intentionally integrated

As an investment specialist, I’m generally involved in the set up of tactical campaigns and less in the weeds of platform-level activation. Budgets, audiences, projections, and channel mixes are more of my forte, but this week’s class assignment took things to the next level.

Our group was tasked with developing a paid social campaign for the client NACD looking to drive traffic to their Directorship Certification application. The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Directorship Certification signals a board director has demonstrated the skills and commitment required to serve in today’s boardroom environment. The assignment asked us to build a campaign in Meta Ads Manager and complete a creative brief explaining the strategy behind it. What looked simple on paper ended up requiring a bit more exploration once we actually opened the platform.

Starting with the audience

The first step was defining the audience. The prompt described the target broadly as “corporate directors,” which sounds clear enough but required us to do a little digging to define characteristics. Once we started exploring Ads Manager, it became easier to split that group into two segments.

To make the targeting more realistic, we also looked up a few NACD certification ambassadors on LinkedIn to see what their titles and backgrounds looked like. That helped us translate a general audience description into something we could actually target inside the platform.

Segment A: Current Board Directors

These were more experienced professionals who likely already sit on boards and may want to maintain or strengthen their credibility.

• Age: 45+
• Titles: CEO, Executive Director, Chairman, President, CMO
• Interests: leadership development, management, finance
• Platform focus: Facebook Feed

Segment B: Aspiring Board Members

This group felt more like mid-career executives who might be building toward a board role.

• Age: 35+
• Titles: Director, Managing Director
• Interests: governance, leadership, higher education
• Platform focus: Instagram

Working through the creative

After defining the segments, we started working on the ads.

For current directors, we designed a carousel of testimonials showing executives in boardroom or office settings. The idea was to lean into credibility and peer validation.

For aspiring board members, we created a single aspirational image of a director leading a boardroom discussion with the line “Prepare for the Boardroom.”

While reviewing the creative, we ended up revisiting parts of the targeting again. Certain interests made more sense once we saw how the message sounded, and some job titles felt less relevant. The process became a bit of back and forth between the audience settings and the creative.

Budget and platform choices

For the exercise we worked with a $100 budget and a one-week campaign flight. We scheduled ads during weekday mornings and lunchtime hours, when professionals might realistically scroll through their feeds.

The budget split was:

• 60% toward current board directors
• 40% toward aspiring board members

The thinking was that current directors might be more likely to take action quickly, while the aspiring audience might be earlier in the awareness stage.

One thing our group kept coming back to, though, was the platform itself. Corporate directors are a fairly specific professional audience. In a real campaign, LinkedIn would likely be the more natural environment since people are already there thinking about their careers and professional credentials.

A quick reflection

The assignment moved fairly quickly overall. Filling out the strategy document was straightforward, but creating the ads took a little longer, especially once we decided to build the testimonial carousel.

More than anything, the exercise was helpful simply because we had to open the platform and work through the options ourselves. Seeing the available targeting, placements, and formats made the planning process feel more concrete than it does when everything stays theoretical.

It also made it clear how much the platform itself influences the decisions you end up making along the way.