Robert Gordon University
Undiscovered Aberdeen
A city written off as oil, gas and grey. We gave a generation a reason to look again, and turned civic pride into a seven-year high in applications.
31.2%
Causal uplift in branded search, isolated against a 36-month trend
170K
YouTube views, 70% of them watched on connected TV
7 yrs
Highest application volume across Scotland in seven years
The Challenge
Prospective students across Scotland were not rejecting Robert Gordon University. They were rejecting the idea of Aberdeen.
Oil, gas, granite, grey. A city people had made their mind up about without ever visiting it. No prospectus fixes that. No open day reaches far enough.
RGU needed the city's story to change before the university's story could. That meant shifting perception among Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and the Highlands, converting that shift into applications, and proving the connection between the two. On a budget under £50,000, with independent creative testing and a government-grade evaluation framework attached from day one.
If nobody knows about it,
that makes it yours to find.
The loudest voices talking Aberdeen down were Aberdonians. Decades of oil-town shorthand had been internalised by the very people who could most credibly sell the place, so any campaign aimed only at the central belt would be arguing against the city's own residents. We built for both audiences at once.
Young people are not looking for the best skyline. They are looking for discovery, authenticity and things worth photographing that nobody has photographed yet. Aberdeen has all of it. It had simply never been positioned as a place you find things, because it had always been positioned as a place you work.
What We Did
Four channels, each given a single job. Nothing ran because it was available.
Short-form video carried the discovery. TikTok, Meta and YouTube ran mobile-first films built around reveals rather than claims. The beach nobody knew was there. The cafe at the end of the lane. Every asset was designed to make a viewer say “that's Aberdeen?”
Out of home put the argument in front of the doubters. Roadside D6 Adshels, mall screens in the St James Centre, and digital boards in Dundee and outside Glasgow Central. We bought the commute and the shopping trip, hitting young audiences in the cities where the stereotype was strongest.
Creators supplied the proof. Local micro-influencers explored the city's hidden gems in real time, sharing independent eateries, cliff walks and community hubs with their own followers in their own voice. Peer-led storytelling did what no paid asset could.
Co-creation gave it legitimacy. Content was built with Visit Aberdeen, local businesses and city ambassadors, so the campaign reflected genuine local pride rather than a marketing department's version of it.
The Results
Every benchmark beaten, and then the measures RGU actually cares about.
Attention. YouTube content passed 170,000 views, with 70% watched on connected TV screens. That is not scroll-past reach. That is families watching a city make its case on the biggest screen in the house.
Intent. Traffic to destination-specific campaign pages surged, with time on site rising alongside it. People were not clicking and bouncing. They were reading.
Behaviour. We ran a Rubin causal inference model across 36 months of search volume for “RGU” and “RGU Aberdeen”, isolating the campaign period against the underlying trend. The lift attributable to the campaign was 31.2%. Not impressions. Not clicks. Demand.
Outcome. RGU reported record application levels following the campaign, with growth in business programmes and a seven-year high in applications across Scotland.
Sentiment. Qualitative feedback from students and residents came back in the language of rediscovery and civic pride. The emotional target was hit as squarely as the numerical one.