higher-education-marketing
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The Long Island Agency That Put a Number on Creativity
Austin Williams sells advertising, but its most persuasive product is proof: deposits, appointments, applications and enrollment. On Long Island, an independent agency built a national portfolio by insisting that the creative work answer to the spreadsheet.
The Advertising Agency That Learned When to Stop Advertising
LT has spent six decades selling attention. Its more useful talent is knowing when another ad, another click, or another line of code will not help.
The Most Expensive Part of Marketing Is the Handoff
A Pittsburgh agency has spent nearly four decades making a quiet bet: the fewer times an idea changes hands, the better chance it has of changing minds.
The Video Shop That Kept Learning New Tricks
JPL started with video cameras in Harrisburg. Thirty-seven years later, it sells a more useful skill: knowing when the story needs a website, a stage, a search strategy - or all three at once.
Yes& Built a Big Agency Out of Small, Specific Obsessions
In eight years, a 55-person merger became a national independent assembled from specialist shops. The trick was not collecting capabilities. It was making the seams useful.
Belfort Group Learned to Count What Happens After the Click
The Boston agency does PR, media, design and websites. Its more interesting product is the connective tissue between them - a habit of following attention until it becomes an application, a qualified lead or a unanimous vote.
Erin Stinner Built a Career Where Words Carry Consequences
Before she became the owner of a Pittsburgh agency, Erin Stinner learned the weight of a sentence in newsrooms, government offices and a college president's cabinet. Now she has a deceptively plain brief: find the proof, lose the fog and make the next decision easier.
The Small Agency That Put the Ruler Next to the Idea
Backe made a useful bet before it became agency boilerplate: the beautiful idea and the measurable result belong in the same room. Its old case files show what happened when a small Radnor shop treated positioning as a practical instrument.
The Agency That Sold Itself to the People Doing the Work
Ethos spent years joining brand craft to digital measurement. Then it made a more consequential integration: in 2017, the founders transferred ownership to the employees whose work clients were buying.
The Agency That Moved Into the Client's Office
23 Marketing Group sells the usual agency tools - strategy, creative, media and measurement. Its revealing move is less usual: get close enough to the client's work that the agency begins to behave like part of the company.
Formation PR + Brand and the Art of Becoming Less Necessary
A small North Carolina agency built a national niche by taking on stories that resist slogans - then teaching clients to carry the message without it.
The Little Agency That Learned to Think Like a College
AccessU found its niche by treating colleges less like products and more like complicated communities. Thirty years later, its best work begins with a deceptively unfashionable move: listening before advertising.
The Three-Person Job That Became Black Digital
Mike Utaegbulam discovered his old job required three replacements. He built an agency around that clue - then learned that doing everything yourself is a terrible way to scale.
The Campaign Was Wrong. Steel Advertising Changed It.
The Austin agency built its reputation on a useful heresy: a beautiful campaign is only the beginning. The real work starts when the numbers disagree with the plan.
Lisa Clements Has Spent a Career Making Public Institutions Feel Open
From Queen’s Park to the Art Gallery of Ontario and now U of T Scarborough, Lisa Clements has built a career around a difficult communications problem: turning large public institutions into places people can see themselves entering.
James Tweedy Is Building a University Brand People Can Belong To
From independent records to a Christian university, James Tweedy has spent two decades learning the same durable lesson: a brand works when people can hear themselves inside its story.
Tanya Kreinin Built a Brand Big Enough to Hold a University
At the University of Toronto, Tanya Kreinin's real product is not a slogan. It is a system that lets thousands of distinct voices sound like they belong to the same institution.
Kara Paymar
Kara Paymar built her career where brand promises meet operational reality. Now the Strategic Education CMO is asking a sharper question of AI: who shapes the system before it shapes the market?
EasyUni
EasyUni is a Kuala Lumpur-based education technology company that runs a network of free university search, comparison and application websites for students across Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East, and sells the resulting attention back to universities as premium listings, qualified leads, bespoke digital marketing and virtual-event software. Incorporated in 2008 and launched publicly in December 2010 after co-founder Edwin Tay watched his niece struggle to compare colleges in any systematic way, the company has grown into a multi-country portal group - eleven regional sites at last count - with counsellors who walk applicants through admissions, visas and travel at no cost to the student. Universities pay; students do not. Backed by Teak Capital (Series A, 2013) and the Axiata Digital Innovation Fund (Series B, 2015), EasyUni also builds Fairwiz, a cloud platform for virtual open days and education fairs that started development in November 2019 and landed just as campus visits stopped being possible.
Greg Shrader
Greg Shrader is the founder and CEO of Wellspring International Education, a Colorado-based firm that connects international students with U.S. colleges and universities. A learning scientist by training who has worked in higher education since 1999, he built Wellspring from a start-up into one of the leading higher-education marketing and recruitment organizations through a string of mergers and acquisitions, including the 2022 purchase of Australian platform StudyMe. He also leads Wellspring Higher Education and its teacher-education brand, NTEC.
Brian Hartnack
Brian Hartnack is the co-founder and CEO of Archer Education, a higher-education growth firm that helps colleges and universities recruit, enroll and retain online and adult learners. A Cornell history major who cut his teeth in the late-90s dot-com scene at eToys, Gifts.com and Rent.com (sold to eBay for $415M in 2005), he launched the company that became Archer in 2006. Two decades on, the firm has worked with 200+ institutions, managed 1,000+ online programs, and connected millions of students to degrees - with Hartnack arguing that the winners in education marketing pair data infrastructure with authentic storytelling.