The Core Agency has created a new campaign for the University of Technology Sydney after being appointed following a competitive pitch to unify the brand under a new platform and develop a creative framework to leverage their distinctive assets and connect its communications.
Housed in what looks like a crumpled paper bag and brutalist tower in the creative heart of Sydney, there is nothing ordinary about UTS, and the university needed to reaffirm this positioning in what is a competitive and evolving sector.
The brand idea ‘It’s not just a university, it’s UTS’ focuses on the ways UTS challenges the status quo of traditional institutions, bringing to life their student, research, and partnership experiences through a new storytelling approach.
Using film as the lead media, each story celebrates unconventional excellence and shows why UTS sits in a category of their own through a series of compelling true stories heroing real UTS students who have brought new ideas and driven progress at the university.
“The more we learnt about UTS, the more we realised it’s so much more than a university. It sits in its very own category. We wanted the world to know about all the ground-breaking work being done at UTS, so we made sure to reflect the unbridled creativity and opportunity that awaits the brightest minds”, said Christian Finucane, founder and creative partner at The Core Agency.
The campaign launches in Australia and internationally, alongside a suite of OOH, digital display and social that complement the films. A new design system has been created, leveraging the existing brand identity, to unify all the campaign assets and allow it to be scaled across the university.
“In a sector where differentiation is an ongoing battle, we wanted a campaign that broke the standard ‘smiling student’ formula and created a narrative of ‘how and why’, rather than ‘what’. We needed an agency that could capture the unique qualities of a UTS experience and bring them to life through visual storytelling to build an emotional connection with our audiences. The Core Agency delivered in spades”, added Tracy Chalk, chief marketing and communication officer at the University of Technology Sydney.
