Comprehensive Advertising and Marketing Services

The vendor is required to provide a full-service advertising and marketing contractor to create and execute advertising campaigns and perform marketing activities to increase new enrollments and grow contributions to existing accounts.
- Strategic consulting and account services:
• Provide ongoing strategic advice to the agency to enhance planned initiatives, identify new opportunities, assess results and recommend changes based on data, as well as participate in agency planning meetings as needed or upon agency request. day-to-day responsibilities include account management, client contact, meeting coordination, work status reporting, and budget monitoring.
• The contractor must participate in quarterly executive-level conferences with the agency to review results to date, develop future strategies, campaigns, personnel assignments, etc.
• Participate in full team sessions, held twice a year, to review the approved strategic plan, creative materials, future campaigns, timelines, budget, and results to date.
- Strategic marketing plan development:
• Conduct strategy sessions and lead the development of a biennial strategic marketing plan for meeting the agency’s needs and goals and to refine and adjust existing plans.
• The marketing plan must adhere to and enhance the existing college advantage brand and be based on industry research.
• The marketing plan must identify the target audience; detail obtainable key goals and major objectives; detail strategies and tactics to reach audiences; list recommendations for messaging; propose timelines, baseline benchmarks, and set appropriate measurements. 
• The contractor must identify relevant resources and recommend a blend of communication channels, print and media, to reach selected audiences.
• Include data from the contractor’s research and the processes that were used to gather, analyze, and interpret the data, and guide the remainder of the work to be completed.
- Media planning, managing, and buying services:
• The contractor must implement general, public awareness-building advertising campaigns during the following college savings campaign season.
• The contractor must monitor and track advertising logs against billings to identify and recoup credits that can be otherwise redirected and create deliverables related to the agency’s partnerships, such as professional sports organizations, universities and their rights holders, libraries, museums, statewide organizations and various non-profit organizations.
- Media creative services:
• The contractor must design and produce creative materials based on the approved media plan. 
• The creative materials must generate a strong emotional response, reinforce brand positioning, and incorporate messaging and images designed to resonate with the target audiences. 
• Creative materials must support advertising on radio, broadcast, digital, mobile, SEM, and print collaterals. 
• The contractor must develop each campaign with the focus on driving new account openings, while residual messaging must remind current account owners to contribute to their existing accounts, thus growing the agency’s new revenue overall. 
- Research and analytics:
• The contractor must utilize research studies to make strategic decisions and measure advertising benchmarks and results of campaigns. 
• Conduct one baseline statewide awareness study to serve as a benchmark, measure the past year’s campaigns performances, and guide future strategies
• The agency may request additional surveys or market research, as needed, and the contractor must provide such surveys upon agency request.
- Video production:
• The contractor must recommend the strategy, create, produce, and help deploy up to six :30 second product education videos, for year-round usage. 
• The contractor must develop and produce three to four videos ranging from 6 to 30 seconds for each campaign directed to primary and secondary audiences. 
• The contractor must develop a multi-channel strategy for the deployment of videos to support new account openings and account owner contributions as well as general awareness.
- Public relations consulting
• Provide ongoing support to the agency’s public relations initiatives including press releases, story pitches, creation and distribution of multimedia news releases, and editorial pitches to promote college advantage, and position the agency and its executive director as a 529 thought leader to state and targeted national media outlets.
• Provide strategic advice on social media messaging and linkages of digital communications to the overall advertising and marketing efforts.
- Contract Period/Term: 2 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: June 10, 2025