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Centerpiece Campaigns
Quarterly campaign system implementation
Reponsibilities:
Art Direction + Project management
Design + Implementation
The Challenge:
Quick escalation on a large scale campaign on a quarterly basis.
Every quarter, Udemy has a "centerpiece" campaign. It usually would land toward the middle or end of the quarter, running about 10 days usually. The spectrum for it's goal or purpose could range from a holiday moment, to a corporate focus (AI, subscriptions, etc), platform content (course subject matter), to a simple sale. It had to stand out from the current landscape of promotions. Udemy had alot of promotions on its schedule, so it had to stand out not only from competitors, but also from our own promos.
The creative team would get approx 6-8 weeks from concept to implemention to create the campaign that would go out accross all of Udemy's channels. From Onsite to email to social media, affilliates and beyond.
The Design Solution:
Shifting uses of elements allows the brand to flex with time. This also gives room to address creative fatigue, stay fresh in a promotions dense environment, while keeping to deadlines in a quick turnaround.
The challenge for the Centerpiece wasn't just the timeline. It was also making sure to stand out in channels where there were a consistent flow of other promotions (24 Hr Sales, brand level campaigns, event promotions, etc) in the channels Udemy used. The Centerpiece was the one campaign every quarter that would go out over every channel (Onsite, email, org social, paid social, demand gen, mobile push, terrectrial tv, youtube channel, etc), so it would need to stand out from the regular programs of those channels, plus also other advertisers. Udemy had worked with multiple illustrators (and had also developed and shot our own stock photography system) to develop two tiers of illustrations, a primary/banner illustration and a secondary supplemental spot illustration group. The secondary group was usually kept to smaller placements, and we had been heavily using the primary illustration and photography repeatedly over previous quarters. Moving to use the secondary illustration in a Centerpiece allowed us more flexibility. They also were simplistic enough to be easy to design for simple but impactful animations for channels like social and email. This is a Q1 sale which in messaging usually was a "New Year, New You" focused. Leadership was asking for just a general sale moment but tied to the holiday moment. Having this simplified focus meant we could also address the different top skills focused content (the top performers were tech focused like dev, IT etc) on the platform which often drew more revenue but also made it easier to design for. The secondary illustrations are whimsical and interesting but also have subject relevant elements (servers, coding symbols, etc) that we could tie aspirational messaging to to encourage participation in the sale.
