ESM Wins MarCom Award for TikTok Enrollment Campaign for Rutgers School of Engineering 

Electric Symphony Media (ESM) wins Gold MarCom Award for their TikTok Enrollment campaign for Rutgers School of Engineering (Piscataway, NJ). 

After evaluating over 6,000 entries from 41 countries in the 2021 competition, MarCom’s judges honored ESM’s TikTok Enrollment campaign for Rutgers School of Engineering with Gold in the Digital Media – Social Media category. The award recognizes excellence in marketing and communications and is one of the largest and most-respected creative competitions in the world. This prestigious accomplishment reflects the tremendous creativity, strategic thinking, and hard work of ESM’s team. 

Throughout the 2020 college application season, Electric Symphony Media executed a TikTok campaign designed to increase applications and enrollments to Rutgers University’s highly accredited School of Engineering. Based in Hoboken, ESM commands a deep understanding of the New Jersey market, which influenced the agency’s strategic planning. The campaign ultimately used 1-on-1 targeting capabilities to reach accepted applicants on TikTok with professionally produced creative messaging, encouraging them to enroll at Rutgers School of Engineering.

Although coinciding with the global pandemic, the campaign far exceeded expectations, yielding over 10,000 engaged students, which Rutgers and ESM continued to reach and remarket throughout the remainder of the enrollment period. The campaign also provided social proof to rising sophomores and juniors who have not yet started their college selection process. 

In spite of the challenging environment, overall applications to the engineering school remained strong and exceeded Rutgers’ goals. 34% of incoming students chose to enroll during the campaign’s lifetime.

“As a small, New Jersey-based agency, we are thrilled to be recognized for our work with Rutgers University. Our MarCom Gold Award is indicative of the exceptional professionalism, dedication, and creativity that our team devotes to every one of our clients. As our agency grows, we hope to gain many more wins like this in the future,” said Ivaliese Chihimie of ESM. 

Rutgers has once again enlisted ESM’s efforts as part of their prospecting and enrollment campaigns for the Fall of 2021. Building on last year’s efforts, ESM anticipates another successful and well-executed campaign.

ESM is a media partner that helps brands and agencies uncover unique value in marketing investments. We believe the most successful media campaigns interweave the art of past experience with the science of data analytics. ESM offers end to end media planning, activation, and reporting services. The agency’s tech stack provides a connective thread across all channels, but as a team we emphasize the importance human experience plays in predicting