GW’s Center for Career Education launched a campaign this summer to advertise its mid-career academic programs to residents of the D.C. metropolitan area.
The ongoing ad campaign – which has cost GW $305,000 in the last year – incorporates direct mail, advertisements in newspapers and on Metro cars, radio spots, and banners on Web sites. The ads showcase the center’s mid-career certificate programs, said Troy Teeboom, special project coordinator for the center.
The ads target young and middle-aged adults in the work force who want to improve their career skills, Teeboom said.
GW offers the certificate programs in a variety of subjects, including legal assistance, appraisal studies, landscape design, publishing and information technology. The program is revenue-generating and has been running at a profit for several years, Teeboom said.
Teeboom said direct mail is one of the most successful advertising tools GW uses to promote its mid-career programs. GW purchased mailing lists and tailored the lists to publicize specific programs to highly-defined target audiences. Teeboom said the mailing campaign cost $110,000 last year.
Advertisements ran in The Washington Post and City Paper, but GW also promoted the programs in specialized publications such as Roll Call, a newspaper for Congressional staffers.
Newspaper and newsletter advertisements cost $185,000, and an additional $5,000 was spent this past year on radio spots.
Response to Metro advertisements was surprisingly strong, Teeboom said. These advertisements, which cost GW $10,000, ran during October and November 1997, and July of this year. They will be featured in Metro cars throughout September.
The certificate programs, offered at locations in nearby suburbs, accounted for more than 7,000 course registrations last year, representing almost 2,000 students, said Peggye Cohen, GW’s assistant vice president of institutional research.
“These (certificate programs) are things people would not necessarily go to school to get a degree in,” Teeboom said. But the programs offer beneficial skills, especially in growing fields such as information technology, he said.
“The employment sections of newspapers are filled with ads looking for skills in certain (computer) programming areas,” he said.
GW schools also offer specialty programs in conjunction with the center.
The Columbian School of Arts and Sciences, School of Business and Public Management, School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Graduate School of Education and Human Development offer part-time post-graduate degree programs, with classes taught in Alexandria and at GW’s Crystal City campus, Teeboom said.
