Archive for 'Authenticity'

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Ready for your Facebook facelift?

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SUNY Cortland believes in looking at the big picture. At least when it comes to Facebook.

So the central New York campus is inviting students, faculty, staff and alums to submit photos for the new cover image that will dominate its Facebook page starting on March 30th. That’s the day the social goliath has set for its worldwide switch to “Timeline,” a redesigned interface that emphasizes photos, especially the one that spans the top of the page.

Many colleges have already converted to the new design, posting everything from breathtaking campus vistas, to inspirational taglines, to depictions of their athletic mascots. Others — like SUNY Cortland — have at least a strategy in place, if not an actual image. But there are ...

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16
MAR
0

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Facebook, Social Networking

Ch-Check it out

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Yes, that’s a Beastie Boys song title. While some may scoff at the idea of learning something from three guys who go by Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock — their 25-year career, international fan base and 2012 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is certainly no joke. And higher ed would be smart to listen up — there are serious lessons to be learned from this Brooklyn rap trio.

“The Beastie Boys Guide to Brand Storytelling” by Kimberly Bordonaro identifies seven elements that explain why their loyal following over the years didn’t happen because they got lucky. It happened through a unique blend of what the kids today would call “sick” rhymes, funky fresh beats, and for ...

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9
MAR
0

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Marketing, Storytelling

What the Superbowl can teach higher ed

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According to the Neilsen Co., an estimated 111 million people watched last year’s Superbowl. But I wonder how many people took their bathroom break during the game and stuck around for the commercials.

This advertising juggernaut has brought us some of the most iconic 30-60 second ads of all-time. Brands bring out the creative “big guns” to catch people’s attention and hopefully have them talking about their product long after the Lombardi Trophy has been awarded.

So you are probably asking yourself, “What does the Superbowl have to do with higher ed?” Well, if you’re in recruitment marketing those ads are doing something that colleges and universities need to be doing much more of — using creativity to grab ...

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3
FEB
0

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Millennial Generation, Millennials, Uncategorized

All Purchasing is Emotional – Especially Where to Attend College

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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 ...

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26
JAN
1

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Marketing

Mailing Millennials

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Talking about “snail mail” as an effective recruitment strategy is sure to raise an eyebrow or two, but don’t discount its benefits and the value it adds. In the second half of this year’s recruitment cycle, admissions offices are thinking more about acceptance letters, open house invitations and financial aid packages — all traditionally print recruitment pieces — that still work according to Deliver Magazine.

In the article “Making sense of the Millennials” by Allan Nahajewski, Millennials don’t mind direct mail. According to one study, Millennials say 75 percent of the mail they receive is valuable, and 73 percent of them have used direct mail coupons.

With this in mind — what’s the most effective way to use direct mail? ...

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13
JAN
0

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Marketing, Millennial Generation, Millennials

Writing your school’s resume

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You’ve heard it a thousand times — Be distinctive; stand out from your competitors. You can’t do that with your faculty/student ratio, no matter how impressive. Or with your small class sizes, no matter how important. Or with the personalized attention your professors provide their students, no matter how beneficial.

Start your story with something that cuts through the college marketing clutter, say all the experts. But perhaps no one has said it quite like advertising executive Angie Jones.

“I have a Bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing,” Jones writes in a recent blog post. Pretty good, but unfortunately millions of people in America have the same degree and emphasis, she says. “Education-wise, I don’t stand out from ...

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11
JAN
0

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication, Marketing

A New Year’s Resolution Toward Authenticity

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Most of my friends and colleagues know I’m not one for the November and December holidays. My nickname is Scrinch , a combination of Scrooge and Grinch. But, I do love New Year’s. It’s global, non-sectarian, and is about a fresh start and beginning.

For years I’ve been preaching about the experience economy and what it means to recruiting students, especially through more authentic, engaging, and memorable campus visits.

I have two titles at TargetX: VP, Consulting and Apostle of Authenticity. My mission as the Apostle of Authenticity is to get schools to be comfortable with who they genuinely are and to embrace their core DNA.

But our industry is overrun with a generation of leaders (most of whom have been raised ...

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19
DEC
0

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit, Millennial Generation, Millennials

It's all about the experience!

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In 1999, I read a review of the groundbreaking text, “The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage” by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. Finally someone so intelligently explained what I always believed about business: it’s not what you say or do, but how you make people feel.

With The Experience Economy as our blueprint, TargetX Campus Visit Consulting began six years ago this month. Our first client was Rider University. Since then we’ve taken thousands of campus tours and worked with hundreds of colleges across the country to help them stage authentic, engaging and memorable campus visits designed to connect with more best-fit students and help reach enrollment goals.

An updated edition of the book has just been ...

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26
AUG
0

Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff

Know your niche and market to nobody

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When I talk with admissions leaders, cabinets, or boards, everyone wants to talk about what separates them from the school up the road. Yet, most schools tend to look and sound like the school up the road.

It seems like schools that are trying to be all things to all people are the schools that are having enrollment challenges. Ambiguity confuses the market place. A university president once asked, “What’s the greatest mistake we can make regarding a campus visit?” My reply was to have a family get in the car at the end of of their time on campus and say, “Nice school, but nothing special.”

Great marketing and positioning might offend. It might not appeal to the masses, but it ...

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10
MAY
3

Categories: Authenticity, Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit Experiences, Outside Resources, Word of Mouth

Forget Facebook, if you want to yield students you should be on YouTube

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Any dyed-in-the-wool Gen Xer can tell you that the first video MTV played when it launched on August 8, 1981 was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. Not as many can tell you the second video played on MTV. Do you know?

Video facts you need to know:
-43% of current prime time internet traffic is real time entertainment ( 12.2.2010)
-Netflix streaming accounts for 20% of internet traffic on any given evening (BusinessWeek 12.2.2010)
-Cisco predicts that by 2013 video will be 90% of consumer internet traffic (TechCrunch 7.9.2009)
-YouTube is a top “search engine” accounting for 28% of Google searches (Google 1.31.2011)
-There are 500 million monthly YouTube ...

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3
FEB
1

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Did You Know?, Facebook, Free on Friday Webcasts, Social Media, Social Networking, Storytelling, Student Yield, Videos, Web Traffic, Webcast, Your Website

Waiting for the Dead Poets Society Moment

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They come in all different sizes and all different levels of content.  Some give a specific route, others just a mandate on what to show.  Some give facts and figures (there are 1,314,649 books in the library), others read like a Hollywood script.  I am talking about the beloved tour guide training manual.

I wonder what the norm is for this manual?

After searching high and low, and talking to several schools, I have found one that is challenging the norm: Alfred University. They aren’t even calling it a manual, but rather a Reference Guide. Only a few pages long, it has information for the guides to reference – expectations, the tour route, a brief history of the buildings, list ...

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26
JAN
0

Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Storytelling, Student Workers

New Year's Resolutions to Improve the Campus Visit

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Happy New Year!!!

Now that the decorations are down (maybe) and the sleep deprivation from being forced to stay awake until midnight has subsided (not really), it is time to think about 2011.  I know that some of you spent New Year’s Day thinking about your personal resolutions. Maybe you want to lose weight, watch what you eat (I am limiting myself to one Twix bar per week out of the snack basket on the plane), be more organized, or respond to emails in a more timely manner.  No matter what your personal resolutions are, I think you should add three more to the list.  These resolutions will help you improve the ever-important campus visit.  Call this your list of work ...

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6
JAN
0

Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience

What should I wear?

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I get asked some of the same “hot topic” questions about the campus visit from many of our campus visit clients and during the countless campus visit presentations that we do.  One question that keeps coming up:  “What should our tour guides wear?”

I ask a question or two in return.

“What do the students wear on campus to go to class?”
“What is most real and authentic to the student experience?”

In a recent issue of BusinessWeek (Let me disclose. Jeff Kallay forwards along the important articles) about the rise of Millennials in the workplace, I saw this cartoon and just had to share as we discuss the tour guide uniform.

etcequetteschool1

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11
NOV
0

Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Audits Sidebar, Campus Visit Experiences, Generations, Millennial Generation, Millennials, Student Workers

Delta Airlines. A lesson in authenticity. Be careful what you promise.

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As I sit here at JFK waiting for a connection back to Atlanta, I thought it fitting to talk about authenticity and the airline that I use for 99% of my flights.

Recently, Delta launched a series of beautiful black and white ads produced by Wieden+Kennedy, the Portland shop famous for Nike advertising. According to Brandweek, they’re focusing on the NYC market.  Seemingly, the TV spots get it right; they tell a story, they show human emotion, keep it real, and have a compelling voiceover (is that Donald Sutherland? For you Millennials, that’s the real-life father of the actor on Fox’s 24 ).  But are they authentic?  Has one of the biggest airlines in the world overpromised with ...

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4
NOV
6

Categories: Authenticity, General, Uncategorized

Marketing to Millennials

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The youngest are only 10, so you’re going to be dealing with the Millennial generation for years to come. That means you should overcome your sense of Millennial overload and continue to welcome new insight into how to reach these “vocal, demanding, discerning, shrewd and, yes, narcissistic” prospective students.

Advertising Age’s Thomas Pardee has written another psychosocial look at those born between 1982 and 2000, and he concludes with five tips for marketing to them.

  • Be fast. “For Millennials, there’s nothing worth saying that can’t be said in 140 characters or less. It’s not that they can’t handle long-form pitches, they just know you can do better. So do better.”

  • Be clever. “Smart and funny is the new rock ...
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29
OCT
4

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication, Generations, Millennials, Word of Mouth

A view from the front lines

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I recently joined TargetX as VP of Engineering, but I’m contributing this week’s Recruitment Minute in my more taxing role as parent of a high school senior. As we reach the college search home stretch, I thought I’d share some impressions.

Lowlights:

  • The box of printed materials threatening to crush our bookcase. Our son opens almost none, and never if the school isn’t on his list.
  • Most campus tours — large groups preclude engaging with the guide, and most are interchangeable. We learned to self tour, and tried to chat up (and eavesdrop on) students.
  • Important information buried on websites — including academic break schedules and how to arrange class visits.
  • An info session using and then defining words as simple as “cadaver.”
  • Buzzword ...
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22
OCT
1

Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit Experiences, College Recruiting, Parents

The truth about branding

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Branding continues to dominate so much of the discussion in higher ed marketing, and Geoffrey James can’t figure out why.

The popular writer and commentator on sales and marketing reacted recently to a series of radio spots run by a Boston-based brand consultancy.

“They’re selling snake oil,” he writes, “because it’s not possible to create a brand through anything that’s typically done under the name of branding.”

Let’s start with the truth, he says. Your brand is the reflection of four things, and none of them is your logo, tagline or anything else that a marketing agency may try to sell you. Your brand is made up of:

- The quality of your products and services (50 percent).
- The way you treat your ...

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15
OCT
4

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Communication

Resist Herd Mentality

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Diverse student populations, small class sizes, a wide range of student activities, state-of-the-art facilities and convenient locations. These are characteristics that institutions use to describe themselves. What they don’t realize is that every college is saying the same thing. So where’s the differentiation?

Bloomberg Businessweek posted an article discussing Youngme Moon’s book, Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd. Moon, a Harvard Business School professor, wrote her book with a focus on what is called “reverse positioning.” An idea that promotes the following: Simplify when everyone else is tacking on options. Give back to customers when competitors are taking back. Resist the urge to succumb to feature-itis.

Examples of companies that broke free from the herd include JetBlue and Google. These organizations stripped down ...

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3
SEP
3

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting

Making tours come alive

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In the latest ode to the campus tour guide, higher ed reporter Tim Barker continues a trend that has made the college visit one of the most anticipated events in a student’s search for the right school. Newspapers and magazines, TV and radio, even the movies have all elevated the campus tour to greater prominence and raised the expectations of prospective families.

“Five to 10 years ago, they were simply the thing you did if you had time,” says a Washington-based admissions consultant. “Now they’ve become events.”

At St. Louis University, campus tours are the school’s best tool for persuading students to attend, writes Barker, who covers higher education for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“It’s our No. 1 yield event,” says ...

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13
AUG
1

Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, College Recruiting

Increase your digital influence

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In admissions, you often cannot attend every conference you would like to, especially when there are so many throughout the year. So, why not attend the shortest conference ever? 60 speakers in 60 minutes.

ThoughtLead held their first 60 in 60 event on July 6. The Influencer Project: The shortest marketing conference ever, discussed how to increase a business’s digital influence in the competitive world of online media. Sixty speakers provided their personal advice on how you can do this today. After listening to the conference, there were several points that were extremely relevant to recruitment and admissions efforts on the web. Here are just a few:

“Make connections online and then go and meet them in person in the ...

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23
JUL
3

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Social Media, Websites, Your Website

Tell me a story

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People love stories, Jeff Kallay reminds us. They pay attention to them, learn from them, believe them and share them.

Storytelling has been our most effective means of communication since we developed language eons ago, and that’s more evident than ever in this new world of social networking.

So why do colleges still spend so much effort on branding and taglines, and so little effort identifying and telling their unique stories, asks Kallay, Consulting VP at TargetX and one of higher education’s most inventive marketers.

“When crafting your recruiting communications, find the stories that set you apart,” he says. “I’m often asked by admissions and marketing people how they find stories like that. I know this sounds simple, but you can find them ...

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18
JUN
4

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication, Word of Mouth

Appeal on an emotional level

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Colleges and universities need to appeal to prospects on an emotional level through storytelling and the campus experience to engage best-fit students.

The recession has made consumers think differently about how they shop, buy and — in higher education — choose a college. Adweek Research writer Mark Dolliver states, consumers want good value for their money; while rational sales pitches and practical benefits have ruled the school of thought for decades, a shift is necessary to more emotional appeals. The same is true for higher education.

Dolliver reviews the results from a survey of client-side marketers conducted by the Association of National Advertisers and they reveal that emotional benefits should be more balanced with the rational/functional benefits. Marketers see the need for ...

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11
JUN
8

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Research, Storytelling

What makes a good message?

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Simple and true. That’s the key to effective marketing communications today, says agency executive Jeff Cannon.

“With savvier consumers and a flood of messaging, you have an ever-narrowing window within which to get your message right,” he says.

So he advises us to keep it simple. What does he mean? Focus on only one benefit or point of differentiation per message, whether it’s an ad, email promotion or blog post. “If you have more than one point of differentiation, save it for another message,” he says. “There will be another time and place to get it out.”

Simple messages are easier for your audience to understand, to remember and to repeat and pass along, says the president of Think Cannon LLC.

And make sure ...

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14
MAY
1

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication

Changes that work

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Butler University’s deposits are up, and it appears to have less to do with the basketball team’s exhilarating run through March Madness and more to do with an impressive overhaul of the school’s recruiting communications.

Kristen Raves responded to last week’s Recruitment Minute about the common refrain on America’s campuses this year: “Apps are up, deposits are down.” Not at Butler, she said. “We have integrated new ideas into our marketing plan throughout this year and we are up in deposits!”

Here’s a small sampling of some of the things they did:

  • Deciding that fresh content was essential, Kristen told her student bloggers that they must post at least 3 times a week and include 2 links and a photo or video each ...
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7
MAY
1

Categories: Authenticity, Blogs, Change, College Recruiting, Student Yield, Twitter, Websites

A Makeover in California

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No, I am not going to talk about the latest spa treatment in Hollywood, or am I going to share with you who met who at the club in Santa Monica. I will leave hardcore reporting like that for all those magazines you find at the grocery store check-out.

I want to share with you an experience from my travel through the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) last week.   This is an airport that I have been in at least a hundred times in my life.  This trip through LAX was different, though. Upon landing at LAX, I was caught off guard by a change of the flow of traffic since my last visit.  I was inquisitive about the change.  Then I ...

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6
MAY
3

Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Storytelling

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