From the Nominator

"In 2022, UBC Magazine launched “My Town,” a digital story series that relies on alumni-generated content to connect UBC graduates with one another. Structured in a question-and-answer format, each “My Town” story features a graduate who lives in a unique part of the world and whose responses and photos provide a personal glimpse of what their city is like. 

This creative and cost-effective series provides interesting snapshots of life around the world and inspiration for those looking to travel post-COVID. It also ensures that international alumni are represented in the stories we tell and communicates to our readers that they are part of a vibrant, global alumni community. So far, we’ve featured eight alumni living in cities in Kenya, United Arab Emirates, the United States, Peru, Indonesia, and Portugal. We took a multi-channel approach to tell their stories—publishing them on the UBC Magazine website, sharing them in our e-newsletters and on various social channels, and adapting them into micro-stories for Instagram. We also hoped our alumni participants, selected in part because of their influence on Instagram, would love the end result enough to share it with their networks. 

In 2022, the stories collectively reached over 70,000 unique individuals, garnered a half million social impressions, and generated over 3,600 social engagements (with numbers continuing to rise in 2023). To our delight, participants did share their stories on their Instagram accounts, which range in size from one thousand followers to 2.4 million!"

From the Judges

Simple, but well done. A unique spin on traditional alumni profiles and the use of user-generated content. Strategic recruitment of alumni in specific locations, especially those with strong social media presence. Definitely something others could model.