Despite the complexity of the problems facing under-served students, the solutions that are emerging to help those kids (and sometimes their parents) get to college – and succeed once they've arrived – can be as simple as the lunchtime talks between Maggy Lewis and Saleisa Lampkin. Or as absurd as a talking donkey.

The animated equine – star of a college-access ad campaign in Maine – can be traced to marketing executive John Coleman. Coleman, president and CEO of VIA Group LLC, admits that higher-education policy and college access weren't exactly his forte when state officials approached his Portland-based firm about developing a marketing campaign to convince more Maine students to consider college.

"We had no direct experience with education," says Coleman, whose firm's clients include The New York Times, Sun Microsystems and Victoria's Secret. "Some of us, in fact, barely got out of school." Undeterred, Coleman and his VIA team jumped at the opportunity presented byofficials from the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Compact for Higher Education and the Senator George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute.

The catalyst for the campaign – funded by a National Governors Association grant – was the data: Of 100 Maine students who begin the ninth grade, 78 will graduate from high school within six years. When students who subsequently obtain a GED are added to the mix, Maine's high school completion rate tops an acceptable 90 percent. From there, the decline begins. State education statistics show that only 39 of those 78 graduates will begin college during the same year they leave high school. Of those, only 25 will earn a college degree, the lowest completion rate in New England.

To Colleen Quint, executive director of the Mitchell Institute, numbers tell only half of the story: "Maine's economic engine is evolving. It used to be a high school graduate could walk into a mill with a diploma, get a job and keep it 40 years. That's not the case anymore. The mills aren't hiring as much, and the lobster industry is changing, too. We're also seeing a lot of kids who are keenly aware of how hard their parents had to work to scrape things together."

From the outset, Quint knew Maine needed a bold campaign to reach those kids – bold with a capital "B." VIA did its homework and concluded that most college access campaigns target high school seniors. In the process, they miss indecisive younger students who need most to hear the message.

"It was all about money, and it was all about seniors," Coleman recalls of the research. "But if you weren't on the (college) track by that point, then you probably weren't going." VIA returned to the development team and proposed a campaign targeting middle school students. (As it happened, officials at Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation for Education, in discussions last year leading to what became the KnowHow2GO campaign, were almost simultaneously drawing the same conclusion.)

For the idea to work in Maine, Coleman suggested, a group of young adults and middle-aged professionals – many of them state officials – would have to do something they hadn't done for decades: Think like kids.

It was, just as Quint hoped, a bold concept – and it proved to be a tough sell for state bureaucrats and members of the education establishment. Many were more accustomed to the traditional recruiting methods involving brightlycolored brochures, guidance counselors and senior-year visits by admissions officers.

"They didn't see it as a problem that could be solved by outside thinking," says Norm Higgins, a state education department consultant. Still, the team decided it needed a social marketing campaign that could pique the interest of middle school students and somehow hold their attention long enough to impart some serious information. With that, the buzzword went from "bold" to "fun."

VIA tested a handful of themes with target audiences. One demolished the notion that college is only for rich kids; another emphasized the social side of college (that one, suffice it to say, didn't play well with teachers); a third played off the idea that kids should "be afraid, be very afraid" (of the consequences of not attending college).

The marketing group's initial offerings were thoughtful, sophisticated and provocative... and they bombed. "The kids hated the first ideas," recalls Jason Wright, a VIA client specialist. "They told us (the ads) were stupid and that they didn't say anything to them."

The team went back to square one. Constrained by a budget that included no more margin for error, they forced themselves to adopt a middle school mind-set. Thoughtful, sophisticated and provocative went out the window. Goofy came in. The focus groups lapped it up, and "Kick Start – Getting Kids College Ready" was born.

"Humor," says Quint, "completely worked." Not just any humor; middle school humor in the form of a deadpan donkey who welcomes visitors to www.kickstartmaine.com. He's called "Norm," a name that won out over "Henry," the team's original choice. "The moral of the story," Higgins quips, "is never miss a meeting."