UFS website re-launch awareness campaign

Formal research done to benchmark the UFS website against (i) usability design principles, (ii) 2016 Webby Award winners in the School/University category, and (iii) other leading international and local universities, indicated that the UFS website required a major overall. We realised that relaunching the website would require a change-management campaign to share information about the imminent change, create excitement, and get staff to embrace it. The campaign was carefully planned and executed, keeping the principles of change communication in mind: (i) Building common ground, (ii) Making it simple and honest, (iii) Be authentic to win people’s hearts, (iv) Keeping communication alive.

Our web-relaunch campaign was aligned with two of the strategic drivers of the new Rector and Vice-Chancellor – it was a totally new and different website (innovation), and it encouraged our staff to embrace the change that the new website would bring (transformation).

(i)      Building common ground. We used communication media that is inclusive of all the different generational communication preferences: UFS website, UFS Facebook page, billboards at the campus entrances, duck coasters (free handout), internal staff newsletter and staff intranet. The message elements were also chosen to include our diverse audience. The communicator was a duck – in our context, gender and racially neutral, not age-bound, and offering many useful idioms that we could play with in the messaging. For the video, we used a student in a duck suit; for photos, we used an actual toy duck; and for the billboards, a duck design.  

(ii)     Making it simple and honest. All the designs were simple and honest. It was easy to understand, and the idiomatic wordplay supported the overall message: Get your ducks in a row (prepare for change)  |  Don’t be a sitting duck (embrace change)  |  Don’t get bowled out for a duck (be ready for change)  |  The ugly duckling turned into a beautiful swan (enjoy the change). The background music used for the video was a simple tune – aimed specifically at including the older generations.

(iii)     Be authentic to win people’s hearts. We used the ‘innocence’ of the duck and duckling to engage our stakeholders emotionally, and minimise the resistance, fear or frustration they might experience as a result of the change. Who could be rude to a little yellow duckling…? The cuteness factor was repeated across all the platforms to communicate the message.

(iv)    Keeping communication alive. The website-relaunch awareness campaign was communicated during October 2017. The billboards were up for the entire period, the videos were released weekly (on Facebook and the UFS website). The coasters were handed out on the last day of the campaign (the day of the website relaunch).

Videos

Video 5: Launch day.

Billboard and social media cover image designs

Duck travelling the world
To conclude our website-relaunch awareness campaign, a colleague took one of our toy ducks on a trip abroad. We were supplied with imaginative photographs of our duck travelling the world in eight days. By doing so, we wanted to express how comfortable our new website fitted in globally.