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Render authenticity (Part 2)

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authenticity_erasedIn last week’s Recruitment Minute, Render authenticity (Part 1), I talked about why it is important to render authenticity in your campus visit experience.  In this week’s conclusion, I want to help you understand a few ways you can move that process along on your own campus.

College is a transformative experience.

Most colleges and universities hope to light a spark within their students, encouraging them to spend their lives learning something new, trying something different and striving to be their best. Institutions want students to participate in class, sign up for an internship, study abroad, engage in community service, live in the residence halls — and most importantly — ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Change, College Recruiting, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Millennials, Storytelling

Chevy looks to Disney to improve the dealership experience. What does your admissions office look like?

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I’ve often said that much of our automobile brand experience doesn’t just take place in the car but in the dealership. It’s where you buy and get your vehicle serviced that often manifests the brand experience. This is why back in the 90′s I bought Infiniti(s) — they created well designed dealerships (and were early providers of the now near industry-standard roadside assistance and loaner vehicle).

Similarly we often say that your admissions office or visitor center space is the first, often the longest and last impression of your school. The importance of the campus visit and campus visitors are both on the increase. This crucial first “impression” is why so many schools are investing in new or renovated spaces. (Continue Reading

Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff

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

Girl Scouts Are Using Them. What About You?

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As we’re approaching the time to convert applicants to deposited and enrolled students, everyone is thinking about yield.

Each yield communication and event should have a purpose and a call to action; it should take you to the next step.

Many of you will be hosting events for students who have applied and have you near the top of their list. While you’ll roll out the red carpet, gussy up the campus, serve better-than-average food, and have a meet and greet with your president, do you have a plan of action to get the students to take the next step?

These events are about garnering the deposit, so why not take a cue from Girl Scouts? They are selling cookies to countless small ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Mobile, Mobile Marketing, Yield

Campus Tours Go Disney, Washington Monthly article by Eric Hoover (and "ears" off to our campus visit team!)

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Our campus tour work has had a fair amount of press this year. One of the best articles to feature our work, “Campus Tours Go Disney“, was published last month in Washington Monthly Magazine’s college guide. It was written by the Chronicle’s Eric Hoover, one of the best reporters and storytellers around.

Often, people think our work is about creating a whiz-bang, cleverly crafted experience, a Disney “E” Ticket (for those of you old enough to remember). Sometimes, potential clients think we’ll help them create something that’s cool for the sake of cool. That’s not what we do.

Our work is grounded in helping our clients render an authentic, memorable, and engaging campus visit experience that also supports the enrollment ...

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Categories: Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, General, Uncategorized

Baldwin-Wallace College now includes van ride during campus visit experience

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beevan

August and September are hectic times for our consulting campus visit team members. Trent Gilbert, Emily Welsh and I are crisscrossing the country conducting ambassador/tour guide training and checking the status of campus visit improvements at many clients.

But it’s also one of the most rewarding times. Besides having the opportunity to inspire student guides to be master storytellers, render authenticity and have fun, we get to see the progress consulting campus visit clients are making based upon our recommendations.

Recently Baldwin-Wallace College in NE Ohio implemented a walking-riding tour. BWC has a unique physicality because it’s the merger of two campuses (Baldwin and Wallace Colleges) and a third campus ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Change, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Parents

Outstanding Ohio State Admissions Campus Visit Guide

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The Ohio State University has one of the best visit programs we have encountered, yet they’re always looking to improve the experience.

To inspire you, here’s a copy of the new piece:

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The creative folks in admissions worked hard to create a visit brochure that sets the expectation and reveals visit basics, while giving it the feel of a travel brochure. They’ve outlined Four Ways to Discover Ohio State: Sport Enthusiast, Foodie, History Buff and Academic Explorer. The brochure unfolds to reveal places and spaces in these themes complete with photos, insider tips and more.

At the CIVSA conference in Lexington this June, they told us that the majority of families bring the piece ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit Experiences, Communication, Experience Economy Stuff, Twitter, Uncategorized

York College of Pennsylvania – Campus visit makes front cover of their magazine

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When prospective consulting clients ask us what we do, or what they get specific to the campus visit, the answer is often big picture. We make the campus visit a top priority within admissions and ultimately campus wide. We help our clients fight the fight for the campus visit at their school.

Lately Trent Gilbert, TargetX’s CXO, Chief eXperience Officer, and I have been receiving a number of emails from consulting clients about improvements to their campus visit since working with us. That’s really the ultimate in satisfaction.

Recently, our clients at York College of Pennsylvania; Steve Neitz, Assistant Dean for Enrollment Management and Nancy Spataro, Director of Admissions sent us both electronic and printed hard copies of the ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Change, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Followup, Storytelling

The Benefits and Cost of College

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We all know that this year the cost of college has been on the forefront of conversations with prospective families and in the media. But what about the benefit?

Businessweek tackled that in their 3/9/2010 issue:

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Categories: Experience Economy Stuff

Consumer creates content at AE Times Square Billboard

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I recently went on a college road trip with my best friend from high school and her 16-year-old daughter. We visited three campuses in three days, including our client, Pace University, in New York City.  I’ll be blogging and video blogging about lessons from the college road trip soon, but couldn’t wait to share a moment in the trip that stood out for me.

Andy Warhol said, “We’ll all have our 15 minutes of fame.”

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy and Authenticity said, “If a consumer helps create something, it’s more authentic to them.”

Well, now American Eagle’s Flagship store in Times Square allows you to create the content and have your 15 seconds (vs. minutes).

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Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff

Disney Stores, iPhone Apps, AR (Augmented Reality) and your campus tour

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So let’s connect some experience economy dots and make them all relevant to your campus visit programs.

Disney to finally make their Disney Stores an “Experience”
Disney Stores have never really matched the Disney Magic. They’re just stores. Passive buying. Not an experience and not at all reminiscent of a Disney park.

As reported in the New York Times:

“The world does not need another place to sell Disney merchandise — this only works if it’s an experience,” said Jim Fielding, president of Disney Stores Worldwide. The company plans to unveil the new look in May in Southern California, Long Island and Madrid, and is close to signing a lease for that Times Square flagship.

Theaters will allow children to watch ...

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Categories: Authenticity, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Change, Experience Economy Stuff, Millennials, Mobile Marketing, Outside Resources

Alfred Conference Bike a lesson in authenticity and change

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Chances are you’ve read about the Alfred University Campus Tour Conference Bike in various higher education press resources or in my colleague Ray Ulmer’s Recruitment Minute.

But let me give you the inside story.

Alfred University and their Director of Marketing, Jodi Bailey, are the kind of clients all services providers love to work with. They embrace change (even though they face internal hurdles) and are fun to work with.

Back in the winter of 2008 when I first toured Alfred’s beautiful mountainside campus in Western New York, I told them, “Your admissions office in Alumni Hall is on one far end of campus, and you’re walking tours about the full length (about 1/2 mile) to the other end ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Parents, Student Workers

Words of wisdom

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Planes are my library. They are where I do my reading. And since I’ll be visiting some 18 campus visit consult clients between this week and NACAC you might expect to see a fair amount of posts sharing my thoughts and observations.

“It’s not marketing, research, consultants, it’s just the experience.”
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on their plans to refresh and renew their experience.
From the 8/3 Businessweek

From a August 2009 Fast Company article about Hot Topic – a $763 million dollar retailer that teens with apparel, music and more. (And does so without any advertising!) “The chain’s target demographic is notoriously fickle and hyperalert for any whiff of the inauthentic.” and “It doesn’t ...

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

Smart Signature Moments and Memorabilia

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Two of the tenets of The Experience Economy are Signature Moments (think throwing a coin in the Fountain Trevi in Rome and having your photo made with Mickey Mouse at a Disney park).

Recently I’ve come across three really great ones:

San Francisco Zoo

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Created posters with various animals parts, guest stand in front of them and they take photos where it appears they have wings, antlers and other animal parts. And as reported in Advertising Age, they’ve created an online gallery for guests to upload them and share. As put them out on city bus shelters as part of an award wining outdoor ad campaign.

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Categories: Authenticity, Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Campaign Intelligence, Campus Visit, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Uncategorized, Website

FLIP for a better campus visit evaluation

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flipevaluation

All campus visits should be evaluated by students and parents. (And each should have different evaluations.) And the data for evaluations should be constantly used towards improvement.

The problem is most schools provide detailed, 20+ questions on two-sides of 8.5″x11″ paper and the whole thing is too taxing on those filling them out and those processing them.

This weekend I ate at FLIP burger boutique here in Atlanta. (By Top Chef contestant Richard Blais.) The place is contemporary homage to an American classic. But I’m not here to review restaurants.

Tucked inside the bill folder was a simple evaluation form on card stock. It asked to rank five simple topics ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists

Two Tales of Customer Service – which is your school like?

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I’ve often said what’s hindering The Experience Economy movement is the lack of customer service in our current service/information economy. Our k-12 schools are still preparing graduates to go work in factories as cogs on an assembly line, not for jobs in a service economy.

The State of the Experience Economy (and the progression from a service to an experience) came up at the 10th Anniversary/Birthday of the publishing of Pine and Gilmore’s Book,
The Experience Economy (TEE). Held at the Ritz-Carlton Cleveland, OH. Some 80 people from across the country attended.

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore next to a cake of ...</p><a class=Continue Reading

Categories: College Recruiting, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists

Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage

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“Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage” that’s the subtitle to Pine and Gilmore’s ground breaking book The Experience Economy.

We’ve moved on beyond goods and services. Colleges and universities have been in the experience economy business for millennia.

At TargetX we always tell our clients, you’ve got to look outside of higher education to learn. So I took a break from campus visit travels and joined Jim Gilmore, one of the co-authors of The Experience Economy at Gallery Furniture in Houston, Texas.

They say “Texas is a whole other country” and every time I’m there I have to agree. Gallery Furniture, like Texas is huge! Nearly 1/4 million square feet at their main store, and ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Experience Economy Stuff

Happy 10th Birthday to The Experience Economy

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teepartycake

On April 28, 1998 Harvard Business School Press released Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore’s ground breaking text The Experience Economy-Work is Theater & Every Business a Stage

While I’ve referenced this book, applied it to campus visit and given away countless copies to clients, colleagues and more: now it’s time to celebrate this 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

On April 28, 2008 fans of the book and experience economy folks from across the globe will gather at the Ritz-Carleton in Cleveland for a 10th Birthday Party thrown by the authors and their consultancy, Strategic Horizons.

Click here for details or to RSVP.

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Categories: Experience Economy Stuff, Lists

Consider your advertising (it's a cluttered marketplace)

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It’s my goal to make this blog about the campus visit experience and the experience economy, so rarely do I post about traditional advertising.

On my “endless road trip” (as Chronicle of Higher Education writer Eric Hoover called my campus visit travels) I take Atlanta’s MARTA rail to and from the airport. I noticed that the car I was riding on had 4-5 “higher education” ads. Now there are only 10-12 ad spaces per car. I thought this was a fluke, so at each station I changed cars and saw this repeating itself in every car.

There amongst the fast food, felony search, and mobile phone ads was a plethora of “college” ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists

Leaving Las Vegas (and bad customer service)

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February 25-27 was the TargetX Client Xpert Summit in Las Vegas. We had some 60+ clients from some 40+ colleges and universities from across the country participate. (Some of whom paid their own way to attend because of travel/budget cuts.)

The presentations were engaging and featured many clients.

The conversations and networking even better.

The Experience Excursion an experience.

But customer service in Las Vegas was terrible.

Ironically on the flight out I was reading a two articles in the 3/2/2009 Businessweek that I found relevant:

BTW – What Doesn’t Happen in Las Vegas
Short article about the decrease and cancellations of business meetings in Las Vegas. While perception is everything the article says,

“But in December, the number of corporate meetings was down ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Blogs, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Uncategorized, Xpert Summit

Campus Tours as Tourism (from the NY Times)

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Even before I became higher education’s first “Experience Evangelist” I always loved touring college campuses. Would do so whenever travel and time permitted.

It seems that I’m not alone in this pastime. The Sunday New York Times Travel Section’s “College Campuses as Affordable Travel Destinations” reports about other who do the same and tips on doing so.

Click here to read the main article: “No Application Needed: College Tours”
This article focuses mainly on Yale.

Click here to read the companion piece “There’s More to See Than Classrooms and Football Stadiums”
It features: Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Illinois Institute of Technology and others.

But remember this tip: admissions job isn’t to tour every visitor to campus-only those ...

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Categories: Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff, Lists, Uncategorized

How to win frugal consumers and influence them to buy

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Yesterday I was at the University of North Texas, and one of the admissions staff asked me if the recession will impact the “experience economy.”

On the flight out I read three articles that I think addressed this.

The first was from the Fast Company World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, about #20 online shoe and apparel provider Zappos. Founder and CEO Tony Hsieh gets that the experience is the marketing:

In March 2003, we made a decision to be about customer service, says Hsieh, from the company’s Vegas headquarters. “We view any experience as a marketing experience as a marketing cost because it generates more repeat customers through word of mouth.” Zappos spends a tiny percentage ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Experience Economy Stuff

XpertTip No.95: Data disasters

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Last week I received a pretty nice email from CVS Pharmacy explaining how easy it would be to transfer my prescriptions online.

It was well-designed, with a nice graphic and very clear call to action. It even had a coupon at the bottom offering me $5 off my next purchase. Score.

One major problem: I’m already a CVS customer! I’ve been getting my prescriptions filled there for at least a decade.

Naturally, I was annoyed. I felt taken advantage of — just another name and email address on some list somewhere. Didn’t these people care that I’d been a long-time client? A loyal customer? Who the heck is in charge of this operation? Do they ...

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Categories: Data, Database Fields, Email, Email Campaign Ideas, Experience Economy Stuff

Microsoft Surface – coming to a visitor center near you?

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Last week the TargetX Interactive Recruiting Workshop was held in Downtown Chicago at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business Gleacher Center. The host hotel was the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers.

The Sheraton had three Microsoft Surface units. Guest could program music, discover the neighborhood, and view satellite images/maps of Earth. We all agreed that these devices would make engaging tools in the any college visitor center.

At the hotel was “Microsoft Chris,” a Surface team member who was managing the installation. In conversation with him, my TargetX colleagues and our guest speakers Marisa Peterson from St. Edwards (TX) and Pete ...

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Categories: Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff

Recycling experiences (and the Apple Store)

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Last year at our TargetX Chicago workshop, instituteNext, the learning excursion included a visit to the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue. The two predominant take-aways were:

1. customer service matters (especially in higher education)

2. and wouldn’t be great if more colleges build enrollment centers that worked like the Apple Store.

I’ve been a long time Mac fan/user, but last week my TargetX PowerBook gave up the ghost. (It’s log in about 75,000 frequent flyer miles this past year and proudly powered some 100+ presentations.)  The Apple Store Genius Bar and Personalized Shopping experiences I had at their Atlanta Perimeter Mall and Lenox Mall locations blew me away.

The reservation system was simple and fast. Once I got to the store(s) the welcome was ...

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Categories: Campus Visit Experiences, Experience Economy Stuff

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