Augustana College

When CCA began working with Augustana College in 2008, it was largely unknown beyond its traditional recruitment strongholds of suburban Chicago, the Quad Cities region, and several other parts of Illinois and Iowa.

Working closely with the College's Office of Communications and Marketing, CCA created new core messages—visual and editorial—to strengthen the Augustana brand.

Building on these messages, we produced a suite of five new recruitment publications for Augustana: a travel piece, a yield piece, a campus visit brochure, a mini-viewbook, and a viewbook, as well as a series of postcards for early inquiries. Most of the pieces also featured an intriguing visual "hook"—a handcrafted yellow capital "A" identical to the one in the Augustana word mark.

For the class entering in 2010, the first students to receive the new publications, applications for admission rose by 420 students—almost 12 percent—over the previous year. The rise in applications allowed Augustana to become more selective, accepting only 57 percent of applicants, compared to the 67 percent accepted in 2009. Deposits for the class entering in 2010 also rose by more than 70 percent over the previous year, with more than 200 students confirming their intention to attend Augustana by March 2010.