From the Nominator

Welcome Week is a cherished time at Vanderbilt University. Each year, we mark the arrival of new and returning students with milestone moments and “only-at-VU" traditions. This week includes move-in day, orientation, founder’s walk, and the first day of classes. This year, the Vanderbilt communications and marketing team rolled out the black and gold carpet like never before, with a content strategy that enhanced the energy and excitement of Welcome Week. Our goals were to help our new and returning students feel welcomed and to invite the wider Vanderbilt community to celebrate this pivotal joining moment. By bringing together the editorial, design, photo, video, social media, and campus communications teams, we executed a multichannel campaign that resonated with students, families, alumni, prospective students, and beyond. Our tactics included a fresh approach to design, highly visual editorial content, in-person campus activations, and a creative social media strategy. Our efforts broke year-over-year records and shattered our ambitious goals in terms of followers, views, in-person engagements, and content uploads. We received thousands of positive comments from students, parents, alumni, staff, faculty, and local community members. Some posts reached far beyond our community, as a viral video on TikTok and Instagram Reels introduced Vanderbilt to entire new audiences. These results not only set new benchmarks for Welcome Week engagement and impact, they contributed to @VanderbiltU reaching our highest-performing social media month of all time.

From the Judges

We appreciated Vanderbilt's welcome week project and all it encompasses. Kudos to the team for the great data and results.