3 Marketing Takeaways from University of Maine’s “Life in the Pines” Video Series
By John Azoni, founder of Unveild— a video production company for higher education.
TL;DR:
UMaine's "Life in the Pines" series works because they let students go off script (unfiltered beats polished), they've stopped chasing view counts (three-minute forestry videos were never gonna go viral, and that's fine), and they package it as a series instead of a playlist (a "season" makes people want to stick around). Do those three things and students start coming to you instead of the other way around.
What would a student say if you weren't in the room?
That question has been stuck in my head since I watched University of Maine's "Life in the Pines" series. So here's what I think schools should do more of, less of, and differently — based on what UMaine's been doing right.
Do more of: letting students go off script
What if you handed a student a camera, told them to take a walk, and just let them riff?
That's exactly what UMaine does. Every episode pairs a normal sit-down interview with a solo "riff" session.
One student got on his one-wheel (an electric off-road skateboard thing) and rode around campus for 20 minutes straight, talking the entire time, while the crew stayed behind. That was where the bulk of the “interview” content came from.
A lot of schools can't stomach that kind of loss of control. It feels risky to hand a student a camera and just... let them go. But that's exactly why it works. The second a video feels unfiltered, it earns way more trust than the polished version ever could.
And the "unfiltered" part isn't just a vibe — it's a structural choice. UMaine pre-interviews every student before filming, specifically hunting for the three unique, identifiable details that make their story theirs. Sometimes that's an internship two and a half hours into the Maine woods. Sometimes it's a kid who traded a chocolate bar for a bike from a professor. You don't find that stuff by asking boring marketing questions. You find it by digging for gold, and then getting out of the way.
Do less of: chasing view counts
If your student story videos aren't getting a ton of views, don't panic. That's just what happens when you make content for a specific person at a specific point in their decision, instead of content built for the algorithm.
A three-minute story about a kid who studies forestry in rural Maine was never going to go viral. It's built for the prospective student who's already two schools deep into their research, loves trees, and is trying to figure out if this place could actually feel like home.
There aren't millions of those people in the world at this very moment. That would be weird if there were.
Your videos shouldn't be for everyone.
Here's the thing that made this click for me: UMaine's YouTube channel actually has a decent subscriber count — somewhere around 38-40,000. But almost none of those people are watching "Life in the Pines." They subscribed years ago for the university's extension program content — how to prune raspberry bushes, how to cook a lobster. Genuinely useful stuff with broad appeal that has nothing to do with recruiting students.
The student story series pulls a fraction of those views. And that's fine, because it's not doing the same job. It's not top-of-funnel awareness content. It's the thing a student watches when they're already halfway convinced and trying to get a real feel for the place before they visit. That's a completely different job than "get millions of eyeballs," and it should be measured differently.
Do differently: package it as a series, not a playlist
Calling something "Season 1, Episode 3" instead of just uploading it to a playlist changes how people engage with it. A playlist says here's some stuff, browse if you want. A season says there's more where this came from, and you're gonna want to stick around for it.
Don't just make marketing videos. Make a "thing." Give that thing a name. Make it into something students want to be a part of — just promise me that when you post about it, you won't say "we did a thing."
And the "wanting to be part of it" piece is real, not just a nice idea. Season 1 of "Life in the Pines," UMaine's team had to go find students — working with deans and faculty to identify good candidates, then pre-interviewing them to see if there was a story worth telling.
By Season 2, they didn't have to go looking anymore. They opened an Instagram call for submissions, and students came to them. Season 3, they upped the ask even further, having interested students submit a 60-second video of themselves answering a question, just to gauge how they'd feel on camera.
That's the flywheel you want. Not "how do we go find students willing to be filmed," but "how do we manage the line of students who want to be."
There's a Student retention angle here too that you shouldn’t overlook.
Patrick, the videographer on the project, mentioned that he almost transferred out of his own school freshman year — and one of the things that kept him there was watching that school's own video content. Students already on campus are watching this stuff. Seeing themselves, or their friends, or the version of their own experience they haven't fully articulated yet, reflected back at them. That's not nothing.
None of this requires a bigger budget than what you're already spending. It mostly requires giving up the instinct to control the message, and trusting that the real version is more persuasive than the polished one.
If you want to hear the full conversation with the team behind "Life in the Pines" — including the exact rig they use to get that walk-and-talk footage — check out the episode here.
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