ADOWA had a brand-new residence to fill and a hard intake deadline. We ran a paid media campaign across Meta to reach students at scale and drive applications, supplemented by the meme pages inside the student communities. The first residence filled, ahead of the intake.
A new residence to fill, on a deadline
ADOWA Living had a brand-new student development to fill and a hard deadline to do it by: the 2022 academic-year application intake, coming straight at them, with no channels and no audience yet in place. They came to ThinkStory, a paid media agency in Johannesburg, with a clear job: kickstart the brand and fill that first residence before the intake closed. This was a performance problem, and it called for a campaign built to reach a lot of the right students quickly and turn that reach into applications.
A brand-new residence to fill, with a fixed intake deadline
No existing channels or audience to launch from
A student market that had to be reached at scale, fast
A paid media campaign, built to convert
The engine of the work was paid media. We built ADOWA's presence on Instagram and Facebook and ran paid campaigns through Meta, targeting students and pointing everything at one action: applying for a room. Every rand was aimed at applications, not just impressions. Paid media let us reach the right students at the scale and speed the deadline demanded, testing what landed and putting budget behind what worked. It is the fastest way to put a brand-new residence in front of the exact people who need it, and that is what the deadline called for.
Supplemented by the student meme pages
Paid reach gets you seen; trust gets you chosen, so we supplemented the campaign with an influencer layer. We found the meme pages living inside the different student communities and partnered with the accounts students already followed and found funny. A residence recommended through a page a student already likes lands differently from the same message in a feed, and that credibility gave the paid campaign more to work with. Paid media carried the reach; the meme pages made it feel like a tip from a friend.
Supplementing paid media with the student meme pages
The results speak for the approach
Together, the paid campaign and its influencer layer did exactly what they were built to do. The work reached over 90,000 accounts in a few months and drove over 700,000 website visits across three months, and the applications came in ahead of the intake. Most importantly, ADOWA's first residence filled, one hundred per cent of the job they came to us for. Numbers like those are ADOWA's own, from an account that started with nothing. The residents and the wider audience even began posting and sharing themselves, so the campaign kept working beyond the spend behind it.
A playbook for the next intake
What started as filling one residence on a deadline became a repeatable playbook for the next intake. The paid media approach, sharpened by the meme-page partnerships, is something ADOWA can run again for the next building and the next deadline, rather than a one-off push. That is the real win: not one full building, but a way to fill the next one too. The channels we built stay in place, the learnings carry over, and the next campaign starts from something rather than from an empty account.
Common questions.
How do you market student accommodation on social media in South Africa?
Lead with paid media, then add trust. For ADOWA Living we ran paid campaigns across Meta to reach students at scale, supplemented by the meme pages inside the student communities, which together reached over 90,000 accounts and drove over 700,000 website visits in three months.
How do paid media and influencers work together?
Paid media delivers the reach; influencers deliver the trust. For ADOWA the paid campaign put the residence in front of the right students at scale, and partnering with the meme pages students already followed made that message land as a recommendation rather than a banner.
How do you build a social audience from zero before a deadline?
Put paid media behind the launch. We built ADOWA's channels and ran paid campaigns across Meta, supplemented by the student meme pages, so applications came in ahead of the 2022 intake despite starting with no followers.
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