Key Highlights:

• Manhattan Strategies launched Boxcar Digital, a B2C innovation hub engineered to command and measure consumer attention, with competencies in higher education marketing.
• Boxcar Digital is the first partner solely specializing in helping colleges and universities adapt their recruitment of Generation Alpha to cultural and demographic shifts.
• The new venture applies Manhattan Strategies’ visual communication framework to enable institutions to capture and convert Gen Alpha’s attention.

Manhattan Strategies, the award-winning, visually-driven public affairs firm built for the next generation of enterprise brands and leaders, has announced Boxcar Digital: an innovation hub designed to command and measure consumer attention. Applying the firm’s signature visual communication framework, Boxcar Digital is initially focused on disrupting higher education marketing and student recruitment.

“Demographic and cultural changes are shaking up how society values a college degree. Higher education is at a turning point, and Boxcar Digital lets us apply everything we’ve learned about human behavior to a sector that’s ready for reinvention,” said Max Morgan, Founder & Principal of Manhattan Strategies. “We see enormous potential to help educational institutions reconnect with their core audiences, compete in the new landscape and most importantly, win.”

Engineered for Tomorrow's Decision Makers

Manhattan Strategies’ visual communication framework has empowered enterprises to cut through the noise of the attention economy for more than seven years. By 2035, most CEOs and elected officials will be digital and visual natives, commanding short form, dynamic engagement styles. Manhattan Strategies brings a design studio, communications firm and analytics team under one roof to meet that moment.

Responding to growing B2C demand, Manhattan Strategies is launching Boxcar Digital, a consumer-oriented innovation hub that extends its capabilities to enrollment, advocacy and direct-to-consumer work. In preparation, the firm expanded its U.S.-based full-time team by more than 30%. Boxcar Digital operates alongside Manhattan Strategies within a secure advisory framework with service delivered exclusively by full-time employees based in the United States, governed by a Responsible Use of AI operating model and supported by a SOC 2 Type 2 audit underway to validate controls for today’s data landscape.

Defining the Next Era of Higher Education

Boxcar Digital is engineered to guide colleges and universities through three shifts reshaping the higher education:

1. Demographic Cliff: U.S. high school graduates are projected to peak around 3.9 million in 2025, followed by a 13% decline through 2041. Institutions will compete for a smaller pool of college-bound students.
2. Value of a College Degree: Recent national polling finds that only 35% of U.S. adults now believe a college education is ‘very important’ – down sharply from around 70% in 2010. Among parents of children under 18, just 38% say a college degree is very important.‍
3. Gen Alpha: Gen Alpha (born 2010 and later) will enter the Common App cycle in 2027. Their expectations for content, credibility and communication differ sharply from prior cohorts, requiring institutions to adapt now.

To maintain or grow enrollment, institutions need a modern playbook – one that captures attention, converts curiosity and does so efficiently. Boxcar Digital delivers that playbook through Manhattan Strategies’ award-winning visual communications framework.

Its novel approach was recently presented to the State University of New York Council for University Advancement in a session titled “Hacking Attention: How to Win Gen Alpha,” outlining practical steps for engaging and converting the first fully screen-native generation of applicants.

Boxcar Digital made its public debut at the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education in National Harbor, Maryland, on Monday, November 10, 2025.

‍