When the UNH Marketing team collaborated with the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture to tell the story of UNH’s legacy cucurbit breeding program, a true integrated project came to life, including a four-minute YouTube video, a UNH Today article, a THRIVE story, a social media collaboration and more.
The Goal
The UNH cucurbit program video was produced to accompany a story in COLSA’s THRIVE magazine. The video project enabled the Marketing team to share with a larger audience the importance of UNH's cucurbit breeding program, the longest continuous squash and pumpkin breeding program in North America.
The video also offered the opportunity to highlight a new faculty member leading and reviving the cucurbit breeding program: Chris Hernandez, assistant professor in the department of agriculture, nutrition and food systems. Since cucurbits include pumpkins and squash, the video was poised to garner maximum engagement during the fall season.
Aerial view of cucurbit farming at Kingman Farm
The Process
This project involved a successful collaboration between UNH Marketing and COLSA, as well as a collaboration between these two departments and the students, faculty and staff featured in the video. Although coordinating interviews with busy students and researchers can be an obstacle, the team was able to manage everyone's schedules and find the right people to interview.
Interviewees included Renee Goyette, research technician for the cucurbit breeding program. Renee's voice as a staff member was especially integral, since many research stories highlight mostly faculty and students.
What set this project apart?
“We were there for all of the steps,” Scott Ripley, Communication Director, Photo & Video, said. Rather than just capturing the planting and harvesting of the cucurbits, the team was able to film everything else in between, which was important, given the ever-changing fall landscape and crops. The collaborative nature of the project was also a high point. “It’s a great example of an integrated marketing project that had a big impact,” Nick Gosling, Communications Information Specialist for the NH Agricultural Experiment Station, said.
Collaboration on the project extended beyond the video, to a social media collaboration. Social media collaborations between UNH accounts are a part of our larger social media strategy and consistently perform well on Instagram. Sam Gorski, Social Media Producer, partnered with Alex Hatch, Media Communications Specialist for COLSA, to broaden the reach of the story across social media accounts.
The Success
Both the YouTube video and UNH Today article have received hundreds of views. The video was also promoted through the UNH flagship and research Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts, gaining over 23,000 total impressions. The story received press coverage on Morning AgClips and Science Friday. Reflecting on the project, Sarah Schaier, Integrated Marketing Director, COLSA, found its “single biggest success” to be visibility for UNH research.
True to our Marketing Team value of “for the greatest impact,” the cucurbit program story doesn't end here. The project's true success is in the way its components will enrich future marketing efforts. Scott Ripley and Jeremy Gasowski, Senior Producer, Photo & Video, took the opportunity to shoot a variety of photos during the video shoots, which can be accessed on Resource Space. Shooting photos during video shoots and videos during photo shoots enables them to efficiently create content for future Marketing efforts.
The YouTube video will also garner more engagement into the future. Longer videos like this one (nearly four minutes) tend to perform better on YouTube. “These videos will live on,” Scott Ripley said of videos on our UNH YouTube channel, like the cucurbit video. The more we build out a library of engaging content as a team, the more future viewers will find and engage with our content.
