Up Against Budweiser

Standing out while not appearing amateurish can be a tricky balance for colleges, says Miriam Tillman, assistant vice president for marketing and creative services at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, which earned its first-ever tournament berth this season. On television, she notes, "you're competing with Budweiser and other professionally produced spots."

Pictures abound in the splashy new 30-second spot that UMBC began running last fall, but it, too, has a nontraditional feel, with dozens of floating captions- "Interned at Alvin Ailey," with a shot of a dancer; "75 Percent of Freshmen Live on Campus," with a shot of students playing volleyball-and animated maps designed to quickly convey that the campus is near Washington.

"We really wanted to convey a sense of place," to change perceptions of the university as a commuter institution, says Ms. Tillman.

The commercial, which an advertising agency produced for $85,000, has no narration. "We didn't want to distract from the visual," says Ms. Tillman. "The idea was to intrigue."

The agency and university officials spent weeks sketching out the scenes and debating how many factoids and phrases they could jam into the spot without going too far.

Still, one of the most interesting elements was unscripted. While the crew was shooting the closing scene, with a group of students and professors representing the requisite mix of ages, races, and sexes, a redheaded student walked past, wearing a bright-yellow shirt and juggling balls. He was quickly drafted to fill out the final shot. It is a tableau in which his three juggling balls are the only things that move as "Learn More," the tagline for the university's broader marketing campaign, appears on the screen.

The redhead is identified in the ad as "Engineering Major & Fire Eater."