University of Michigan

For a brand that walks the walk, Look to Michigan.

Public perception of higher education is shifting toward skepticism. To rebuild trust, the University of Michigan set out to prove that it wasn’t just a leading public university, but a leading university for the public.

Services

The Insight

Telling a story of public good.

When the University of Michigan set out to turn its new 10-year strategic vision into a public-facing campaign, it had an even bigger ambition: to change the national conversation about the value of higher education.

Michigan wanted to move beyond being recognized as a leading public university and establish itself as the leading university for the public. To show how its people, research, and ideas were making a difference in the world.

But how do you tell a story that big?

We needed a creative platform ambitious enough to carry thousands of stories, yet simple enough to make every one of them feel connected.

Enter Look to Michigan.

We developed a verbal framework that begins with a challenge facing the world and resolves it with the people at Michigan working to solve it. From lifesaving healthcare to the climate crisis, each story gives the public a reason to look to Michigan.

Visually, we drew inspiration from one of the university’s most iconic landmarks: the Diag, the diagonal pathway that cuts through the heart of campus. Its distinctive geometry became a visual thread connecting stories across the campaign.

Together, the words and visuals gave Michigan a way to tell one powerful story through thousands of individual ones.

We declared our commitment to freedom of speech and public education in anticipation of America’s 250th in The Atlantic and The New York Times.
The Solution

The medium doesn’t just carry the message. It carries it out.

A campaign about being a university for the public needed to do more than tell people about Michigan’s impact. It needed to demonstrate it.

So we asked: what if the media placement itself could become part of the story? What if we could turn an ordinary billboard into something that actually cleans the air, or use the few seconds of someone’s commute to make a breakthrough in medical research feel real?

Michigan’s placements didn’t just promote their research, they proved it.

We cleaned America’s smoggiest cities with billboards featuring a TiO2 coating.

The most powerful brand promises are felt.

We brought that same thinking to another challenge: accessibility.

How could we use the campaign itself to demonstrate Michigan’s commitment to making the world more accessible for people with disabilities?

Working with the university, we highlighted an alumni-led initiative called the Holy Braille Project, which makes sports more accessible for fans with visual impairments.

Together, we created a full-page print advertisement featuring an embossed illustration of Michigan Stadium, affectionately known as the Big House, alongside Braille lettering.

Rather than simply telling readers about the university’s work to create more inclusive experiences, the ad invited people with visual impairments to experience a piece of Michigan football for themselves.

The most powerful brand activations don’t just tell people what an institution stands for. They show what it’s willing to do about it. And when a brand promise becomes something people can experience, it becomes something they can believe in.

The Results

Reach was the easy part. Belief was the goal. An 11.1-point lift in how people see U-M as a driver of the public good shows what happens when a university does its work out loud: the public notices.

  • 400m
    // impressions delivered to national audiences
  • +1.76m
    // web sessions
  • +11.1pp
    // lift in U-M’s perception as a driver of the public good

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