Moving minds of all kinds.
Carnegie Mellon has an excellence problem. That is, they have so much of it that many brilliant folks struggle to imagine themselves as Tartans (the university demonym, as well as the school colors—yes: Carnegie Mellon’s colors are a pattern). More than a bit of this is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion challenge, which CMU is committed to meeting. The marketing challenge: show CMU as a place where brilliant minds of all kinds can come together, live their truths, put in the work, take out some fun, and do amazing things for humankind.
The journey to the CMU Admission Campaign coincided almost perfectly with the COVID shutdown, and was tested and tempered and proven true throughout the civil unrest of 2020. Here’s how the work got there.
Concept Exploration
What if we start with music? That was my sugestion to the creative team. All of us had worked with CMU at some point on previous projects, so the learning curve was fairly flat. Going into one of last weekends before the lockdown, we all went home and added to a Spotify playlist, the prompt: what would the soundtrack be to the ups, down, highs and high-fives of being a CMU student. We arrived at three forks in the road:
Fork 1: It takes all kinds.
Fork 2: Rules are for remaking
Fork 3: Make the future
Among all the campus comedies of the 1980s, Real Genius rises above because it captures what is authentic about great minds doing great science a college, and that there is joy in identifying as a smart person, and living a big life on one’s own terms. This was the transcendent truth about CMU, and who thrives here, and fired and inspired by a Spotify playlist heavily weighted towards 90s—00s hip hop, we landed on the All Kinds concept.
A hero emerges
All Kinds Concept/Narrative Video
Embodying the unadulterated (it would be adulterated) essence of the All Kinds brand platform (and regrettably featuring my voiceover talents), this would be our tone, voice and creative energy North Star:
Since Carnegie Mellon doesn’t have ANY trouble attracting outstanding applicants, they save their marketing juice for what they choose to call “The Fat Letter.” But it’s always been more than a letter, telling an applicant they’re in: it was traditionally a letter from the president, accompanied by a folder stuffed with every possible document and form. But this time, CMU had an actual Admissions Campaign.
