From the Nominator

In Summer 2023, we sat down to brainstorm creative ways to leverage the hype and excitement of the upcoming Georgia football season, fresh off our second national championship. We wanted to tell a collection of student stories to remind our audiences that there’s more to the University of Georgia than just what happens “between the hedges” on a game day Saturday. We landed on Georgia Game Changers, a collection of profiles about students, including a few football players, who support the Georgia football ecosystem in a number of ways. With input from around campus, we settled on 12 students and proceeded to develop the look and feel of the Georgia Game Changers website. Through a combination of writers, photographers, creative designers, web developers, and social media professionals, the site and campaign went live in September. Each student was given a dedicated photo shoot and story, as well as an Instagram Reel and other social media posts. We planned early on to use behind-the-scenes footage of the shoots, in combination with the polished photos, to help tell these students’ stories on social media. The campaign was a resounding success. We published a total of 120 pieces of Game Changers content on social media throughout the fall season, resulting in 4,237,232 impressions and 246,819 engagements (a 5.8% engagement rate). In total, the Game Changers site received 31,990 page views from September 13 to December 31, 2023.

From the Judges

The judging panel agreed this is an excellent storytelling campaign with great visuals and use of multiple modes of delivery. We especially liked how the stories tie the message to the university's priorities beyond sports and included different voices. There were incredible results for this campaign.