Savannah Tech wins national honors for creative design with 2019 Collegiate Advertising Awards

SAVANNAH, Ga. – Savannah Technical College’s HERO Faculty and Staff Campaign won first/gold in the U.S. for a fundraising campaign with the 2019 Collegiate Advertising Awards. The College also earned two silver awards for logo design and self-promotion.

The College first started its Helping Everyone Realize Opportunity (HERO) campaign in 2015. STC’s marketing team developed the brand, built the campaign around personal interaction and offered incentives for donors. The HERO character was created as the original mascot for the campaign. The campaign surpassed fundraising and participation goals.

In 2019, STC rebranded its HERO campaign with custom hero characters that featured STC faculty and staff. This inspiration came from an incident when the five-foot foam-core HERO lost his head. He was on his way to be presented during a best practices workshop feature the HERO campaign for other colleges. To salvage the character, STC’s marketing team rounded off his shoulders, so donors could put their head on them for a photo. That’s when the team thought of the idea to create custom digital hero illustrations, bringing new life to the campaign.

Last year’s HERO campaign included 92% participation from STC faculty/staff raised $34,600+, which offered 20 student scholarships in FY2020. This also includes 32 who pledged 1% of their salary.

STC also won silver for developing a custom logo to promote Career Connections, a website connecting STC students and graduates with employers. Eric Willis with Fluorescent Design Studio designed the logo.

Another effort to promote Career Services won silver for self-promotion. To direct students to find the Career Services office at the Savannah Campus, STC’s marketing team had student success photos installed on the office windows. Photos were taken by Stephen B. Morton and installed by The Kennickell Group. Morton’s STC student success photography has previously been recognized with national awards.

The Collegiate Advertising Awards is an elite national program seeking to recognize today’s most talented marketing professionals for outstanding excellence in all forms of advertising, marketing and promotion specific to higher education products and services. All entries are centralized for judging (per category) by a panel of design and education marketing professionals with decades of combined experience. Entries are judged on: creativity, layout/design, typography, production, quality and overall effectiveness.

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# 2032 | June 10, 2020

Media Contact: Amy Shaffer, APR
912.443.5512 or ashaffer@savannahtech.edu