Campaign Spotlight: Never Mind Citi Bike, Here\'s Campus Bike

Never Mind Citi Bike, Here's Campus Bike

A bicycle giveaway and bicycle-sharing program are part of efforts at the University of Dayton to help protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions.

In 1892, a song celebrated “a bicycle built for two.” More than a century later, a campaign for a university is upping the ante with an offer of bicycles built for a hundred.

The University of Dayton, in Dayton, Ohio, is promising 100 incoming freshmen free bikes in exchange for pledges to forgo bringing cars to campus for the first two years they are enrolled. The program was being promoted to the freshmen members of the Class of 2017 in a campaign by an agency named 160 Over 90, which is based in Philadelphia and also has an office in Newport Beach, Calif.

The campaign has included a section of the university's Web site and postcards inserted in admission packets. The students were asked a teaser question, “When is two greater than four?”; those whose curiosities were piqued could learn more about the program, which was portrayed as “protecting the planet two wheels at a time.”

The free bicycles, which the University of Dayton is purchasing from a company named Linus Bike, complement an initiative that the school began two years ago, offering students a chance to participate in a bicycle-sharing program. (The freshmen receiving the free bikes are not obliged to share them, but it is expected that many will do so, at least occasionally.)

The 100 first-year students who have won the Linus bikes were chosen from 293 who submitted pledges, out of about 1,600 eligible incoming freshmen. (The Class of 2017 totals close to 1,900 students, of whom around 300 are from outside the United States and would not be bringing cars to campus; they did not receive the information about the free bikes in their admission packets.)

Both the bicycle giveaway and the bicycle-sharing program are part of efforts at the University of Dayton to help protect the environment and reduce carbon emissions. The private Roman Catholic university, founded in 1850 by the Society of Mary, has three principles in its mission statement, one of which is “the common good.”

The campaign, with a total budget estimated at $90,000, is emblematic of the increasing efforts by colleges and universities to differentiate themselves through advertising and marketing. The goals of such campaigns include recruiting students, assuring the parents of those students that their children have made the right choice, encouraging alumni to make donations and seeking new faculty members.

Just how competitive the higher-education category is getting was reinforced by an ad in the Sept. 2/9 issue of The Nation magazine, which asks, “What if the best education in America was in Canada?” The ad encourages residents of the United States to attend the University of British Columbia.

“We all basically say the same thing: ‘We have excellent students. We have excellent faculty. All our graduates are successful,'” says Sundar Kumarasamy, vice president for enrollment management and marketing at the University of Dayton.

The ads “might as well be” for “the University of Utopia,” he adds.

As a result, “we need to differentiate who we are in a cluttered market,” Mr. Kumarasamy says, adding that even before he began in his job, in November 2006, “I clearly knew U.D. needed to tell its story.”

That led to a decision he made in the first month on the job, he adds, to hire 160 Over 90, which has also created ads for colleges and universities like Loyola University Maryland, Michigan State University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

As a Marianist university, “we are very humble about who we are,” Mr. Kumarasamy says, so in considering how to promote the university, “we said, ‘How do we brag about being humble?'”

The idea soon emerged that “we don't want to tell people who we are,” he adds. “We want to show people who we are, in tangible ways.”

The first project for the university from the agency was a view book that “created so much stir in the higher education marketplace,” Mr. Kumarasamy says, describing how its cover read, “Do you know more about Lindsay Lohan than Darfur?”

“It was a modern way, a contemporary way, of bringing” prospective students, many of whom are 17 years old, “into the conversation,” he adds.

Another example Mr. Kumarasamy offers is a 36-foot interactive wall at the university's visitors center, which is designed to be engaging as well as illustrate the concept of community.

“The more people go toward the wall, the more it'll reveal the full picture” of the University of Dayton, he adds, and “when nobody engages,” there is nothing to see.

The bike giveaway is intended to “demonstrate our commitment to sustainability,” Mr. Kumarasamy says. “We don't just tell you to be environmentally friendly.”

“The one thing we always say is that what we do has to be true to our mission, extend the value and commitment of our brand,” he adds.