University of San Francisco - Brand Strategy, Outdoor, and Print
The University of San Francisco is a great academic institution that teaches values and ethics as part of the core curriculum. We counseled USF that while they may never be considered on the same academic level as Harvard or Stanford, they could be the Harvard or Stanford with a heart. We developed an evocative digital and out-of-home campaign based on this strategy and saw immediate results. Alumni and student social channels lit up, and the university’s steering committee reported an almost overwhelmingly positive response from business colleagues, friends and professors, as well as a 12% increase in unaided awareness the first year alone.
- See more here: https://hubsanfrancisco.com/work/university-of-san-francisco/.
HUb was born in 2002, a time when flip phones were all the rage and the idea of a “dot-com” company was just starting to be a thing. As these nascent brands raced to be first to market with a well-built brand, the agency world was woefully unprepared to help. Every agency was specialized—they focused on advertising or design or strategy or direct response or production or whatever.
What was obvious to us back then was that emerging brands didn’t need help with just one thing. They needed an agency that could do everything—like a marketing Swiss Army knife (but less pointy).
So that’s why we built HUb. To help these challengers build powerful, strategic, well-loved brands at speed.
To make it happen, we blew up the traditional creative agency model. That meant building out a huge network of senior creative specialists across every discipline—basically our version of a dream team. In the office, our full-time staff of creative directors handpick the best talent for the job and then work with them to ensure strategic, visual and tonal consistency.
Since then, we’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the most amazing, important companies on the planet—all with one thing in common: Each and every one of them possesses the mindset of a challenger.
Today, we have a full-time staff of about 20 people. In addition to creative development, we have a serious strategy practice, we plan and buy media, and we’re a production company too—we write, direct and produce all of our video content. We do smart, strategically sound work that wins a lot of creative awards and, more importantly, sells a lot of stuff. Along the way, we never forget to have fun, and we tend to work with clients that like to do the same.
