Background
SAE Institute (The School of Audio Engineering) is the world's leading and largest dedicated school of media arts and sciences. Founded in 1976, the Institute operates more than 30 campuses in 15 countries on four continents and educates more than 12,000 students annually through accredited degree and diploma programs in audio technology, recording arts, multimedia production, and the music business.

Challenge
While SAE Institute was indisputably the largest educational enterprise of its kind, its awareness level within the United States remained largely invisible through the dawn of the new millennium. The school regularly took a back seat to its smaller competitor, Full Sail University, whom Griffin represented in the mid-1990s. SAE was about to initiate a major United States expansion program with the opening of new campuses in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Nashville, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

In 1999, SAE turned to Griffin for an integrated branding and communications program that would support the school's United States expansion program. The agency produced and implemented a dynamic consumer advertising, public relations, trade show, and special event program to both reintroduce SAE to the professional audio industry and introduce SAE to prospective students in each city targeted for development.

The agency leveraged the scale of SAE's international operations in a major communications effort promoting the fact that “the world's largest university of its kind was expanding to the United States.” Famous alumni were showcased in a series of media interviews. A national media tour of professional audio industry publications allowed senior SAE directors to present its vision of education in a way that generated cover story coverage in media that included Billboard, Pro Sound News, the AES Daily News, Audio Media, as well as education media like College Bound magazine, Business Nashville, and major metropolitan newspapers.

The agency designed a new trade show exhibit for SAE and introduced it at the 2000 AES Show in New York. A print consumer advertising campaign broke in publications like Guitar World, Musician, Mix, Electronic Musician. Finally, the agency coordinated local market promotion events that included the appearance of famous producers like Eddie Kramer.