Every spring, UNH celebrates the graduation of students all across the university. The Marketing team works hard to ensure that those who can't attend the ceremony can follow along at home and that once the big day is over, graduates and their families will have content to reminisce on the culmination of their UNH experience. For Commencement 2024, the UNH Marketing team was able to capture powerful and memorable moments through photo, video and social media across all ceremonies.
watch commencement YouTube videos
UNH student celebrating after COLSA commencement ceremony
The Goal
UNH's 2024 commencement ceremonies celebrated 3,007 graduates. According to Jeremy Gasowski, Senior Producer, Photo & Video, the goal of commencement photo, video and social coverage is to “capture the essence of the weekend”—the joy and accomplishments of the students and their families. “We want everyone to feel just as celebrated by UNH as by their parents and families,” Jose Rodriguez-Cole, Senior Integrated Marketing Director, Advancement, said. There is also the opportunity to connect with UNH alumni, who feel nostalgic for their graduations when viewing commencement content.
Social media content allows family, friends and members of the UNH community who can't attend commencement to still follow along and experience the highlights of the ceremonies.
The Process
The process for producing commencement content is collaborative, involving the photo, video and social media teams. The Marketing colleagues who worked at commencement this year felt that they did a particularly good job of collaborating, especially when creating emotional content. With a short timeline, the team had to be nimble, figuring out the best content to capture during the ceremonies.
In order to properly cover all ceremonies, some members of the team needed to take on new roles. Jose was able to help Jeremy with photography. Keith Testa, UNH Today Editor, along with Amy Maki, Communication Director, Project Management, did photo intake all weekend. A station set up for photo, video and social at the ceremonies let the team make real-time adjustments to their photography style and allowed for continuous improvement.
Knowledge of how the commencement ceremonies happen is important so the team can plan out content collection and find the moments when excitement will be highest. According to David Vogt, Video Producer, reading people's body language is key to getting good shots. Finding people who are willing to engage with the camera and are excited for their photo to be taken results in high-energy content.
There is also strong collaboration between the Marketing team and UNH Wildcat Productions, who provide arena coverage during the ceremonies, as well as a livestream.
UNH student receiving diploma
The Success
Commencement social media coverage across all accounts performed better than last year and resulted in higher levels of engagement. Impressions increased by 9%, engagements by 38%, video views by 156% and clicks by 53%.
LinkedIn posts performed very well, with many students sharing photos of themselves at commencement taken by Marketing on their personal LinkedIn accounts. Carousels on Instagram also performed particularly well. The commencement social coverage received many shares and comments, showing that viewers wanted to actively engage with the content.
One particularly successful Instagram reel features a young daughter handing her mother, who is about to graduate from UNH with her MBA, her graduation cap. The video places the viewer in the position of the mother, as the daughter moves the hat towards the camera, before we see her mom put it on. Nostalgic folk music plays in the background. The reel received 40.2K impressions and 1,215 engagements, as well as a series of very positive comments. Nate Baker, Executive Creative Director, said the reel may have performed especially well since it is relatable to many mothers working towards a degree, even those who did not go to UNH.
Much of the success of commencement photo, video and social coverage comes from the Central Marketing team's collaboration with the colleges and schools. Jeremy reaches out to each school prior to the ceremonies to make sure he can get the content they need. Bianca Nicolosi, Senior Integrated Marketing Director, Grad School, Online and Manchester, arranged for the woman graduating with her MBA and her daughter to participate in the reel above. Despite the short timeline, coordination among the business units of Marketing and between Marketing and other offices allowed for the capture of the most authentic and best-performing content.
The Flickr galleries from commencement received over 1.5 million views from May-June, showing just how much UNH graduates and their families appreciate the photo content of their special day. Of the commencement YouTube videos, the ceremony livestreams performed the best, with 14.5k total views for all seven livestreams.
