Campaign Case Study: Island Grad Ceremony 2023

Background

Island Grad is a nonprofit organization based in San Bernardino, CA. We offer community-based events, workshops, and scholarship opportunities for Pacific Islander students in all educational settings and backgrounds. As Island Grad's marketing specialist, I planned and executed multiple social media campaigns including the 2023 social media campaign promoting the organization's largest annual event.

Island Grad Ceremony 2023 Campaign

The yearly graduation ceremony is Island Grad’s largest community event.

For something so big, we needed a social media presence even bigger. The campaign was developed to find unique methods of spreading the word about the yearly graduation ceremony, which was returning at full scale for the first year since the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Our key performance indicators for this campaign included impressions, which expressed our exposure to people who previously may not have been aware of the annual ceremony, followers, which indicated audience members who will continue to interact with the brand into future ceremony years, and profile visits, which indicated audience members considering registration for the event. While also conducted on Facebook, Instagram was a more valuable route for reaching our target audience in this campaign: Pacific Islander high school and college seniors in the Inland Empire and San Diego. 

Post Case Study 1

Our highest performing content during this campaign, beyond Instagram’s usual preference for videos, was photo content. That in mind, I tried my hand at photography to create an eye-catching glimpse of what would be offered at the ceremony. 

For the copy, I wanted the first two lines above the “read more” to entice the audience to scroll lower and reach the registration links below (shared as simple, condensed URLS for greatest accessibility). 

Post results:

• 444 unique accounts reached (36% non-followers)

• 668 impressions

• 81 post interactions

Post Case Study 2

Part of our campaign included taking advantage of the yearly graduation photos and grad season trends of social media.

For this post, I wanted to create an image that, while still heavily featuring the Island Grad name, looked like a grad photo that our audience could see themselves in. I opted for a panoramic carousel post using a photo from a previous ceremony year. I edited the contrast of the image for a striking silhouette effect, sure to stand out against the neutral colored UIs of Instagram and Facebook.

Post Results:

• 555 unique accounts reached (48% non-followers)

• 758 impressions

• 139 post interactions

Post Case Study 3

In this reel, I wanted to display the unique community experience offered at the Island Grad Ceremony. I included multiple videos of previous graduates and performers partaking in traditional Pacific Islander dances on stage and enjoying being in a uniquely Islander graduation ceremony.

The video also contains the text “does your ceremony look like this?” as a play on the tendency of traditional graduation ceremonies to be somewhat solemn and overly-practiced- a valuable comparison given Island Grad’s ceremony competes with dozens of other ceremonies happening in close proximity.

Post Results:

• 2,178 unique accounts reached (83% non-followers)

• 2,660 plays

• 133 reel interactions

Result Highlights

Overall, the campaign promoting the 2023 Island Grad Ceremony was an overwhelming success for the organization. Its results far outperformed expectations for improvements in all of our key performance indicators. The highlights of the campaign results are as follows:

• 368% increase in graduates registered compared to previous in-person ceremony year

• 248% increase in Instagram following

• 432% increase in Instagram profile visits