Agencies are deepening their expertise in higher education—here are the opportunities and challenges
AdAge | April 8, 2026
by Lindsay Rittenhouse
Ad agencies are finding that higher education is a sector ripe for opportunity in a competitive new business environment. Colleges and universities are navigating market challenges, including increasing scrutiny over their value as tuition costs climb and an overall decline in the population of college-aged students in the U.S. In response, they’re turning to agencies for help in crafting new strategies that will stand out amongst their competitors.
Agencies carving out niches in this space are competing for these accounts as higher ed marketers increasingly issue RFPs, according to 17 people interviewed for this story, including agency and marketing executives.
“There’s lots of opportunity,” said Adam VonOhlen, executive VP and chief creative officer of TwoxFour, which recently started a practice dedicated to the higher education space that serves university clients including the University of North Carolina, Duke, Harvard, Caltech, DePaul, Yale and more. “If you can unlock how to be successful in the space, it leads to new business,” he said.
Below is a guide outlining how agencies are expanding their remits in this space, including the pros, cons and challenges of working with higher education clients.
Education is a conflict-free zone
Chris Connelly, associate VP of marketing and analytics for Mercy University in New York, appointed Familiar Creatures as its agency of record in 2019. Familiar Creatures has worked with some other higher education clients but it’s not the agency’s specialty, and that was enticing for Connelly, who joined Mercy after working on marketing at Benjamin Moore & Co.
Connelly’s mission has been to create breakthrough campaigns for Mercy University and signing “a top-tier creative shop like Familiar Creatures was really important,” he said.
If you are an agency seeking opportunities in this space, there are some things to consider. For one, the average higher education marketing budget ranges between $200,000 and $3 million, according to Romaniuk. And layers of bureaucracy tend to result in delays in getting campaign approvals.
VonOhlen said TwoxFour’s strategy there has been getting in front of a university’s various stakeholders at the beginning to find commonalities they can then craft campaigns around. “Getting that singular message up front is what allows us to sell the work in without a lot of subjective debate,” he said.
Considering such challenges, one might wonder why an agency would go after such a client. Justin Bajan, co-founder of Familiar Creatures, said that working with Mercy University has pushed the agency outside its comfort zone, and that’s benefited clients in other categories.
“It’s one of the hardest things we work on because we can’t be disingenuous,” Bajan said. “You can’t rely on constructs, hacks and shortcuts to be truthful and soulful. You have to really go for the heart—and at the same time not be smarmy.”
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