christian sternal

creative director | copywriter

It’s the birthplace of Nike. The home of modern running, disruptive no-huddle college football and green living. But a lot of people didn’t realize, UO also happens to be an academic powerhouse. A top research university with a penchant for collaboration, being crazy interdisciplinary and finding answers in spite of obstacles. The challenge:  elevate recognition of the UO’s academic excellence and position it as one of the nation’s premier research universities.

It’s the birthplace of Nike. The home of modern running, disruptive no-huddle college football and green living. But a lot of people didn’t realize, UO also happens to be an academic powerhouse. A top research university with a penchant for collaboration, being crazy interdisciplinary and finding answers in spite of obstacles. The challenge:  elevate recognition of the UO’s academic excellence and position it as one of the nation’s premier research universities.

After hundreds of in-person interviews with students, alumni, professors, staff and administrators, we discovered what makes the UO different—what makes Ducks, Ducks. It’s something we called “Wonderlust.” A kind of compulsive curiosity. An insatiable desire to ask “what if…”—search, research, collaborate, and find better ways.

HOW International Design Awards
Advertising
2016

It all starts...
...with IF.

"We IF"

We launched with a spot that showed the world a side of the UO they’d never seen before. The :30 version debuted to over 28 million viewers on ESPN and an in-stadium audience of 92 thousand during the most viewed Rose Bowl game to date. Web traffic quadrupled. Visits to the academics information page doubled and 6x more traffic streamed from the UO homepage to the admission page over the previous year when the Ducks won the Alamo Bowl. And the new work catalyzed fresh momentum that lead to over 4 million additional media impressions.

CASE VIII Communications Awards
Grand Gold
Advertising Spots and Public Service Announcements
2016​

*The CASE Awards gauge the efficacy and excellence of work created specifically for the advancement/education community. Those who don’t work in or around the higher ed sector may not know about them, but they are a key source for validation and bragging rights each year. 

CASE Circle of Excellence Awards
Silver
PSAs and Commercial Spots
2015

Explore IF

The commercial drove viewers to a custom landing page below, where they could see the brand new brand in action, read a short manifesto and watch the extended version of the spot. An interactive timeline on the page allowed visitors to scan through every single visual in the spot shot-by-shot to reveal its purpose for being there along with more branded storytelling and deep links to related content on the main site.

CASE VIII Communications Awards
Silver
Individual Sub-site or Section
20165

CASE Circle of Excellence Awards
Silver
Individual Sub-site or Section
2015

UO in the Wild

The university doesn’t usually do much print or OOH advertising, but for the rare occasion of their brand relaunch they did both.

WE WAKE UP EVERY MORNING ASKING THE SAME QUESTION, WHAT IF…?  If drives us. If inspires us. It creates and defines us. We are leaders in sustainable sustainability. Lawyers who make the world cleaner. Architects who make it greener. Professors who teach better teaching. We’re dozens and dozens of Fulbright scholars and Guggenheim Fellows and people with Pulitzers. Our feet planted in the humanities and our hands at work in the lab, we teach each other to think critically and live ethically. We reimagine the field of special education with zebrafish research. We rewrite the rules of climatology with journalism students. Because interdisciplinary is our way of life. So is breathing fresh air and seeing stars at night. And walking among trees. They’re everywhere here. By the way, “here” is Eugene. Yes, Oregon. Where our community of curious collaborators searches and finds new ways, together. Driven by the insatiable desire to know what we don’t know. We if. At the University of Oregon. UOREGON.EDU

A New Point-Of-Viewbook

Completely rewritten and redesigned from the ground up to make a powerful first impression. This seminal piece defined and informed the copy tone and design language for the entire brand moving forward. Today, the UO viewbook is being translated into in 11 languages, including: Chinese, Vietnamese and Arabic.   

Social love
Social love

The Search for Curiosity

We wanted to attract a specific kind of student—the bright, compulsively curious kind. So we sent 19,700 of them a very unusual search piece that we called the “Answer Pack.” A deck of playing cards that displayed a different puzzling answer to an unknown question or UO attribute on each. Students were instructed to Google the answers IF they were curious. And when they did, we made sure the top search hits always lead to a page, usually on the brand site, that provided the question and context they were looking for.

On each custom card, an answer.
And all answers lead back to the UO.
But, on one card, an invitation.
The love was real.

Plant Your Flag

This ultra targeted yield kit was sent to 14,500 admitted students to inspire them to take the critical final step—enroll. Inside, they found a Class of 2019 flag and a personalized poster that instructed them to visit their very own custom URL where they could virtually “plant their flag” in a quad at the UO, officially become a Duck, and share the experience through social streams.

CASE VIII Communications Awards
Bronze
Student Recruitment Sub-site or Section
2015

Flag front: student class year.
Flag back: UO founded message
Poster with student name URL and call-to-action.
Landing page with custom congratulations message.
Drag your personalized flag to plant it in the UO quad with others.
Interactive map shows where other Ducks are coming from.

A Duck Like These

This yield piece was created to speak directly to select admitted students, and their parents, who were still on the fence. Featuring Ducks from a wide range of disciplines, one to thirty years after graduating, the success stories outlined the paths they took to their current careers and assured that a UO degree, built on a solid liberal arts foundation, fully prepares you for life after college.

CASE VIII Communications Awards
Silver
Recruitment Brochures, Direct-Mail and Event Materials
2015

Common Scents For Alumni

We noticed something while we soaked in the atmosphere around the UO. The place smelled. In a good way. In town, on campus, the air was filled with all kinds of powerful olfactory triggers. This gave us the idea to create a line of custom scented products that could remind alumni of their time at the UO and encourage them re-engage. On the back of each, copy vividly explained the specific scent and a reported a little nugget of recent UO excellence. 

The Good News Pizza Box

Track Town Pizza is more than just an iconic pizza joint right across the street from the UO. It’s a social epicenter. Everyone goes there. Everyone orders from there. It’s where the public and Duck culture collide. So we partnered with them and turned their pizza boxes into an in-your-face way to blast out recent news about how the UO is making an impact locally—and everywhere. 

CASE VIII Communications Awards
Silver
Branding and Image Development/Identity Programs and Projects
2015

ECD tammo walter  | MANAGING DIRECTOR megan pomplas  | CD  david levy  |  ACD/LEAD CW christian sternal  |  LEAD DESIGNER harilios  skortis  |  ACD/CW elliot Leboeuf  |  DESIGNER ben biondo  |  ACCOUNT DIRECTOR  isaac bodenhamer  |  ACCOUNT SUPERVISOR jeremy groff  |  ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE scott andreen  |  DIRECTOR of INTERACTIVE ryan blain  |  CD/BROADCAST/DIRECTOR konstantinos psimaris  |  ACD/EDITOR max paollucci  |  EXECUTIVE PRODUCER tom ammon  |  PRINT PRODUCER beth julian  |  PROJECT MGR alison carter | PHOTOGRAPHERS boone speed, bailey speed, clayton hauck, boone rodriguez, steve babuljak

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