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.
Category: Branding
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 […]
I saw Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln” over Thanksgiving weekend. Wonderful screenplay by Tony Kushner and amazing acting by Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Fields and Tommy Lee Jones. I was struck by the parallels between Lincoln’s strategies for consensus building and the branding work we do for Christian colleges. To me, Lincoln was brilliant at holding tension […]
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 […]
Last week, I was floored. A prospect looked at our portfolio and clustered our work into two groups: like and not like as much. Asked me if I could explain why. I looked at the two groups and quickly realized that the the ones he liked were all written by our storytellers/copywriters from scratch and […]
How do you know when people are really engaged with your brand? Certainly one way to tell is if they stand in line for hours on end for a chance to buy your latest product. But how do you measure it when you are a small, regional college in rural central Pennsylvania? In 1998, my colleagues […]
Your brand already exists. Your brand is the foremost expression of your college or university. It’s the lens through which you invite the world to view your work, your product, your significance. Many colleges and universities struggle to create a distinct brand. In truth, brands are not created. They exist, and it’s just a matter […]
Colleges and universities are rebranding themselves at an increasing rate. Here are a five common reasons for a brand makeover: 1. “We need to reach new frontiers.” We want to widen the nexus, expand our reach, grab new markets, seek new revenue streams. 2. “The world has changed and we are still relevant.” The world […]
When choices proliferate, branding ascends. The Internet has created a truly global marketplace. More national competitors and more international competition from Europe, India, China and Brazil are acting as a forcing function for the adoption of branding by B2B Manufacturers. When it comes to branding, the only way to see the world is through the […]
Suddenly it’s very quiet. How would you react if 25% of your active customer base got up and left on the same day? Would you become concerned? Perhaps, if you’re a business owner. But not if you’re a college enrollment manager, right? Because it’s commonplace. It’s commencement, and students are leaving in droves right now across […]