Campaign success prompts HK's PolyU to extend run

The campaign, which included print and outdoor executions, used the positioning line 'Qualified for the real world', and was based on research indicating that PolyU graduates have a better grasp of real world practical issues. "It's a category that is just full of wallpaper advertising," said Eight managing partner Charles Brian-Boys. "They all do exactly the same stuff -- tombstone-like, superlative claims about the faculty and so forth. We defined a disruptive value proposition, which is that it's a practical institution where its students hit the ground running and in a meritocracy will climb the ladder faster." Accordingly executions feature such creative as a sharpened pencil, a speedometer at full tilt, and a recharged battery, along with the 'qualified for the real world' tagline. "The irony is that most of the business schools are world famous for their marketing courses, but not in terms of marketing themselves," added Brian-Boys. "The campaign helped propel all the advertising programmes higher on PolyU's course popularity leader board, and achieved a 55 per cent increase in info day attendance over last year." In a statement, PolyU Graduate School of Business director Judy Tsui said: 'We provide business learning that enables our students to function better in the real world. Marketing, of course, is a vital part of modern business. "So we looked at how business programmes were marketed in Hong Kong and decided to apply some of the principles we teach. The results speak for themselves." The success of the advertisements is being taken a step further in the next stage of the campaign, which targets undergraduate students with the creative message, 'Some learn about the real world. Some learn in it'.