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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Anyone involved in higher education marketing and branding could learn something from the annual ritual known officially as the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting, or more commonly, the Draft. In the early days of the league, the Draft played out in quiet seclusion, owners and general managers holed up in a New York hotel, ordering […]
Girl walks across campus. Not the kind of information that higher education marketing types rush back to their desks to share with the world. But as This American Life creator Ira Glass reminds us, sometimes the distance between information and story can be covered in one simple question: And then what happened? On the campus […]
Brand managers, take note. Researchers are finding out that insecticides introduced in the 1990’s are causing the decline of bee colonies two decades later. Similarly, the impact of poor branding may not be felt for a decade or two, but ultimately it will catch up. I see several colleges, companies and non-profits doing a reckless […]