail the work that they did during their time at the client’s firm. Furthermore, these 5 testimonials will be based upon work that was done across 5 different industries in order to most effectively engage a diverse array of candidates. Moreover, the student testimonials will also convey the way in which the students’ work with the client’s firm was fun, rewarding, and contributing to a greater cause.
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The article series will be structured as follows:
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Introduce the client, what it does, and its mission towards helping a greater cause
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Introduce an interactive list of five issues that Harvard interns have impacted
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"What issue do you care about the most?"
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Button each of the five issues that when clicked, takes the reader to a quick article with the following format:
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Introduce a case study that a Harvard student has contributed to crafting the solution
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Elaborate on the greater impact that the work of the client had on the world and generalize to include the skills an intern can learn on the job
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​Recruiting information/call to action
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Additional statistics that would entice people to apply
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Diversity statistics
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School/extracurricular statistics
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Timeline of recruiting events and deadlines for applications, interviews, boot camps, etc. linked to the company’s recruitment webpage
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The purpose of these paragraphs is to help convey an image of the client caring for the world and the people in a range of industries to entice students pursuing non-traditional majors to see what difference they can make working for the client. Because we are trying to get applicants, we will also include recruiting timeline information and a link to the application site through a button labeled, "How will you change the world?".
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An example visual mockup with sample narrative text is below:
​** The sample text is based on a fictional company; we would have our narrative based on an actual case study, employee, and statistics using the information we get from the client.
COMPANY X Sponsored Series | Story 1: Journalism
Continuing a Family's Legacy
CONSULTING & JOURNALISM
JANE DOE
HARVARD '21
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As an intern at one of the top consulting firms in the country, Jane Doe, Harvard '21, went into the summer with the expectation of being at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. As a History and Literature concentrator, Jane didn’t know what to expect from the consulting experience. She had spoken to her family about her interest in branching out and exploring new opportunities, so she applied the prior fall. To her surprise, she was accepted.
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Jane realized on the first day that the experience would be entirely different from her expectations: she would be an active part of a consulting team. In her first week, Jane was assigned to work with a team of analysts made up of an experienced manager, two tenured associates, two new analysts.
Over the summer Jane’s team worked on the News Company Y case. Company Y is a family-owned newspaper company that was finding it difficult to monetize its services in an increasingly digitized world. Jane explains, “The first step was conducting industry research. The main point of the industry is that traditionally, journalism companies have profited most from subscriptions to print my services in from print advertising, but with the Internet becoming easier to access each day, these revenue streams are quickly disappearing. I didn’t realize that this is such a big issue in media and journalism.”
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With this research in hand, the team realized that most of Company Y's readers don't read many articles every month and were unwilling to pay the flat monthly subscription fee that national papers charge. In the process of brainstorming solutions, although Jane was new to consulting, she took the initiative and drew up a new system of pay-per-view news articles for Company Y’s subscribers in which subscribers pay only 5 cents for every article that they read. The team worked to implement Jane’s solution into a proposal to send to Company Y.
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When asked about her experience, she answered, “it was eye-opening and intensive. I came in really worried that no one would really listen to my thoughts, but I’m so glad that I was wrong. I was immediately included in the most important conversations and was able to make a difference in an industry that I really cared about. The team members took the time to train me and they trusted my work.”
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The case team believed in providing an immersive experience for the interns, so over the course of the case, Jane personally conducted interviews, presented research, and made recommendations at the table with the rest of the team. Today, two years later, Company Y’s business is booming, nearing an increase of half a million dollars in profit from before the crisis.
2021 Summer Associate applications must be submitted before June 1, 2020 before 11:59pm EDT. Applications are considered on a rolling basis.
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SOURCES
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https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/comprehensive-list-of-target-schools
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https://igotanoffer.com/blogs/mckinsey-case-interview-blog/how-to-get-into-consulting
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https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/lifestyle-monitor/gen-z-social-sustainability-issues-142403/
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https://www.digitalhrtech.com/digital-recruiting-challenges/
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​https://citygro.com/color-and-meaning-business-branding-infographic/
The Crimson Brand Studio
University daily since 1873
Address: 14 Plympton St,. Cambridge MA, 02138
Email: thecrimsonbrandstudio@thecrimson.com
Phone: (617)-576-6600 ext. 202