Ideas, insights and inspirations.

Tonight, the Pittsburgh Pirates host their first playoff game in more than two decades, just a few blocks away from Elliance headquarters. What might anyone involved in higher education branding take away from the most surprising team in Major League … Continue reading

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F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”. At Elliance, we have made it … Continue reading

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The closer my son gets to college age (t-minus three years) the more I ask myself: “Does the work I do listening for and giving voice to higher education brands actually help prospects and parents make sound choices?” In an … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

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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 … Continue reading

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I presented at a higher ed conference recently. I was intrigued by another presentation, which was all about cool. I started thinking about the anatomy of cool and communications in general. I decided to capture the repetitive patterns in the … Continue reading

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