What Can You Imagine at Purdue?

“What Can You Imagine at Purdue?” is Purdue’s most watched video to date, with over 29 million views on YouTube.

Creative Collaboration

The heartwarming story of “What Can You Imagine at Purdue?” is told through the eyes of a little girl who imagines her future at Purdue University.  

The video was shot over the course of a week in the fall of 2022, alongside our creative agency partners at Madhouse. Many MarCom staff members and campus partners were involved in the planning, logistics and production of the video. 

Results

29M+YouTube ViewsAs of October 2023
82.2%Average View DurationAs of October 2023
679K+Social ImpressionsAs of May 2023

Creating an Emotive Video 

The goal was to showcase Purdue’s mission of providing a world-class education at every stage of an educational journey, from Purdue Polytechnic High Schools to Purdue University’s flagship campus and Purdue Global for working adults.  

We created an emotional tie to our world-class offerings so that our unaffiliated audiences could understand the kind of place Purdue is — a place where people bring their best and learn to build a better world together. 

Varied Distribution Strategies

The strategy for promoting this video was to share it broadly and across multiple platforms to reach as many audiences as possible. This included Indianapolis and Chicago affiliates during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, ESPN2 during the Purdue vs. LSU Citrus Bowl, and various sporting events throughout the winter on Fox, NBC, the Big Ten Network, WISH-TV, Monday Night Football and more. We also created a complex distribution plan that included more than 50 social shares, collaboration with campus partners and interviews with media outlets. 

Uniting Strategy and Creativity

As the video began to gain popularity with multiple audiences, we continued to refresh the creative assets to strategically test and optimize performance on YouTube.  

Science, analytics and data were expertly combined with creativity and emotive storytelling to make this video a success!  

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