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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

10 Lessons from Starbucks

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My TargetX colleague, Scott Parks, sent a great blog post link that I’d like to share with you. It’s 10 Lessons from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul.

The blog post challenges radio broadcasters, who like college administrators are facing challenges, to “think how these lessons apply to you.”  The guts of the post are quoted below. Let me throw out the same challenge: Think how these lessons apply to you.

1.  Don’t Lose Sight of what Matters

“Our strategy was to do more of what worked in the past.  But we were not pushing ourselves to do things better or differently. ...

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22
JUN
0

Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Customer Service, Storytelling, Student Workers

Building better tour guides

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Be careful, warns U.S. News reporter Jackie Mantey to college-bound students, your campus tours may be led by guides who “decided pointing at landmarks would be a better job than flipping burgers for food services” and who rely on “a word-for-word recitation of the school’s brochure.”

As news media have increasingly focused on the critical role of campus visits in the college selection process, student guides who lead the tours have gotten a lot of press — and not all of it good.

“There seems to be this assumption that tour guides are paid to say exactly what the schools want,” says campus visit expert Emily Welsh. “Parents especially seem surprised that many student guides are volunteers and their schools are not ...

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18
MAR
0

Categories: Campus Visit Experiences, College Recruiting, Free on Friday Webcasts, Storytelling

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

Make a connection

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Will your yield activities include the admissions team presenting to groups of accepted students this spring? If so, create a presentation that doesn’t just inform students, but connects them to your institution.

Jon Thomas’ blog post “The Art of Storytelling in Presentations — Connecting” discusses the importance of telling a story that resonates with the listener.

“Stories are different from facts, figures and features. They connect us,” says Thomas. “They form a bond between audience and storyteller that can actually be felt. That connection can be immensely powerful and most importantly — memorable.”

Building great yield activities happens over time. Take a step towards a more successful, effective admissions presentation now and help students remember what it is that makes your college the ...

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28
JAN
0

Categories: Storytelling, Yield

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

Preparing for the new year

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Another year has come and gone but you are only about half way through the recruitment cycle for the class of fall 2011. As you wrap up 2010, think about where your recruitment marketing efforts currently are and where you might be going in 2011.

To help you do this, ThoughtLead hosted the Future of Marketing micro-conference. Sixty speakers each take 60 seconds to impart their wisdom on us with insights into what the “future of marketing” is in 2011 and beyond. Here are just a few that might appeal to admissions and recruitment marketing:

“Mobile is a game-changer” (Chuck Martin). We’ve heard about this a lot over the past few months, and your institution needs to begin thinking about how you ...

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17
DEC
0

Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Mobile, Social Media, Storytelling, Word of Mouth

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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23
JUN
3

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

XpertTip No. 159: Storytime continued…

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Did you read the Recruitment Minute last Friday?

In case you missed it, it was all about the power of storytelling and why it’s the most effective way to communicate what’s truly authentic about your school.

To take it a step further, telling stories is a great way to stave off summer melt and keep prospects and their families engaged in the next few weeks.

How much does your content strategy revolve around letting current students, faculty and staff tell the real stories of your institution?

These “snacks” of information make the perfect subject matter for web pages, social networks, microsites, student portals and profiles (and we know email is the best way to drive folks there so they can keep the ...

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22
JUN
2

Categories: Storytelling, Student Yield

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

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

A pause to refresh

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Do you know about TED?  TED’s mission is to give knowledge-seekers around the globe direct access to the world’s greatest thinkers and teachers. And they do!  TED charges the most fascinating people to give the talk of their lives in 18ish minutes.

Here’s how a New York Times Magazine writer describes Ted:

“Oh why oh why have I been bingeing on TED talks again? I promised myself I would quit watching the ecstatic series of head-rush disquisitions, available online, from violinists, political prisoners, brain scientists, novelists and Bill Clinton. But I can’t. Each hortatory TED talk starts with a bang and keeps banging till it explodes in fireworks. How can I shut it off? The speakers seem fevered, possessed, Pentecostal. ...

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10
FEB
0

Categories: Authenticity, Experience, Storytelling

Social storytelling

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Marketers tend to obsess over the tools behind social networking’s meteoric rise. Are blogs more effective than Facebook? How easy is Ning to use? Does Twitter appeal to young people?

What they’re forgetting, says social strategist Gaurav Mishra, is that the tools are not as important as the content. And the content that continues to engage people most consistently is a good story.

“I have come to the conclusion that social media is most powerful when it’s used for creating, collecting and sharing stories,” Mishra wrote recently. “In fact, I now believe that storytelling is the key to social media marketing success.”

Stories are central to the human condition, he says. We love to listen to stories. We’re able to learn from stories. ...

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4
DEC
3

Categories: Social Media, Social Networking, Storytelling

XpertTip No. 131: Don't shoot the messenger

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You know how this time of year goes — before you can even put your Halloween costume away, department stores will be all decked-out for the holidays and radio stations will be spinning The Waitresses 24-7.*

But while the premature holiday push can be frustrating, it does remind us that the end of the year is coming on fast.

So today I’d like to remind you to start making plans for any special holiday campaigns you’d like to execute in the next few weeks — especially if they involve creative services.

I know it’s early, but you’ll need the time to brainstorm, refine your concepts and get the right people involved (before it’s too late).

Here are a few ideas to help kick your ...

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2
NOV
0

Categories: Communication Plans, Email Campaign Ideas, Storytelling

Good storytelling

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So much of the marketing discussion these days is about technology, says entertainment executive Corey Torrence. Should we be on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or MySpace? Can we take advantage of text messaging? What can we do with the iPhone?

“Technology is quickly changing the way the game is played,” he acknowledges in a recent post on iMedia Connection. But the fundamentals of the game are no different than when Homer scratched out the Odyssey on papyrus scrolls.

Successful marketing is all about good storytelling.

“Concentrate on storyline-rich content that resonates with your audience,” says Torrence, who is CEO of Animax Entertainment. “The simplest way to gather an audience — dating back to ancient times — is good storytelling.”

So think of technology tools as ...

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7
AUG
2

Categories: Storytelling

XpertTip No.118: Move in on marketing opportunities

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Few experiences stir up the emotions that “Move-In Day” does for me.

A true milestone in the realm of recruiting, us admissions-folk get to finally see the fruits of our labors actualize in the form of the newest members of our campus communities.

It’s equal parts nostalgic, satisfying and rewarding.  But unfortunately, it can also be a missed opportunity.

[Brief pause to allow you to put on your "marketer" hat...]

Think about it this way:  Move-In Day is the perfect time to gain insights, get feedback and gather content while the college choice is still fresh on the minds of new students and their parents.

And since you’ll all have captive audiences relatively soon, today I’d like to offer some ideas for you to make ...

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27
JUL
1

Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Storytelling

Baldwin-Wallace College tour guide is not a "tourbot"

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This past Tuesday I was at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio conducting tour guide training on rendering authenticity and storytelling. (That’s me standing by one of their admissions Minis.)

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Yesterday I got an email from Pattie Skrha, BWC’s Director of Admission, telling me how the Chairman of BWC’s Board came to campus with a prospective student and shared with Pattie how “it was the best tour he ever had.” From Pattie’s email:

“Thought you’d love this random, too-good-to-be true story!

It just so happens that our board chair was on campus today, accompanying a prospective student from his home town. He went on tour with her. Upon his return, he ...

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26
JUN
1

Categories: Campus Visit Experiences, Experience, Storytelling

How to tell a good story

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Storytelling has been gaining momentum as a marketing tool in recent years, and nowhere does it make more sense than in higher education, where great stories abound.

But you need more than interesting subjects to produce effective stories, Andrea Jarrell reminds us in a post on her “School of Thought” blog. We should keep in mind the elements crucial to an effective story.

“Good stories have tension and conflict,” she writes. “Even the heroes have flaws. So how can you persuade readers of an institution’s virtues and still tell a good story?” She offers the following essentials:

- Protagonist and plot. “Every campus’s brand story is a mythic archetype with mythic heroes: the revolutionary, the discoverer, the change agent. Once you ...

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15
MAY
0

Categories: Storytelling

Tell me a story

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“It’s not your numbers that make you interesting,” writes Amber Naslund, as if she’s speaking directly to college marketers who still insist on including the number of library books and research grants in their institutional descriptions.

“It’s not your logo, your tagline, your brand promise,” continues the social media and marketing expert. “It’s not the colors you agonized over for your website.”

It’s your stories.

“I want to follow your story,” Naslund says simply in a recent post on her blog, “Altitude…brand elevation through social media.”

The blog is directed at businesses of all sizes, so she is quick to remind readers that they don’t have to be big to have a compelling story, nor do they need to be small and ...

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17
APR
0

Categories: Storytelling