1.8 million possible tour paths. One that feels like yours.

The problem

Concordia's existing virtual tour was a clickable map with photos and captions. It was meant to introduce campus to people who couldn't visit. It didn't. For the population of prospective students who couldn't fly to Minnesota, the tour was supposed to be the moment of decision. The tool wasn't doing the work, and admissions could feel it.

The challenge

Recreate the in-person tour experience. Friendly guides, picturesque walks, personalized stops, the whole emotional payload, on a video pipeline that could barely handle a college dorm room WiFi connection in 2012. And do it for an audience whose attention spans were already dwindling and who would bounce in seven seconds if the first video buffered.

“1,860,480 possible paths. The audience just needed to feel like the one they took was made for them.”

My role

Creative director and lead Flash developer. In every meeting, every review, every late-night encoding session. Coordinated a 20-person cross-functional agency team. Led the pitch that sold the client on the branching-path concept. The big bet was that we could build 1.8 million unique paths through the school and make every one of them feel personal.

The process

Three problems. Humanity, personalization, and the technology, in that order. Worked with real campus tour guides and got them to bring their on-campus storytelling to the screen, which is a different muscle than tour-walking. Built personas that let prospective students choose tours weighted by what they cared about. Music students got music. Athletes got athletics. Pre-meds got the science labs. Then the technology problem. Found a CDN that could handle the scale, then spent the final weeks fine-tuning bit rates and frame rates so that the first frame of every clip loaded fast enough that nobody bounced.

Results

Launched for Minnesota Private College Week. 1,000+ daily visits at launch, from 50 states and 98 countries. 80%+ of users finished a full tour, which is the kind of completion rate streaming services would trade their algorithm for. Concordia landed its largest incoming freshman class in school history. For the agency, this was the single biggest creative contract of the year at $650K, and it launched a product line that brought in another $1.5M over the next two years.