SmartBook Campaign

As the creative lead, I partnered with Marketing teams on many digital and print campaigns. This case study outlines a promotional campaign for McGraw-Hill’s SmartBook, an adaptive digital learning product for the higher education market. We developed A/B versions of the campaign, the images below represent the design that generated the most sell through during the back to school selling period.

Customer Journey

Goal/Aspiration: Spreading the word about the benefits of McGraw-Hill’s SmartBook, a new adaptive digital learning product.

Internal Investigation: Identify target audience using existing data and personas; in this case college students.

Awareness: Develop marketing plan and supporting creative asset plan.

Creative: Design execution of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, email, landing page, digital ads.

Purchase: Digital ads, email, clickthrough to product page. Social ads clickthrough to brand ambassador article with product page text links.

Retention/Advocacy: Student-brand ambassador article.

My role: Creative direction, hands-on design, copy editing based on space restrictions.

The 125 year old startup.

Flanked by agile startups and industry disruptors, we reinvented McGraw-Hill Education through a brand reboot.

When McGraw-Hill Education emerged as a new independent company, we found ourselves in the midst of a changing educational landscape. Thanks to mobile devices, learning is no longer confined to a classroom. Students learn when and where they choose.

With its long history of textbook publishing, the McGraw-Hill Education brand was percieved as "old-school” and didn’t resonate with students in the digital landscape.

Through a brand redesign centered around mobile learning, we focused our messaging and imagery on the out-of-classroom experience, redefining McGraw-Hill Education as a relevant digital learning company with roots as a trusted educational leader. Thus, a long publishing history, once seen as a burden, has become a differentiating asset among its startup competitors.

Telling the story

Not only did McGraw-Hill Education need to refresh it's brand in the eyes of its customers, but we also wanted to change the perception of the brand in potential employees. To attract the same tech savvy talent as the likes of Google and Apple, We developed a recruitment campaign aimed at coders, developers, UX and UI designers.

Rebranded messaging on the website's career page, social media channels, and the development of a fun recruitment video, helped attract the tech savvy talent needed to transform their digital business.

Keeping the brand message and look consistent

It's important to have a consistent look, feel and tone of voice for any brand.

We created a comprehensive brand guideline to assure all our marketing efforts, regardless of who’s creating them, stay on brand throughout all customer touch points.