The Savanah College of Art and Design has launched a new video viral campaign called SCAD shorts. The idea is that you watch a short, creepy-goofy video and then guess it’s four-word name. The words begin with the letters of the college’s abbreviation S, C, A, and D. If you guess the name correctly, you could win a video iPod.

So for prospective students they offer:
- zany videos, a new one each month
- a chance to use their brain to work out a puzzle
- chance to win an iPod

The current video is really quite good. It’s kind of campy in places, but in a way that will make it more endearing. The use of a teenager cliché in it gives it a forced feeling, and it might make teens wonder if SCAD is taking the cliché seriously or using it consciously for humor. I think most of them will get it. We’ll see if it’s really ‘viral’ or not, but the level of originality in the whole setup is enough to earn my respect.

Since the campaign is being put on by SCAD, you can expect some great design work. The folks at the Dandy Dwarves who put the campaign together did a bang-up job in that respect. The design is incredible–daring, edgy, funny, and relevant. My only complaint was a horizontal scroll bar that appeared at a screen resolution of 1024×768.

The “about the artist” page brings the whole concept back around to the college–the artist, Britt Spencer, is a SCAD alum. You get to read an interview with Britt about the background of the short film and see some of his other work. A problem with this section is that it’s long and you don’t find out about the artist’s connection to the school until fairly far down. That connection should be up top where hyper, scanning teenagers will see it alongside Britt’s incredible illustration work.

On the whole, this is one of the first higher ed viral projects I have seen that has potential for real prospect appeal. With art & design schools leading the way, it would be nice to be able to get edgier with recruitment material for liberal arts institutions. I know any mention of a “third nipple” on our pages would have some eyes (and heads) rolling.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Higher Education, Marketing. It has been viewed 1873 times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

From ‘A Softer World’

There is an argument made against privacy that says someone who isn’t engaged in criminal behavior has nothing to hide. This method of thinking allowed the US government to slowly sap away our civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks–many have just accepted that trading privacy for security is acceptable and used the “nothing to hide” argument to rationalize what was, essentially, a decision based on fear. However, limiting the government’s ability to intrude in our private lives is easy compared with attempting to control how personal information spreads on the internet via gossip. Rather than spies or wiretaps, gossip is often gathered by those we trust and spread online by people who don’t understand or appreciate the potential for the damage it can do. In reality, privacy is about much more than concealing wrongdoing.

Internet-based abuse (‘cyberbullying’) and privacy / relationship issues are still massively misunderstood. The complexities of online sociality are probably the biggest ‘generational divide’ between modern teens and adults. To help put it in perspective a bit, here are some numbers…

I HAVE A MYSPACE ACCOUNT!!1!