How do we support a legacy fellowship program’s quest for a more diverse and equitable application process?
Challenge
For nearly a century, the Henry Luce Foundation has been committed to deepening cultural understanding as a means to advance democracy and justice. Their Luce Scholars Program is an immersive and exploratory program where emerging US leaders with diverse backgrounds and interests spend a year living and working in Asia. Historically, the program had worked with a select number of elite higher education institutions to identify scholars. However, they were transitioning to a more open and equitable application that allowed anyone between the ages of 18 and 34 to apply and needed dedicated support reaching a new and expanded audience of graduating students and young professionals.
KMSG supported the marketing rollout for the 2022 and 2023 cohorts.
Henry Luce asked KMSG to support with:
Creating an engaging social media marketing campaign to announce their Luce Scholar Program in Asia
Developing a digital marketing strategy to recruit recent graduates, young adults, and early professionals seeking leadership development opportunities
Ensuring their new audience profile focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI/B) and curating a targeted list of higher education institutions and leaders with an emphasis on historically-underserved student populations
Establishing benchmarks based on in depth reporting of campaign success, lessons, and recommendations to drive future digital marketing strategy
Context
Action & Impact
2023 Campaign :
Utilizing paid ad campaigns on Instagram and LinkedIn, we garnered over 360,000 unique impressions (for a total of 989,960 impressions) and over 4,500 link clicks leading to applications for Luce Scholars Program (LSP).
Of the more than 333,000 unique Instagram accounts reached, the age and gender breakdown was as follows: 44.6% Male 25-34; 28.6% Female 25-34; 13% Female 18-24; 13.1% Male 18-24; and 0.7% Other.
This campaign led to 4,808 unique visits from paid and organic social posts of an overall total of 19,660 unique page visits. That means that 24.45%, or nearly 1 in 4, of all visits to the LSP page came from our ads.
To compare these results with the 2022 campaign (which was already successful at referring new applicants from more diverse communities), we had 707 unique visitors from social of a total of 12,741 total unique page visits. For 2022, 5.5% of link clicks to the page came from our ads.
Performance improved year-over-year by more than 4.5X.
Social Ads & Imagery
Top Performing LinkedIn Ads
Top Performing Instagram Ads
Instagram Grids
Additional Ad Imagery
Action & Impact
2022 Campaign :
Developed and disseminated 3 waves of ad campaigns across all social media platforms that specifically targeted higher education audiences and reached over 730,000 people (LinkedIn: ~101,000; Instagram: ~274,000; and Twitter: ~363,000) and cultivated over 43,000 meaningful engagements (and nearly 1,500 link clicks on the application portal).
Successfully engaged leaders ranging from Student Life Directors, Alumni Advisors, Professors, and College Deans who amplified the LSP opportunity to their networks.
Social Ads & Imagery
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