The Ample and CourseSmart relationship began over a bit of branding, and then quickly grew into something more. CourseSmart is a San Francisco based company that provides over 9,000 eTextbook titles from the biggest and best publishers. Of course, when we met them it was closer to 3,000 titles. Which gave us a chance to grow with them. We continue to deliver great work, and they continue to reach out to us again and again.
Don’t feel like reading? Watch the overview video!
Concept 1. A better way to find a better textbook concentrated on evaluation.
Concept 2. A teaching resource for the resourceful asked them to consider a change.
Concept 3. 6,000+ textbooks in one convenient place. Your desktop, pushed ease of adoption and a green. message
Concept 4. Higher learning at a lower price, focused on students.
Our first project with CourseSmart involved figuring out who they needed to talk to and what they needed to say. We entered into a series of research programs that probed the minds of college professors – discovering what made them tick and what ticked them off. Among other things we tested multiple concept videos featuring potential looks and a voice over that spoke to the various features and benefits.
Marketing Tool Kit
After a direction was chosen, we created an entire deck that featured messaging and design specs to be used by industry partners. It assures that any communication about CourseSmart is consistent, no matter who creates it.
Making eTextbooks available on the Apple iPhone is no small feat, and grasping how it works requires more than a few words and images. Ample developed a webpage which features a carousel of iPhone comps to walk people through how it works. It also features a video which we wrote, designed and recorded to act similar to the iPhone TV spots. To top it off, an Apple-branded-button directs students to the App Store so they can gain access to their textbooks from the phone in their pocket.
The site provides CourseSmart with a great resource that didn’t just inform students, but also acted as a platform from which their PR firm could direct media in search of details. In that vein, CourseSmart made frequent use of the blog to keep students and media up-to-date. It also allowed them to add information to the site without needing to change the design or the main messaging.
iPhone Site. The video, carousel of images and text give students a choice in how they want to be informed.
The highly anticipated release of the Apple iPad means big things for CourseSmart. And Ample built a site to let people know about it. Taking what we already knew about CourseSmart, and what we could guess about the iPad, we developed a site before the 2010 Apple Keynote. Later, after watching Steve Jobs do his thing, we did ours. Which means we did some rewriting, a little redesigning and presto – we launched a site featuring how CourseSmart would work with the iPad. And we did it the day after the announcement was made.
Imagining the iPad
We created the video before the iPad existed. For that matter, we did it before it was really announced that it would exist. That being said, we weren’t too far off, and with a couple tweaks we were able to offer a nice glimpse of the future.
Concept Video.
We imagined, designed, wrote and recorded a video that was promptly embedded on the Wall Street Journal’s website.
