Marketing to those who hate marketing: Bling

A professor showed me a clever piece the other day with a simple diagonal die-cut that was accordion-folded for five panels, creating an attractive and interesting zig-zag effect. He hated it.

"Too showy, not serious enough," he described. He saved it as an example of what not to do when targeting faculty.

Tip #2: Forget the bells and whistles. For every person who gives a "wow—that's cool" reaction to an interesting publication shape or feature, you're likely to get two or more who respond with "wow—what a waste of tuition dollars." Depending on the purpose of the piece and your audience, some things can stand out in the mail for all the wrong reasons. Lenticular printing, die cuts, giveaways and other tactics may help distinguish a direct mail piece, but in a time when IHE budgets are being tightened nationwide, budget-conscious recipients may discount your institution's fiscal responsibility.

Solid message development and creative design doesn't require printed bling to be effective. Even if you've got the budget for such tactics, spending those funds on other applications is likely to give you much more bang for the buck.

Marketing to those who hate marketing: Why?

I think I may have put the cart before the horse on my last post by diving straight into tactics before strategy. So let's answer the bigger question: What's the point of marketing to groups who hate marketing?

First, let me better define marketing in this context. The first reference to marketing is what we do: developing and communicating programs that provide value to our defined markets. The second reference to marketing refers to advertising tactics meant to persuade individuals to buy a product or service.

There are two major audiences in graduate and professional schools who usually have disdain for traditional advertising: Gen Y students who value authenticity and academics who value substance over style. Notice any similarities?

Thankfully, the strategic approach for addressing both of these groups is the same. Be straightforward. Don't let form get in the way of function. And if you work for a great institution with solid academic programs, the best thing we can do is share its story without diluting the impact with tactics that could backfire (which is what the rest of this series will cover).

Related posts:

• Marketing to those who hate marketing: Gloss

Marketing to those who hate marketing: Gloss

It's no secret that graduate and professional schools are full of savvy, smart consumers. High-achieving students and scholarly professors are, almost by definition, independent thinkers, and most hate to be marketed to.

So how can a professional communicator best reach these marketing-cynical audiences? By re-thinking typical marketing practices for a potentially skeptical audiences, small choices can make a big difference. For my next few posts, I'll hit on some simple ways your marketing communications can be more effective with academic audiences.

Tip #1: Watch the gloss. Nothing says "slick marketing piece" like a high-gloss design. While many--if not most--color designs look best on a coated sheet, there can be such thing as too much of a good thing. I once heard a professor mock a brochure from another institution as portraying its faculty as "god-like creatures" due to the super-shiny gloss spot varnish on its cover portraits. If you're going for a highly formal or serious academic message, consider skipping the shine entirely and print on an uncoated sheet.

I want a new website for my department. Now what?

It's an increasingly rare request: to start a new website from scratch for a department. Redesigns, yes. Website expansions, all the time. New landing pages for marketing, of course. But creating a new site for a department or program that has lived without one for the past 15 years since the World Wide Web went mainstream? Not so much.

Yet as I've recently began the thought process for educating a program director on how to build a good website, it has become a good refresher on the foundational concepts that we all should be considering when working on any Web project:

1. What do you want your website to do, and who do you want it to serve? Go no further until you can answer these questions. Every other decision streams from knowing what goals you want your site to accomplish and for whom.
   
2. What content should the site include? Since most websites serve first as informational resources to outside audiences, it's good to assess what you're already publishing for these groups. Do you have print brochures, news releases, advertisements or information on other websites about your program? For example, an academic program might not already have its own stand-alone site, but the program's faculty may already have their own biographical sites. If there are frequently asked questions that your program receives via phone, that information may also help guide the content of the site. Do remember to include a description of what the department/program does, the main contact information, and the physical location.
   
3. What information or functions are most important? Use the answers to #1 and #2 to develop the information architecture of the page. A good website sets priorities and communicates them to the user. Trying to clutter too many links on a program's home page confuses users and ultimately will make your entire site less effective.
   
4. Once you build it, who will maintain it? Building a website creates the responsibility for keeping its information current and accurate. Who will handle that responsibility? Will they be trained in maintaining the information themselves, or will they need to work with someone who already has that knowledge? How often should the site's information be reviewed and updated? A department that has survived this long without a website may not appreciate the long-term commitment they represent. Websites are not one-time projects that season as they age; their owners must preserve their content lest they rot.
   

Halloween in Higher Ed

Every year, our faculty support office holds a Halloween party complete with costume and pumpkin decorating contests. It's a blast to observe, though it usually appears that there is only 10-15% participation in the costume contest (and I'm not in that group).

In a law school where professionalism is paramount, it's easy to see why the holiday isn't widely observed during office hours. Our dean has been known to visit offices with treats (God bless her!), but our communications office has remained firmly in the no-costume camp. One year, I tried to go as our events coordinator since people frequently mixed us up, but alas, our campus was hosting a moot court competition that day and she wouldn't let me borrow her name tag.

For those of you who are considering dressing up for work (or perhaps managing the fall-out by others who do), here are some interesting resources:

• What costumes might breed fear in the hearts of faculty? Check out what the staff at Inside Higher Ed compiled a few years ago from academics across the nation.
  
  
• The Society for Human Resource Management recommends that organizations set costume guidelines, enforce dress codes and discipline when necessary for costumes that are too revealing or offensive.
  
  
• What better way to celebrate Halloween at work than by using it as an excuse to preach your brand? Last year, D.W. of the Old College Try blog dressed as her school's official color, Pantone 281. I'm considering printing sandwich-board-sized versions of our incorrect inverse logo (aka "Halloween tower") to educate the campus on what not to do.
  
  
• Author/blogger Michael Stelzner offers three simple marketing lessons from Halloween:
  1) if you want someone knocking on your door, turn on the light, 2) be prepared to give something away, and 3) engage visitors and they will love you. His readers offer some other great takeaways in the comments section.
  

Social Media and Faculty Publicity

Faculty stars. You know who they are, and so do they. They may be prolific authors, influential activists, professional leaders or international speakers. Their achievements are frequent and important within their spheres of influence.

And these stars want you to magnify their shine through publicity.

Not too long ago, there weren't many options for handling stellar, PR-happy faculty. You could give into their requests for publicity in the few channels available (namely news releases or institutional publications), featuring them with such frequency that other quieter professors become obscured. The other option was to draw a line in the sand and say no, offending the well-regarded faculty member. Needless to say, both options had significant drawbacks.

Enter the social Web to the rescue!

With a flexible and well-designed Web site and social media presence, higher ed communicators now have a broad range of tools at their disposal for promoting faculty achievements. Instead of saying "no, we can't write another news release about you" to a prestigious professor, we can now respond with "congratulations, we've already posted your news to your department Web page and our college's Twitter feed." Here is our new range of options:

• College/university magazine article
• News release
• Home page spotlight
• Lower-level Web site features (i.e., departmental home pages)
  
• Facebook update (reserved for accomplishments that reflect more widely on the institution)
  
• Twitter update
• Flickr/YouTube (if media available)
• "Faculty applause" or "Faculty in the news" Web pages
  
• Testimonial quotes/features in marketing materials
• E-newsletter profile