Storytelling the Admissions Process 

 Challenge 

 I handle digital marketing for a university in Pakistan . This semester we were planning our   marketing campaign when the pandemic hit and forced us to shut down our campus . Initially , we   had made several plans of holding open houses and asking students to visit our campus to see   our facilities . We even decided to make a nice welcome oﬃce to provide information to any   student or parent coming to visit . These plans were put on hold and we had to design our entire   admissions campaign online . In general we struggled to attract students to our newer programs   and felt that by opening up the campus and showing the facilities we had we could attract better   candidates and grow our brand . In short we wanted our prospective students to experience our   culture and campus , which could have helped them make a decision to apply to our programs . 

 Selection 

 When we decided to take our entire admissions campaign online , we had to ﬁgure out a way to   still allow our prospective students to experience our campus and culture . We pondered what   would be the best way we could do that , so we chose to take the Storytelling approach .   Storytelling allows brands to connect with the emotions of the audience and show characters that   the audience can relate to . As the Storytelling Tool video from Week 2 of the course says that   storytelling does n’t solve a problem but creates a cause “ A cause is something that ignites   people , and unites people . ” 

 Application 

 We realised that the best storytellers for this situation would be the Alumni . If prospective   students saw Alumni established in good companies , and they tell the story of their experience on   our campus , then that could attract those students to apply . Because it is their story that would   be the most honest account of the campus experience rather than the marketing team trying to   tell why the University would be a good ﬁt for them . That is the reason we created a webinar and   had some of our well established alumni talk about their experience at the University through their   stories . We promoted the webinar with the names , titles and companies ﬁve of our Alumni are   working in , we then set up a sign up sheet that allowed us to collect data for these prospective   students . During the webinar , the alumni talked about their stories and their experience at the   University and how the University helped them excel in their respective ﬁelds . The moderator   himself was an alumni so it became a very personal and casual conversation . This was also live   streamed on our oﬃcial Facebook page , where our representatives were ready to reply to any   query immediately . Through this conversation ; facilities , faculty , scholarships and other beneﬁts of   the University were highlighted by the stories of the Alumni . 

 Insight 

 This turned out to be a successful activity that created a lot of engagement and generated queries   regarding our admissions process . As we had live streamed the activity on our Facebook page ,   we were able to have a reach of 16,500 people and generated about 100 admission applications   right after the activity . Our team was available to instantly answer any query a viewer had and   directed them to the proper channels for further processing . On the days leading up to the event   we had about 200 people sign up and whose data we collected . This taught us that prospective   students want genuine stories and this was as real as it could get . It was live and unedited and   they were personal stories of success and stories that these prospective students could one day   be telling as well . Due to the success of this , we plan to hold similar activities for the remainder of   our admissions campaign . This turned out to be a better approach than just posting video   interviews or testimonials as they might not have the realness that this did . 

 Approach 

 I felt that the approach we used worked and that in our case storytelling , and the way we did it   was a great approach that was unique for us and it was a great way of showcasing real examples .   Perhaps our next step would be to take this storytelling process to the next step and connecting   prospective students with our alumni and current students to have a more intimate one on one   conversation so that the stories told can have a more authentic touch to it and help build a strong   brand image and loyalty . We are already looking into diﬀerent tools that can help us easily do that   so that our Alumni and students do n’t feel burdened with an added responsibility but can easily   do this . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Storytelling the Admissions Process 

 Challenge 

 I handle digital marketing for a university in Pakistan . This semester we were planning our   marketing campaign when the pandemic hit and forced us to shut down our campus . Initially , we   had made several plans of holding open houses and asking students to visit our campus to see   our facilities . We even decided to make a nice welcome oﬃce to provide information to any   student or parent coming to visit . These plans were put on hold and we had to design our entire   admissions campaign online . In general we struggled to attract students to our newer programs   and felt that by opening up the campus and showing the facilities we had we could attract better   candidates and grow our brand . In short we wanted our prospective students to experience our   culture and campus , which could have helped them make a decision to apply to our programs . 

 Selection 

 When we decided to take our entire admissions campaign online , we had to ﬁgure out a way to   still allow our prospective students to experience our campus and culture . We pondered what   would be the best way we could do that , so we chose to take the Storytelling approach .   Storytelling allows brands to connect with the emotions of the audience and show characters that   the audience can relate to . As the Storytelling Tool video from Week 2 of the course says that   storytelling does n’t solve a problem but creates a cause “ A cause is something that ignites   people , and unites people . ” 

 Application 

 We realised that the best storytellers for this situation would be the Alumni . If prospective   students saw Alumni established in good companies , and they tell the story of their experience on   our campus , then that could attract those students to apply . Because it is their story that would   be the most honest account of the campus experience rather than the marketing team trying to   tell why the University would be a good ﬁt for them . That is the reason we created a webinar and   had some of our well established alumni talk about their experience at the University through their   stories . We promoted the webinar with the names , titles and companies ﬁve of our Alumni are   working in , we then set up a sign up sheet that allowed us to collect data for these prospective   students . During the webinar , the alumni talked about their stories and their experience at the   University and how the University helped them excel in their respective ﬁelds . The moderator   himself was an alumni so it became a very personal and casual conversation . This was also live   streamed on our oﬃcial Facebook page , where our representatives were ready to reply to any   query immediately . Through this conversation ; facilities , faculty , scholarships and other beneﬁts of   the University were highlighted by the stories of the Alumni . 

 Insight 

 This turned out to be a successful activity that created a lot of engagement and generated queries   regarding our admissions process . As we had live streamed the activity on our Facebook page ,   we were able to have a reach of 16,500 people and generated about 100 admission applications   right after the activity . Our team was available to instantly answer any query a viewer had and   directed them to the proper channels for further processing . On the days leading up to the event   we had about 200 people sign up and whose data we collected . This taught us that prospective   students want genuine stories and this was as real as it could get . It was live and unedited and   they were personal stories of success and stories that these prospective students could one day   be telling as well . Due to the success of this , we plan to hold similar activities for the remainder of   our admissions campaign . This turned out to be a better approach than just posting video   interviews or testimonials as they might not have the realness that this did . 

 Approach 

 I felt that the approach we used worked and that in our case storytelling , and the way we did it   was a great approach that was unique for us and it was a great way of showcasing real examples .   Perhaps our next step would be to take this storytelling process to the next step and connecting   prospective students with our alumni and current students to have a more intimate one on one   conversation so that the stories told can have a more authentic touch to it and help build a strong   brand image and loyalty . We are already looking into diﬀerent tools that can help us easily do that   so that our Alumni and students do n’t feel burdened with an added responsibility but can easily   do this .
### Output: 