From the Nominator

"PowerED™ by Athabasca University is constantly seeking new ways to grow and build its online community. Based on the overwhelming success of our free micro-course, "Navigating Extraordinary Times," we reengaged the community that helped make us so successful last year by creating The Uplift.   

The Uplift marketing campaign was an opportunity to build and cultivate a more consistent, present online community focused on professional development. Centred around the creation of a free course, The Uplift campaign shifted perspective. Rather than asking our community to follow, we asked them to lead.   

The first campaign deliverable was a crowd-sourced, free micro-course selected from participants within this community and developed in collaboration with our integrated marketing and communications (IMC) team, KelloughCo. and Digital 55. The Uplift was cultivated during spring 2021, seeking to source, develop, and launch a free course—later called Elevate Your Personal Brand—all within a five-month period entirely from scratch. By offering the course for free, we removed barriers for people seeking to enroll in online learning at no cost and provided them useful information to help advance their careers.   

The marketing campaign was broken into two distinct phases: a promotional phase through the summer months of 2021 that relied entirely on grassroots momentum and social sharing, and then a paid promotional component that began in September to continue to bring awareness to the course and the community it sought to create."

From the Judges

Judges liked this creative concept, which met goals on creativity and the overall concept was innovative.