Case Study
Rutgers School of Health Professions
The Project
The Rutgers School of Health Professions (SHP) partnered with Bristlecone Solutions (BCS) around a meaningful opportunity.
As the largest and most comprehensive health professions school in the nation, SHP already had a real strength. What it wanted was a clearer, more coordinated way for prospective students, peers, and stakeholders across Rutgers to find that strength, trust it, and connect with it at the moments that shape decisions.
BCS was brought in to help build that system. We partnered with SHP to develop the strategy, planning, and execution support needed to drive new student applicants across SHP's suite of programs while straightening the school's broader visibility and reputation.
Over time, the work became about making SHP easier to discover, easier to understand, and easier to engage in ways that support both reputation and enrollment.
Objectives
- Bring more prospective students into the application funnel.
- Increase SHP's visibility and reputation within Rutgers and among external peer organizations.
- Build a cross-platform communications ecosystem that nurtures prospective students through sustained engagement.
- Support organizational traction by making SHP's value easier to see, easier to understand, and easier to act on.
32% Increase
Applications increased over 32 percent in the academic year since our work began.
This was not the result of a single campaign. It reflected a stronger system for helping prospective students discover SHP, understand its value, and continue moving toward application.
2.2MM Monthly Impressions
A target audience of Rutgers undergraduate students engaged with SHP content millions of times each month as they moved across campus.
Why it mattered was not just scale. It meant SHP was becoming more visible in everyday environments where awareness and familiarity begin to build.
664.2% Increase in Social Reach
Social reach increased 664.2 percent, with engagement rates rising by multiple orders of magnitude.
This signaled more than stronger channel performance. It showed that SHP's presence was becoming more consistent, more visible, and more able to earn attention across the platforms where people research, compare, and form impressions.
27% Increase in Captured Interest
Prospective students researching programs increased 27% as SHP became easier to find.
That matters because strong enrollment outcomes depend in part on being discovered when people are actively looking for answers. Search visibility put SHP in front of prospective students at exactly the right moment.
The Bristlecone Experience
BCS partnered closely with SHP and operated as central team members alongside internal staff. The first priority was to build a shared strategy for success and a detailed plan that created coordination, accountability, and clearer alignment across SHP and its broader supplier network.
From there, the work focused on strengthening the conditions that drive both reputation and enrollment.
We helped make SHP easier to discover, easier to trust, and more present among the people considering it. That core work required ongoing partnership with enrollment management, program leadership, and administrative teams.
Expanding SHP's presence across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Launching environmental advertising on campus buses, a first for SHP.
Improving search visibility and SEO so prospective students could find SHP more easily when researching programs.
Doubling event registration from Fall 2023 to Spring 2025, showing that coordinated campaigns were expanding reach and visibility.
Sustaining continuous outreach through personalized and targeted content that helped foster ongoing interest.
Building the tools, planning rhythms, and team coordination needed to support this work with more consistency over time.
A Key Consideration
One of the clearest learnings from this work was that requests for more "visibility" do not always mean more ads.
Often, they mean helping people see what is valuable, understand what is distinctive, and get clear answers to the questions shaping their decisions.
That realization changed the nature of the work. It pushed the partnership beyond visibility alone and toward better support at the moments where opinions are formed and choices are made.
The Services
- Strategy Design and Development
- Executive Marketing Consulting
- Project Management
- Media Planning and Buying
- Design Services
- Copywriting
- Multimedia Storytelling
- Data Visualization and Analytics
- Program Experience Design
- Content Systems and Faculty Visibility
Where The Work Is Headed
The next chapter of the work is not simply about doing more of the same. It is about making more of SHP's real strengths visible and creating more program-specific support informed by evidence.
That includes platforming faculty expertise, student outcomes, and program strengths more clearly. It includes expanding content systems that make important research and community impact easier to access. It also includes extending high-quality program-level video and content experiences that were previously difficult to produce at scale.
In that sense, the work is evolving from broad visibility into a more complete system for helping people connect with the value of SHP at both the school and program levels.
You have done a fantastic job as a BCS team and partner to SHP.
Want to see more?
Download the full Case Study to go in depth on our work with Rutgers School of Health Professions
Rutgers Brain Health Institute
