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Does higher education branding actually help prospects and parents make sound choices?
Posted in: Branding, Higher Ed Marketing, Higher Education Branding, Marketing Strategy, Storytelling
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One of the tensions we hold at Elliance has to do with the pros and cons of specialization. While most of our work focuses on higher education marketing — where we have deep experience — we also meet a wider set of client challenges in manufacturing, banking, non profits and other worlds far from campus. Google’s search engine bot and people generally, favor simplicity. Elliance gets it — we know why many higher education marketing firms keep a singular focus. We also know first-hand the many ways that our higher education clients benefit from our broader exposure and reach. In the end, we find that higher education branding and marketing clients have plenty in common with clients in other verticals when it comes to solving the essential marketing challenge: turning awareness into inquiry, inquiry into conversation and conversion, and conversion into engagement, community and lasting brand loyalty. That premise led us recently to ask a bigger question: “What does it … Continue reading
Posted in: Branding, Higher Ed Marketing, Higher Education Branding, RISD, Umpqua
Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology—where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail! Anyone who remembers watching the Super Bowl 29 years ago this week may recognize that speech from the now iconic “1984” TV spot that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer. Apple officially aired the original commercial just once, during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, about the time that Los Angeles Raiders running back Marcus Allen broke the hearts of every Washington Redskins fan with a 74-yard-long touchdown run. Apple and its agency, Chiat/Day, created … Continue reading
Higher education marketing professionals traditionally equate the “new year” with the turning of an academic calendar, the approach of 2013 is good reason to offer 5 New Year’s Resolutions.
When St. Thomas University and the University of Mt. Union meet in this coming Saturday’s Division III NCAA football championship — the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl — we don’t expect higher education marketing and enrollment teams from either school to be expecting too much of a so-called “Flutie Effect.” The “Flutie Effect” refers to the phenomenon of one dramatic televised sports moment, team personality or championship victory spiking prospective student interest in a given college or university. While Saturday’s game will attract a sell-out crowd (7,992 capacity) and reach a national audience on ESPNU, Division III schools carry few illusions. Even the most successful Division III sports programs (Mt. Union seeking an 11th National Championship in football) admit that a wider set of variables and motivations drive enrollment. Last year, we worked closely with St. Norbert College, which has made eight Frozen Four appearances since 2003, winning the national championship in 2008, 2011 and 2012. While such success remains a … Continue reading
No region in the world understands the countervailing forces of hope and despair related to the manufacturing economy more viscerally than Southwestern Pennsylvania. As a young adult, I witnessed first-hand the cataclysmic fall of Big Steel when the region added 124,000 new unemployed people — fathers, mothers, siblings — in a flash of economic destruction between August 1981 and January 1983. In the 30 years since, the United States remains undecided about the most fundamental questions. Can American workers and companies compete in a global workforce and market? Do our schools and education bureaucracies effectively prepare young people for advanced manufacturing careers? Will companies invest in American workers rather than reflexively seek cheaper labor? Elliance has seen the power of smart manufacturing marketing to make a difference for companies seeking bigger/better customers globally, and a stable, reliable workforce locally. We apply many of the same concepts of “right-fit” matching from our work in higher education marketing to the world of … Continue reading
Posted in: Branding, Manufacturing Marketing, Search Marketing
Like a blindfolded volunteer in an “Old Coke, New Coke” taste test, Republican pollsters and pundits seemed genuinely surprised last week to learn that their trusted brand — “USA” — had changed. Although demographers and groups such as the Pew Research Center have been charting changing US birth/death rates and immigration patterns for decades, and essayists like Richard Rodriguez have written with depth and nuance about the change, some in the political class seemed caught flat footed, if not flat stunned. Higher education marketing and enrollment professionals have watched and responded to these trends for years, and college presidents and boards have grappled with a range of issues related to student success, admissions policies, financial aid, and more. Often, the assumption in higher education circles is that institutions play a significant role in helping first generation students advance professionally and personally. While nobody would argue that case, colleges miss a huge opportunity if they fail to acknowledge a wide range … Continue reading
In this season of debates, we turn to a higher ed marketing area where debate is endless. What type of college best prepares students for “the real world?” While consumers — students and parents — can find great programs at the extremes of vocational education and classic liberal arts colleges, most of the higher ed marketing battle happens in the in-between. Elliance has done work for all kinds of schools, always believing that great higher ed marketing involves finding authentic proof aimed at right-fit students. For now, let’s focus on the great many of four-year liberal arts colleges that seem to have either lost their one true brand voice or somehow stand too afraid to speak it. Elliance begins our higher ed marketing work with such schools by taking a close look at a school’s general education core and first year studies courses. How do these and other student experiences shape one’s mental muscle and instills certain habits of the … Continue reading
Posted in: Brand Voice, Branding, Higher Ed Marketing, liberal arts
For those tracking the tectonic shift among major college football affiliations, last week’s announcement that Notre Dame University would leave the Big East and join (reluctantly?) the Atlantic Coast Conference amounted to the last big rock falling. What’s any of it have to do with higher ed marketing? While it’s easy to dismiss these front page courtships and betrayals in college football as a pure money grab, they shed light on a larger question: do we work from a narrow and outdated model of competition/cooperation in higher education broadly, and in higher ed marketing specifically? If Notre Dame and Clemson suddenly share a vague geographic claim to the Atlantic seaboard, then maybe the two schools have more to offer their representative student bodies than just a weekend road trip. And what about the higher ed marketing teams for these and other affiliated schools? Can they put down their cost-per-click metrics long enough to see new collaborative possibilities? Can Notre Dame … Continue reading
A ruling by Judge Rudolph Contreras of the Federal District Court for Washington, D.C. last week set back efforts by the U.S. Department of Education to deny federal financial aid dollars to the lowest performing for-profit schools. For the time being, the marketplace will decide — students and parents matched against hyperbolic for-profit higher ed marketing machines. While the for-profit operators and their Wall Street investors have long understood the power of higher ed marketing, the response by the vast community of endowment-driven colleges and universities remains fragmented. It’s easy for most colleges to disregard the concerns of students and families at the lower rungs of achievement and income — those most vulnerable to the false claims of education value and return on investment. But higher ed marketing is really conversation marketing in the age of social, SEO and PR 2.0 optimization. If the best schools in the country decided to raise the level of conversation as it related to … Continue reading
Posted in: Higher Ed Marketing