UofL has launched a new advertising campaign designed to build image and awareness, particularly in Kentucky communities outside the Louisville market. Like many recent campaigns, it focuses on some of UofL’s strengths, including high ACT scores, national rankings and cutting-edge research.

Here’s the catch: The messages are delivered in front of a royal blue background, the color often associated with the Commonwealth and with UofL’s chief athletic rival, the University of Kentucky.

“The campaign is designed to spill red into the traditional UK and Commonwealth blue, reminding audiences that there is more than one university in Kentucky, said Mary Griffith, senior associate vice president for communications and marketing. ”It’s an incursion campaign coming right at the time UK and UofL play out their traditional sports rivalry.”

Griffith noted that the campaign coincides with UofL President James Ramsey’s statewide fall outreach campaign, in which the president visits communities throughout Kentucky.

Outreach is an effective one-on-one tool, she said, and the campaign is designed to complement that effort.

Target audiences are central Kentucky alumni, current students and potential recruits, and influencers. A smaller print campaign directed at veterans and their education needs is running in Elizabethtown and Fort Knox newspapers.

Creative Alliance, a Louisville advertising agency, helped UofL develop the campaign.