Washington and Lee can be a tough place to socialize. The culture is fairly homogeneous on the surface, and it can be hard for those who don’t care for it to feel welcome. I built this campaign to celebrate the special friendships and heart that makes W&L more special than it may seem on the surface.
We scheduled this week-long campaign to coincide with the week when fraternities on campus completed new member education. This week is a transition point for those who commit themselves to Greek life, making it difficult for those outside of it to feel assured of the social scene on campus.
I filmed these interviews on a DSLR over the course of a few days, and packaged them together into these five videos that we posted in a single week. I asked the interviewees to talk about what makes their friendships so special, and used their answers as the crux of the videos.
Along with these videos, I set up a physical activation on campus where students could send in pictures of their friends to be displayed publicly. This helped bring the message of the social media videos onto campus, bridging the conversation between what our followers consumed online and their life on campus.
Building an integrated campaign helped me see the valuable links that can come from thinking across platforms and media types. This campaign interrupted the traditional rhythms of campus to acknowledge that friendship goes beyond what is most visible on campus, and I built a campaign that told that story in digital and physical form.
