Briana Turnbaugh shows off a billboard with her name that was placed by Wilkes University as a recruitment tool in Hazleton, Luzerne County. The small Wilkes-Barre university markets to the MySpace generation by making prospects the stars of ad campaigns in their hometowns.

WILKES-BARRE — Wilkes University badly wanted 18-year-old Nicole Pollock to be part of its freshman class this fall — so much so that it made her the star of her own ad campaign.

The small, private school in northeastern Pennsylvania plastered Pollock's name on billboards, pizza boxes and gas pumps — and even aired a commercial on MTV — in hopes of getting her to enroll. As one message put it: "We just hope you're on your way to Wilkes University next year."

Mission accomplished: Pollock picked Wilkes over her hometown University of Scranton. Even better for Wilkes, the ads put it on the radar screen of many of Pollock's college-bound classmates.

The quirky $120,000 ad campaign, which also featured seven other students, helps Wilkes stand out in a crowded marketplace. It also demonstrates the lengths to which some colleges are going to reach today's media- and marketing-savvy teenagers.

Increasingly, schools are using podcasts, virtual tours on YouTube, live chats and other interactive technologies to get their messages out.

Wilkes' ads, now in their second year, are focused on the university's traditional recruiting area in northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as the Allentown-Bethlehem region to the south, and the Philadelphia suburbs, Long Island and Binghamton, N.Y.

The school finds out this week just how successful its campaign has been. Thursday is "decision day," the deadline for high school seniors across the nation to notify the college of where they plan to attend class in the fall.

"This is pretty trendsetting and forward-thinking," said Nancy Costopulos, chief marketing officer of the American Marketing Association, which runs a yearly symposium for colleges and universities. "It positions Wilkes as an innovative and fresh kind of school."

The university picks applicants from markets where Wilkes wants to promote itself and who have a "mix of talents and determination," said Jack Chielli, Wilkes' director of marketing. Applicants featured in the ads must consent to have their names used.

The ads are the brainchild of Philadelphia marketing firm 160over90, which had a mandate from Wilkes to convey the message that the school gets to know its students personally and pays close attention to their needs.

To do that, the agency conducts in-depth interviews with participating students, their friends and families — learning their hobbies and accomplishments, their hopes and dreams, their likes and dislikes, even their nicknames.

It uses the information to design highly personalized ads that are placed where students are most likely to see them: on pizza boxes and billboards, atop gas pumps, in movie theaters and malls, and on MTV, VHI and Comedy Central.

An example:

n "Hey Kristen Pecka. Only your closest friends at Central Catholic call you Pecka-lecka-lecka. Choose Wilkes University and add 2,362 more people to that list."

The ads have turned students into minicelebrities in their schools and communities.

Briana Turnbaugh, 17, of Sugarloaf, Pa., said that when she went to a doctor's office for the first time, the receptionist said: "Oh, you're the girl from the billboard!"

Turnbaugh, who ranks fifth in her high school class of 800, ultimately picked Wilkes' crosstown rival, King's College.

Wilkes charges fees and tuition of more than $25,000, and nearly all students get some form of financial aid not including loans.

The school hands out $22 million in aid each year.