AMP Agency Tackles Fishy Sources and Piles of Pages for Study App SHARPEN

McGraw Hill recently kicked off a fully-integrated digital marketing campaign to launch SHARPEN - a first-of-its-kind mobile study app that delivers learning via a continuous content feed, bite-sized videos, swipeable study tools, and a personalized activity dashboard - in partnership with AMP Agency. 

AMP Agency, a full-service agency, collaborated with McGraw Hill to create the brand identity, name, and digitally-native campaign for the app with a focus on how the collegiate audience behaves and interacts with brand content.  A recent survey by McGraw Hill/Morning Consult found that 75% of college students have changed the way they study since COVID-19. 

Combining what students need to learn for their courses with how they want to learn, the SHARPEN app - which launched last month - is targeted towards students looking for learning tools that are just as engaging and convenient as social media. With that in mind, AMP focused on creative that would resonate with college students. The creative campaign that resulted uses imaginative effects, carefully crafted to reflect student’s emotions around studying. Each colourfully coordinated scene represents a different study pain point with in-camera special effects executed in gorgeously constructed sets.

“We were excited to collaborate with AMP to create a campaign supporting our new study tool that helps students stay focused with engaging content they know they can trust,” says McGraw Hill chief transformation and strategy officer, Justin Singh. “The campaign taps into Gen Z and collegiate culture with fun, social media inspired creative designed to get students excited.”

AMP focused on specific key insights from the recent survey by McGraw Hill and Morning Consult to drive the creative: students are overwhelmed, have difficulty concentrating and focusing, and do not trust the learning content they’re finding and using to study on social media channels. 

To address students’ needs and worries head-on in the campaign, AMP channeled the overwhelming, out of control  feeling that can accompany an information overload with social media trend-esque spinning visuals that stop when the student uses the app and becomes in control and in the know. To grab the attention of even the most distracted, the visually appealing creative features bright colors encouraging students to focus on what matters. AMP utilized plays on words to assure those watching that SHARPEN is unique because it leverages McGraw Hill’s trusted content to ensure there are no ‘fishy sources’ to be found on the app. Authentically addressing students’ needs, the work portrays a contemporary and dependable solution with the SHARPEN app.

Eric Sutton, creative director at AMP Agency explained: “We had fun creating a campaign that speaks to students in their language, with visuals that are thumb-stopping. We tackled students’ overwhelmed feelings head-on with digestible bitesize content.”

The campaign recently kicked off with paid ads on Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube - some of the most popular platforms for college students. Mirroring the hyper-relevant, made-for-social content of the app itself, the McGraw Hill and AMP teams have strategically targeted students with ad content that meets the moment and cuts through busy feeds to bring them a one-stop study solution.