Crowdsourcing involves outsourcing tasks to the public rather than employees. Babson College, a top business school, wants to increase its brand awareness through a crowdsourced campaign. The campaign goal is to engage audiences and expand Babson's applicant pool. It uses various paid, owned, and earned media channels to reach prospective students, alumni, and others. Early results show the engagement hub define.babson.edu has received over 100,000 visitors internationally who are submitting and viewing entrepreneurship definitions.

1. CROWDSOURCING
A BRAND CAMPAIGN
Sarah Sykora Gene Begin
Chief Marketing Officer Digital Marketing Director
Babson College Babson College

2. WHAT IS CROWDSOURCING?
A process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people…an
undefined public rather than a specific body, such as paid employees. *
Benefits
• Connection to your audience
• Collaboration and competition
• Simultaneous market research and testing
• Lower cost
*Wikipedia

3. BABSON COLLEGE
• Small, private business college 14 miles west of Boston
• #1 in entrepreneurship for 19 and 15 consecutive years
• Approximately 2000 undergraduate and 1300 graduate students,
representing more than 74 countries
– Undergraduate program (top 25 in business)
– Graduate program - MBA and MS degrees (top 40 in business)
– Executive education program (top 10 U.S. and top 15 in the world for custom
programs)
– Babson Global, which works with corporate, university, government, and
foundation partners to advance entrepreneurship education and Entrepreneurial
Thought and Action® worldwide

4. CAMPAIGN GOAL & OBJECTIVES
Increase brand awareness, engagement, and adoption for Babson, the educator
for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds™.
In doing so:
• Augment pride and engage our community.
• Expand Babson’s application base, in turn expanding and enhancing our student
and alumni base.
• Generate more corporate relationships.
• Create greater attention with academic institutions, foundations and grants
organizations, and the policy community.

5. CONSTITUENCY MAP
Granting
Organizations
Executive
Development Education
& Foundations
Alumni
Governance HR Developers
Parents Centers/Institutes Working
Babson Global Professionals
Policy
Ugrad Makers/
Influencers
Educators/ Graduate
Academic
Institutions
Guidance Counselors Students
(Prospective & Current)

6. TYPICAL HIGHER ED DECISION JOURNEY
Good
Consider Evaluate Buy Luck? Alumni
Apply Enroll
Engage Register
Sign a contract
Hire
Give

7. DECISION JOURNEY LEVERAGING ADVOCACY
Enroll
Hire
Sign a contract
Give
Aware Consider Evaluate Buy
Apply Bond-PROMOTE-Bond
Engage
Enjoy
Attend
Participate
Partner
Share

8. OUR INTEGRATED MIX
Pubs/
Collateral
Public Digital
Relations channels
Social Campus/
Media Environ
Engagement
Word of
Print
Mouth
Sponsor
&
Partner- Radio
ships
Digital
Advertising Out of
/ Search Home

9. CAMPAIGN REACH
Paid Media Markets:
Primary= Boston, San
Francisco
Secondary:
Washington DC, New
York City, Miami
Digital reach via
campaign:
engagement hub,
social media , digital
contests

10. PAID MEDIA: REDEFINE CAMPAIGN CHANNELS
BOS, SFO
Airports

11. PAID MEDIA : PRINT

12. PAID MEDIA : OUTDOOR

13. PAID MEDIA : DIGITAL
Engagement = 2583 CTs &
37 definitions
Engagement = 1049 votes Reach = 70,083 unique
viewers of the post
Engagement = 304 users, 257
clicks generating 64 stories

14. EARNED MEDIA

15. OWNED MEDIA: ENGAGEMENT HUB
define.babson.edu
• Context video
• Definition submission
• Data capture (name,
email, country, zip,
occupation)
• Interactive search
elements
• Liking
• Sharing
• Contests
• Direct marketing

16. DEFINE.BABSON.EDU : V2
• 1-step form with 7 fields, including definition - 1.4% video submissions
• 2-step form with video & definition on step 1 and remaining 6 fields on step 2 -
12.2% video submissions
• 45% completion rate of entire form

17. DEFINE.BABSON.EDU REACH
• Since November launch, there have been more than 104,000 unique visitors to
define.babson.edu
• Visitors are from all 50 states as well as 147 countries
• Top 10 states outside of MA: CA, NY, FL, TX, NJ, VA, MD, GA, PA and NC
• Top 10 countries outside of US: India, UK, Philippines, Mexico, Canada, Bulgaria, Brazil,
Germany, Chile, and China
• Traffic to www.babson.edu (443 visits) led to more engagement than non-define visitors
• 4.25 pages per visit (up 4%)
• 6:24 (up 16%)

18. SOCIAL SHARING

19. SOCIAL SHARING
Babson student!

20. WHAT’S NEXT? REIMAGINE THAT CONTENT!

21. WHAT’S NEXT? EXTEND TO OTHER INST. GOALS

22. QUESTIONS?
Sarah Sykora Gene Begin
Chief Marketing Officer Digital Marketing Director
Babson College Babson College
@ssykora @gbegin