The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate AthleticsFaculty Summit
on Intercollegiate Athletics - October 15, 2007

An E-card Success Story

Widmeyer recently developed a series of e-cards and online advertisements on behalf of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics to promote the group’s Faculty Summit on Intercollegiate Athletics. The event, which is a forum for discussion about university faculty members’ attitudes toward issues affecting academics and athletics, was hosted in Washington, DC on October 15, 2007. The e-cards and advertisements were aimed at a broad set of audiences, including media, university faculty, athletics officials, and a large community of higher education thought leaders. Widmeyer’s design and advertising group created the e-cards to help generate awareness about the event and drive key audiences to attend.


Results

The e-cards were distributed to the higher education community through various channels in September, 2007. The Summit saw fantastic attendance that surpassed expectations, with higher education leaders from across the country – the majority of whom learned of the Summit through the e-card - making the trip to be in attendance. Even more were able to view the proceedings online via a free live Webcast. As the e-card was distributed, average daily traffic to the Knight Commission Web site increased as much as 191 percent in a single day. In the days following the Webcast, daily traffic to the site quadrupled compared to the daily average.