Sallie Mae
Sallie Mae is one of the country's largest and most well-known consumer banks, offering private education loans, college planning tools, and online banking. On the heels of new executive leadership, a journey around new internal alignment, and a desire to connect with a younger and wider audience, Sallie Mae was ready to refresh its brand positioning and customer perception.
Over the course of 2 years, we helped them transform from a student loan provider to a trusted student support system. From explaining the FAFSA through the lens of a video game, to getting free money in the hands of tall people everywhere, to producing music backed by science, we leaned into the universe of the multiplayer brand and leveraged creativity to change the conversation around affording an education.
Creative Director: John Mathieu, Cristin Barth
Copywriter: Steve Friedman
Art Director: Avery Donahoe
Strategy: Jenna DiCicco
Animation
Hero4Hire, Scholar
Soundtrack
Chris Plante
Digital Campaign
OOH
Social Media
Creator Marketing
Sallie Mae wanted to help students find free money first, before they took out loans. Research showed that 85% of teens use YouTube as their main search engine, not Google – so instead of trying to reach them with ads or articles, we shared answers where our audience was already asking questions: on Youtube.
We created a six-episode narrative series designed to help students “hack” paying for college, turning financial mumbo jumbo into practical, easy-to-understand advice. Knowing that video games are one of our audience’s top forms of entertainment, we turned topics like navigating the FAFSA and finding scholarships into a video game-inspired story. We even got Troy Baker, the legendary voiceover artist, to narrate the adventure.
There’s a misconception that scholarships are only for valedictorians and varsity athletes. So to prove there’s a scholarship for just about everyone out there, we placed billboards all over the country highlighting some of the weirdest, most unexpected scholarships – ones for potato researchers, candy enthusiasts, and even tall people. Instead of using our media dollars to promote our own services, we promoted opportunities that we had no connection to, other than our commitment to helping students find them.
This campaign was part of the larger drive to reposition Sallie Mae from a student financial service to a student support system that’s focused on helping students find free money before taking out loans.
We created a first-of-its-kind album scientifically engineered to help students study. Research showed that music with 50 to 80 beats per minute can enhance and stimulate creativity and learning, and working in intervals of 25 minutes of focus and 5-minute breaks helps concentration — so we created 17 original songs all scientifically engineered to boost your brain. We worked with the producer and composer, , as well as popular artists including Toledo, Jay Som and Isaac Dunbar to create the album that was released during finals week of spring semester 2023. It’s available on Spotify and is accompanied by an album-length visualizer on YouTube.
