Posted: 5/1/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Matt Rourke, The Associated Press Briana Turnbaugh poses with a billboard with her name, placed by Wilkes University as a recruitment tool, in Hazleton, Pa., on April 20.

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Wilkes University badly wanted 18-year-old Nicole Pollock to be part of its freshman class this fall - so much so that it made her the star of her own ad campaign.

The small, private school in northeastern Pennsylvania plastered Pollock's name on billboards, pizza boxes and gas pumps - and even aired a commercial on MTV - in hopes of getting her to enroll. As one message put it: "We just hope you're on your way to Wilkes University next year."

Mission accomplished: Pollock recently picked Wilkes over her hometown University of Scranton. Even better for Wilkes, the ads put it on the radar screen of many of Pollock's college-bound classmates.

The quirky $120,000 ad campaign, which also featured seven other students, helps Wilkes stand out in a crowded college marketplace. It also demonstrates the lengths to which some colleges are going to reach today's media- and marketing-savvy teenagers, who are just as likely to shop for a school on the Internet as to rely on glossy brochures and college fairs.

Increasingly, schools are using podcasts, virtual tours on YouTube, live chats and other interactive technologies to get their messages out.

Wilkes' ads, now in their second year, are focused on the university's traditional recruiting area in northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as the Allentown-Bethlehem region to the south, and the Philadelphia suburbs, Long Island and Binghamton, N.Y.

The school finds out this week just how successful its campaign has been. Thursday is "decision day," the deadline for high school seniors across the nation to notify the college they plan to attend in the fall.

"This is pretty trendsetting and forward-thinking," said Nancy Costopulos, chief marketing officer of the American Marketing Association, which runs a yearly symposium for colleges and universities. "It positions Wilkes as an innovative and fresh kind of school."

The university picks applicants from markets where Wilkes wants to promote itself and who have a "mix of talents and determination," said Jack Chielli, Wilkes' director of marketing. Applicants featured in the ads must consent to have their names used.

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