A Boise State Marketing Agency of Record

In the spring of 2025, I saw a LinkedIn post from a former colleague mentioning that she was collecting proposals to be on the marketing team for Boise State University. She was their director of communications.

Now, I went to high school in Boise, but I went to college at THE University of Idaho. There’s always been a bit of a rivalry there because Vandals know we are the first land grant university in the state, and we have a lot of pride in that. We also know we could never best Boise State in sports.

But, over the years, I’ve softened about Boise State. Who cares where you went to school if you had a great experience? Naturally, I have a ton of friends who attended Boise State and, even as a person who lives in Edmonds, WA, I know a bunch of people who are sending their kids to school at Boise State—their kids’ choice.

I became especially intrigued by what Boise State was working on when I started attending the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference two summers ago. Boise State runs the pop-up bookstore at the event. They send student fellows to attend the conference. I thought that was really cool.

A Call for Proposals

So, when I saw my former coworker (we worked together at Edelman way, way back in my early PR days) post about creating a marketing rolodex for the University of sorts, I thought, Why not!

I have been working on channeling my mediocre white man energy, meaning I will apply for gigs my initial reaction tells me I’m not qualified for.

But the thing is, I am qualified. WE are qualified. I clicked on the application, cringed a little because it was a lot of work, put my head down, and got down to business.

An ACCEPTED RFP

The coolest thing about what my former coworker was creating was a streamlined process for everyone at the University. Once their list was compiled, anyone who needed any work done (photography, social media, printed materials, branding, etc. etc.) could reference the approved vendor list, contact one of us, and enjoy a seamless experience. Plus, fewer people would be going rogue, Googling, and making clunky decisions. My understanding is that an approved vendor list isn’t necessarily common for Universities, so this was novel.

Anyway, 2025 was a wild time of shedding—clients, expectations, relationships, physical things—so once we submitted the RFP, I forgot about it.

Just a few months ago, I got an email that out of hundreds of applicants, Popa & Associates was accepted as an approved marketing vendor, and! Not because I knew the Director of Communications. She wasn’t even part of the process. She just told her team to make it happen and recently accepted a job at a different University across the country.

Boise State Marketing Services Provider

We did a little onboarding over the holidays. I have the Boise State Brand Guide saved and have started reaching out to department heads, telling them what we do. Popa & Associates will provide content services—writing, graphics, communications consulting—and we’re excited to get rolling on some fun projects.

We’re so passionate about education, so coming in to help BSU educate through story is deeply fulfilling to us.

More to come. For now, we dream of all the beauty we can create for students and prospective students, and we allow whatever’s coming to be even better than what we can dream.