CREATIVE DIRECTOR / CONSULTANT / STRATEGIST

Back in the days where doing something on Facebook really mattered, OZU, a brand new university in Istanbul, asked us for a digital campaign to attract the top students from all around the country. They had high standards in education but no testimonials since they didn’t have any graduates yet.

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Our main drive was to create a unique personal experience - a campaign that would not only talk about the university but make people ask their own questions. University years have a major impact on everybody’s lives, thus the project had to be beyond OZU, and it had to be about the student's future.

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So we decided to let students actually test-drive their future by designing a Facebook app that let them make their choices through a hypothetical university life and see the consequences unfold. Various choices and experiences were integrated into the player’s timeline through real-time generated wall posts, pictures, videos, comments, check-ins, likes and status updates.

 

This immersive experience was a world first in using an actual Facebook timeline in the future, not just the past. The individual timelines were saved as video CVs and went to public vote as well as a jury selection. The lucky few that made it through were invited to give an in-person 1-minute pitch to the academic board for a 4-year scholarship.

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The Game of Your Life reached 250,000 people and created 2 million worth of earned media coverage. For the first time in Turkey, a university chose their students instead of being chosen. But most important of all, the university received many students from among the national top 1000, many of whom have said that they would never have considered OZU if they haven’t seen the game.

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