Simmons Centennial
Simmons College celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary in 1999-2000. I worked closely with Becka Yturregui, the Centennial Marketing Coordinator at the time (she is now Senior Director of Print Publications), starting in mid-1998 to create an online identity and communications strategy to engage with students and alums throughout the year via the Web. This project was particularly important, as the Centennial celebrations would be followed by Simmons' largest campaign appeal in its history. A compelling website was a must.
Looking back, it's interesting to me how much this site resembled a blog, of sorts: it was organized around a calendar of events, each with its own microsite, that, once past, would also serve as an archival record of the event. We incorporated the subscription model available back then (email, RSS was still a ways off). A key challenge, then, was to create a consistent, but flexible visual identity system, that could accommodate diverse content, from park dedications, photo albums, to streaming video, and which would drive participation.
The Centennial website presented an opportunity for us to achieve a number of "firsts". This was the first time we delivered online video, including long, streaming segments. This capability was extremely useful, especially since our centennial year was featured on Channel 5's "Chronicle" show. We used the same infrastructure to deliver videos of our commencement and the dedication of "Centennial Park."
In addition, we really pushed email marketing. I created a list management system, which grew to accommodate a large, engaged audience. I designed and sent our first HTML emails, which were enthusiastically received, and which helped drive both attendance at events and use of the website, including the online forums and e-commerce shop. Lastly, this was the first time Simmons delivered a purely online course, when I agreed to teach a class of 25 alums how to build their own websites, which the College would host for free; we got over 400 people attempting to register in the first 24 hours!
