Abamath/MN Code Camp
Tools & Methods: Marketing Strategy, Journey Mapping, Prototyping, Photoshop, iMovie, InVision
Overview
My team was approached by Minnesota based educational company Abamath. Their goal was to increase attendance to their summer coding courses and also launch an end of the summer "Code Championship". We were basically given free reign on the project, even the option of an entire rebrand.
Here's a video highlighting our strategy that we sent to the client: MN Code Camp Strategy Overview
Increasing Brand Visibility
The first area of focus was visibility. We need to launch "Code Championship" but how visible was the current brand? Taking a look at their current social media assets and those of their competitors, it was apparent there was plenty of room for expanding and further utilizing those assets, so that became a priority.
We decided Abamath needed a new identity that more closely matched their services. After some brainstorming and research, MN Code Camp/MN Code Challenge was born! We decided to use the word "Challenge" instead of "Championship" because it felt more inclusive and the company was trying to diversify it's predominantly white male demographic.
Who's using it?
Next we put together some personas of a few potential users; two parents and a child. We began to map out what their journey would look like; starting with where they heard about MN Code Camp/Challenge, to how they decided to sign-up, and ending with their attendance in camp. We kept coming back to "why are they going to sign up their kids for these courses?" and "Why do the kids want to go?". After more research into kids and coding, we learned it's a pretty hot-button issue currently and is getting substantial media coverage.
We determined it was important for kids to code and parents knew it, so we wanted to continually reinforce that idea throughout our online assets and promotions. So how do we show kids that it's fun? One idea was to conduct in person demos of the software the kids would be using at the Code Challenge. A demo can be played here, looks like fun right?
Journey map of personas created by my team member Leah; Logan 12/F, May 37/F, Kyle 38/M
Marketing Plan
After identifying who the users were and how they were going to find out about these courses, we had to strategize a marketing plan to meet these points of contact. We started with a full social media revamp of MN Code Camp. Then we wanted to create these assets for MN Code Challenge and integrate the two together. We also wanted to do the same thing with the websites; keeping strong brand identity and cohesion as a focus.
Prototyping
Once we stablished the goals for increasing visibility, we prototyped the websites and some social media content, to gain a better feel for the users interaction with our marketing plan and demonstrate to our client how this plan would be executed. Our client wasn't available for an in person meeting, so we created a video for him to view our strategy. You can watch that here.
Conclusion
Overall, I think we came up with a good strategy for increasing visibility for their brand and helping them reach a much larger group of parents and kids. The services that they provide are valuable and in demand. With some increased exposure and continued outreach to the community, I believe this is just the beginning of their growth potential. I've consolidated the overall strategy into a timeline below for easy viewing.
