Title	WALK TO THE FUTURE
Brand	UNIVERSITY OF ANTWERP
Product/Service	UNIVERSITY
Category	A02. AR
Entrant	WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Antwerp, BELGIUM
Idea Creation	WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Antwerp, BELGIUM
Media Placement	WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Antwerp, BELGIUM
Media Placement 2	WAVEMAKER Waasmunster, BELGIUM
Production	WUNDERMAN THOMPSON Antwerp, BELGIUM
Production 2	BV PLAYAR Tessenderlo, BELGIUM
Production 3	RABBITHOLE Antwerp, BELGIUM

Name	Company	Position
Pieter Staes	Wunderman Thompson	Creative Director
Manuel Ostyn	Wunderman Thompson	Creative Director
Tomas Van Loon	Creation	Creative
Patrick Vermeylen	Wunderman Thompson	Creative
Matthias Berghmans	Wunderman Thompson	3D designer
Bas Vaerewyck	Wunderman Thompson	3D designer
Kenny Smet	Wunderman Thompson	Designer
Ynje Degaeve	Wunderman Thompson	Designer
Andreas De Ridder	Wunderman Thompson	Motion Design & Editing
Theo Hagtingius	Wunderman Thompson	DTP
Jan-Bart Debruyne	Wunderman Thompson	DTP
Lynn Pinsart	Wunderman Thompson	copywriter
Tine Sinnaeve	Wunderman Thompson	copywriter
Joeri Quinet	Wunderman Thompson	copywriter
Evert Van den Broeck	Wunderman Thompson	Strategy Planner
Dimitri De Lauw	Wunderman Thompson	Strategic Director
Caroline Bogaerts	Wunderman Thompson	Performance Marketer
Basel Alakkad	Wunderman Thompson	Performance marketer
Stephanie Katic	Wunderman Thompson	Account Director
Valérie Rosiers	Wunderman Thompson	Account Manager
Ingeborg Van Hoof	Wunderman Thompson	Agency Producer
Thijs Ter Haar	Wunderman Thompson	UX/ UI Designer
Jesse Debruyckere	Wunderman Thompson	Developer
Arnout Deville	Wunderman Thompson	Chief Thechnology Officer
Bruno Dejonghe	Playar Studio	founder & executive producer
Bram Van Rompaey	RabbitHole Animation	RabbitHole Animation

Background

Every year, all universities organize an open day. A perfect moment to invite people to campus and convince them it’s the perfect place to come and get their academic degree. UAntwerp always takes this opportunity to show they are a creative and innovative university. But at the same time these open days are a great way to highlight another benefit of UAntwerp: their location. As Antwerp is one of the most vibrant cities in the country and a perfect place live as a student. But this year, all universities had to cancel their open days due to corona. So, how could we show future students all these benefits without them visiting our campus?

Describe the creative idea

In times of corona, one of the last things people were still allowed to do, is go for a walk. So, when all universities had to cancel their open days, UAntwerp turned theirs into a city walk. We created a tour map on mobile that people could follow to discover the city, including five unique billboards along the route. Each billboard had future news headlines adapted to their specific city hotspot. After scanning the billboards with their smart phone people brought this news to life in augmented reality, while they discovered the best spots around campus. Our billboards showed how today’s students can change the world of tomorrow. After scanning, every billboard also turned into an invitation to our e-info day where they could enroll at UAntwerp, the first step in turning this augmented reality into actual reality.

Describe the strategy

UAntwerp is a creative and innovative university. This vision translates in their huge amount of scientific research and in the way they teach their classes. Because they want students to use knowledge as a tool to ‘help shape the future’, which is the university’s baseline. We wanted to bring this baseline to life and show the next generation of students how they can actually have a huge impact on the world of tomorrow. And when our open day got canceled due to corona, the university decided to organize an e-info day. But this alone isn’t enough to inspire the students of tomorrow. So, we wanted to show them what UAntwerp stands for while showing them that Antwerp is also a very nice place to live as a student. All this, to convince them to visit for our e-info day where they could enroll at UAntwerp.

Describe the execution

To bring the future to life, we used augmented reality. Not just as a filter, but as a direct link between the world of tomorrow and today’s reality. Because every scan brought to life an inspiring future that was linked to that exact location. For instance, next to city hall where couples get married, we put a billboard with the headline: Belgium recognizes marriage with androids. When scanning the billboard people could pose next to an android bride in front of city hall. Quite intriguing ‘news’ for potential law students, product development students, ICT potentials, … To get people moving, influencers took the walk and shared their experience on social media. On the other hand, we put up posters in high schools. By scanning the poster, students brought to life a polar bear in AR who announced the walk while giving them a teasing preview.

List the results

Within a week, the billboards were scanned more than 1.700 times. This got people talking. With more than 8,5 million media impressions, we reached over 3.5 million people, of which 15% was organic. The campaign got PR coverage in Belgium’s most important newspapers and perception of the university as being innovative grew with 8%. During the campaign, online searches for UAntwerp increased with 111%. All resulting in 19% more leads to the e-info day and 12,5% more university entries compared to the previous year.