Company: American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), Durham, NC
Entry Submitted By: Capstrat
Company Description: The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is the preferred professional organization for CPAs across the country. It strengthens the profession and delivers great perks, conferences and education to its members.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Campaign of the Year - Accounting

Nomination Title: ThisWayToCPA

Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 500 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign:

In 2011, our challenge was to build awareness for ThisWayToCPA, the AICPA’s initiative geared towards college students, and position it as the most reliable resource for future CPAs. By attracting new visitors, we would increase the pipeline of students educated about the profession and encourage college accounting majors to invest in becoming CPAs—and ultimately, dues-paying members of the AICPA.

Planning

How would we do it? In a word: Wisdom. Short, sometimes snarky bits of advice became the source and ultimate guide to get college students (smart but often ill-informed student) from here to there (parent-pleasing, money-making CPA).

The hub of Wisdom is ThisWayToCPA.com –a site dedicated to all the information students need to navigate their way to CPAhood, including a new insight—or Wisdom--every day. While students are undoubtedly connected to the web, we knew we also needed to do more and meet them where they were: on campus, in the classroom, within existing professional organizations and on social media.

Execution

To reach students, we launched the AICPA Accounting Competition, complete with a cash prize. Each year we change the competition topic to keep students engaged and show them the breadth of the profession. In 2011, we focused on fraud and forensics.

To promote the competition on campus, we relied on competition-related Wisdom. We partnered with professors, and sent them a kit with everything they needed to share the competition with students. We used posters in and around accounting classrooms, on-campus giveaways (such as Wisdom-wrapped Ramen) and communications (direct mailings and participant tailored emails) to reach existing and potential ThisWayToCPA members. We used social media to spread the word virally, supplemented by Facebook and LinkedIn ads.

In addition to the competition, we tapped professional organizations that already have a loyal group of student followers, such as Beta Alpha Psi and the American Accounting Association, to spread the word about ThisWayToCPA.com. We included information in student organization publications and also through presentations, panel discussions and booths at conferences.

Other marketing activities included a quarterly e-newsletter to registered users, blogger outreach and media pitching.

Evaluation

Through our promotional efforts, the 2011 AICPA Accounting Competition:
•Recruited 216 teams (goal was 125)
•Received 122 submissions—a 56 percent completion rate (goal was 55 percent)
•Drew participants from over 150 universities (goal was 70)
•More than doubled the number of professors who recruited teams (31 teams with advisors in 2010; 74 with advisors in 2011)

In addition, we drove increased traffic to ThisWayToCPA.com throughout the competition. During the video voting round of the competition, we experienced all-time record daily traffic with more than 700 daily visits, more than 80 percent of which came from new visitors. During public voting, we received 8,666 video views on YouTube and 13,956 votes on the competition landing page.

The biggest win of all was the 2,161 new ThisWayToCPA Community signups. These are students who are now on the path to become a CPA and are relying on the AICPA to help them on their way. That’s a lot of new recruits to the AICPA pipeline.

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Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 100 words):

Scott Moore is the Senior Manager of College & University Initiatives at the AICPA. Scott led the planning and development of the ThisWayToCPA brand, website and forthcoming mobile app. Under Scott’s leadership and through marketing tactics developed and implemented by the AICPA and Capstrat, ThisWayToCPA.com generated more 25,000 registered account users on the site’s community in one year. The site is well on its way to becoming the go-to resource for students seeking a career as a CPA. Scott has also helped the AICPA and ThisWayToCPA build meaningful relationships with organizations like the American Accounting Association, National Association of Black Accountants, National Business Educators Association and state CPA societies to position the CPA profession for excellence.