SFU Faculty of Science
Campaign science: Rethinking undergraduate recruiting.
What we did
Enrollment & Recruitment Marketing, Content Marketing, Video Production
Campaigns proven to drive enrollment for SFU Science.
By 2020, the SFU Faculty of Science had a problem: first-year student recruitment had stalled. Applications had declined for three consecutive years and the melt rate — the gap between confirmed students and those who actually enrolled — had reached –27.4%. One in four students who accepted an offer never showed up.
The root condition ran deeper than competition or pandemic hangover. High-schoolers who genuinely loved science were struggling to connect their curiosity to a career they could defend to their parents, peers, and themselves. Generic institutional language wasn't converting because it wasn't answering the question students were actually asking: if I study science here, where does that take me?
We began with discovery sessions across faculty, staff, students, and recruiter teams to understand what was breaking down in the enrollment funnel. What we surfaced was a mismatch between how the Faculty talked about science and how prospective students experienced their own ambition. Students weren't arriving without passion — they were arriving without permission. The permission to believe that biotechnology, quantum computing, or data science were genuinely reachable from a first-year course catalogue.
Our sensemaking pointed to a clear strategic direction: stop marketing the experience of science and start mapping the destination. Across five years and four campaigns, we built a conversion-first strategy rooted in one principle — connect individual passion to professional purpose, specifically and early. We designed touch-points that helped students recognize themselves in the outcome, not just the curriculum.
Ask Claire
2023 Enrollment and recruitment campaign
Confirmed students who didn't enroll weren't disengaged — they were uncertain. We designed a social-first video series starring Claire, an SFU recruiter, who took audiences behind the scenes of labs, field work, and co-op placements. The series was a decision-making tool: structured to reduce uncertainty and make the abstract concrete. Ask Claire bookings increased 200%, generating 138 qualified advisor inquiries. The campaign achieved a 1.05% CTR, well above platform benchmarks.
Make Science Happen
2023 Enrollment and recruitment campaign
Running alongside Ask Claire, this acquisition campaign grounded SFU Science in first-person storytelling drawn from real student experience. Touching a sea anemone, looking through a telescope, landing a research placement: these weren't just compelling images. They were evidence that the pathway from passion to profession was real, and that SFU was the place to walk it.
Big Potential
2020 - 2022 Enrollment and recruitment campaigns
The first phase established the strategic foundation: connecting prospective undergraduates to real SFU science and to alumni who had realized their potential. Discovery sessions surfaced a core insight that students wanted to make an impact, not just earn a credential. Big Potential gave the Faculty a market position grounded in that truth, differentiating it in a crowded BC landscape.
Results:
Five years of iterative work produced more than enrollment outcomes. It produced a working model for science communication that the Faculty can apply, test, and evolve. The career-pathway messaging framework is now embedded in how the Faculty talks about itself across recruitment contexts. The three-pillar structure simplified a complex program offering into a navigation system that students and counsellors can actually use.
The melt rate reduction, from –27.4% to –14.3%, reflects something more durable than campaign performance. It reflects a shift in how students experienced the enrollment decision: less uncertainty, more confidence, a clearer sense of what they were committing to and why. That kind of conversion isn't manufactured by advertising. It's built by understanding what students need to make a high-stakes decision and designing every touchpoint around that.