I will never understand the mind of teenagers. When we’re conducting tour guide workshops we ask students why they chose their school. There are always two repetitive answers: I visited and it felt right and I could see myself here.

I’ve also heard the most irrational reasons to support their choice:

• “It was snowy and everyone was wearing flip flops when I visited in January and I thought they were cool.”
• “My mom is afraid to drive over bridges, so I decided when I was crossing the Delaware river on the Ben Franklin bridge while driving in for a campus visit.”

As an emotive marketer, I was thrilled to read an article in a recent issue of The Economist about Ernest Dichter, an acolyte of Sigmund Freud who revolutionized marketing in the 20th century.

Some highlights:

“Humans, it turns out, are impressionable, emotional and irrational. We buy things we don’t need, often at arbitrary prices and for silly reasons.”

“You would be amazed to find how often we mislead ourselves, regardless of how smart we think we are, when we attempt to explain why we are behaving the way we do,” Dichter observed in 1960, in his book “The Strategy of Desire”.

“Emotion is back in, the unconscious is back in.

“It is now fashionable to study brain waves to see what lights up upon hearing the words ‘Coca-Cola’, or to measure pupil dilation in response to brand logos.”

Read the entire article here.

So much of higher education is caught up in data paralysis. In the core of your gut you know who is a good fit for your school, where they reside, how much they can pay, and why they choose you.  Get real and authentic and send a message that connects to their emotions.

Read more about our authors.  Jeff is the VP of the Consulting Division and also known as the “Apostle of Authenticity.” He crisscrosses the country speaking at conferences and working with our clients. He’s driven by a mission to inspire higher education executives and admissions offices to overthrow dead culture, embrace their authentic “DNA” and render engaging experiences.