2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

D2L is a classic Canadian tale: a global success story most have never heard of. A leader in online learning with educational software used in schools and corporate training, D2L was founded on the belief that everyone deserves
high-quality education.

D2L faced a common marketing challenge. It’s core product — Brightspace — is better known than the company itself. As the company expands its offering with products under the D2L name, it needs to increase its corporate profile.

Their challenge was developing a B2B initiative to increase D2L’s profile as a leader in the minds of the education community.

Competing in over 40 countries, D2L engages those across academia, needing to persuade administrators who focus on costs. It must inspire educators as well as technology professionals.

They felt the way to distinguish D2L was through beliefs and values, not with a typical campaign. Since its inception, D2L’s been committed to personalized learning and believes how that is delivered needs to change. Exploring that led to their insight that students aren’t standardized. Their education shouldn’t be either.

Just as D2L brings innovation to the world of online learning, the strategy they built set aside traditional advertising in favour of something surprising: intellectual property in the form of industrial design.

To communicate the importance of personalized learning, they tackled one of the most one-sizefits-all relics of old-school learning — the standardized desk. The result was a provocative take on a core educational fixture that
no one’s ever questioned.

For all the changes technology has brought to education, one thing’s remained the same. The desk today’s students sit at is fundamentally no different than the desk their parents or grandparents used. With the Unstandardized Desk, D2L challenged everything about this ubiquitous component of learning.

Development began with input from real experts: teachers and students of all ages. They asked them to imagine the perfect desk, and encountered that everyone wanted something different.

Working with industrial designer Miles Keller, they developed multiple prototypes until a solution emerged. The Unstandardized Desk uses hinged panels made from Nordic wood — inspired by traditional school desks — that can be moved to create different shapes and ways of interacting.

The final design allows students to create their own vision of a desk to reflect how they learn. They made something that embodies D2L’s core belief in the transformative impact personalization can have on learning.

Rather than being a short-term sales driver, the Unstandardized Desk is a statement of D2L’s vision and a calling card that demonstrates the power of personalized learning to transform education. It’s also validates taking an unexpected approach to B2B communications.

A quantitative study with educators across North America showed that 87% said it helped them understand just how different learning styles can be, 93% said it helped them understand D2L’s vision for personalized learning, 80% felt it demonstrates D2L is a thought leader in education and 73% would visit the
D2L website for more information.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Creative Chairman: Zak Mroueh
Chief Creative Officer: Brian Murray
Creative Director/Copywriter: Jonah Flynn
Creative Director/Art Director: Michael Siegers
Account Team: Lisa Walton-Rixon, Erika Dafoe, Shauna McKenna
Strategy Director: Maxine Thomas
Client: D2L
Clients: David Demoe, John Baker
Industrial Design: Miles Keller, Dystil
Production: Zulubot
Senior Producer: Laura Dubcovsky
Content Producer: Colleen Allen
Executive Producer: Adam Palmer
Director: Jessie Posthumus
PR: Walker Sands
Media: D2L