Entries from March 2007
Okay, it’s that time of year again for another little tempest about U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges.” The protest is by the losers in this silly, shallow popularity contest.
This time around, the leaders of the losers are talking about developing a boycott.
It won’t work.
We live in America where people want to be told what’s best and worst. Newspapers, magazines, the Web, are cluttered with “The 10 Best,” “The Top 100,” “The 50 Most Beautiful People. . . ” etc.
Look at U.S. News’ America’s Best Colleges as a precursor to American Idol and a host of reality shows that aren’t quite real.
But U.S. News isn’t totally to blame. College administrators bought into the game early on. They also quickly learned how to inflate figures, position and maneuver to work their way up in the rankings. (Higher education is where we deliver courses on ethics. Oh, wait! We also have courses on evil and serial killers).
A few years later, in a world where the 80-20 formula rules, the 80 percent at the bottom began crying “unfair.”
It is unfair, of course, but both parties played.
I’d like to see the tainted popularity contest disappear as much as anyone, but we live in a society where we beg the media to tell us what’s good and bad.
America’s Best Colleges will thrive because “best and worst” sells.
Irony: Any of us in higher ed marketing would smother ourselves in our spreadsheets to get half the free publicity U.S. News reaps each year from telling us who’s “best.”
Categories: higher education
I’ve thought about this for several days, not wanting to write about it.
I’m going to do it anyway.
I was disappointed with the first TV episode of This American Life on Showtime. It was well done, as I expected. Tall, skinny, nasal-voiced Ira Glass is a great TV host.
But I already saw the shows and the first time I saw them they were much richer, expansive and intimate. The show, about the cloned bull Second Chance, I saw on a sunny summer afternoon while leveling gray stones in white sand on our fieldstone patio. In my mind the bull was huge. On our 42″ screen he was just big. When the scene of Second Chance attacking owner Ralph Fischer played on my silver boom box, it was horrifying. On TV it seemed nonexistent. When the Fischer’s injuries were described on the radio show I created some pretty gruesome images. When the TV camera focused on the farmer in the hospital bed, he didn’t look too bad.
It was an educational moment for me. I’ve always promoted the power of the spoken word and the “theater of the mind.” Now, watching the TV show, I was actually experiencing the power of words shrink as they partner with visual images. When we are given images, the theater of the mind closes down.
The show had its great moments, ie. the woman showing Chance’s hide, complete with empty head. The scene was touching, grotesque and hilarious. Or Glass, sitting at a desk, totally businesslike, on an open highway.
I saw Ira Glass perform a few years ago in Ithaca, NY. His only props were recording equipment. He sat at the console. There was one spotlight. The rest was left to our imagination.
I’ll continue to watch TAM on TV because Ira has one of the most original minds in the business.
I also continue to watch This American Life on radio.
That’s where the big screen is.
I know Director Tom is a big TAM fan and I’d be curious to hear his reaction, and anyone else who has an opinion.
Categories: Uncategorized
By now you’ve probably seen the Hilary Clinton/1984 mashup because in today’s world, word-of-mouth translates into instant international. Any of us in the business immediately saw the potential of this type of marketing.
Apparently many others did, too. What intrigues me about this is:
-the speed at which it flashed through the cyber world;
-the speed with which others produced other similar parodies;
-the fact that someone opened the door to a new style of guerilla marketing, one that could distort facts and become more vicious than the last election’s TV ads;
-the fact that commercial TV news covered it. Basically, traditional media is reporting regularly on a medium that is quickly eating into traditional media;
-candidates en masse are going to pull ad dollars from TV and radio and put them into web video production;
I’m going to continue to follow this phenomenon.
Any opinions? Anything I’ve missed?
Categories: Uncategorized
In my March 13 post about Karine Joly’s CASE CURRENTS article on the User Generation I said it was too bad the article wasn’t available on the Web. (It is available for a limited time).
Rae Goldsmith from CASE, sent a comment explaining CASE’s position, and in fairness to the organization –of which I’m a member — I’m reprinting here, since many who already read the post might not see the comment.
“Hello. I appreciate the thoughts about Web access but do need to correct the perception that CURRENTS is not available online. CURRENTS is actually posted online before the print edition comes out (see www.case.org), and back issues since 1998 are also available and searchable online. It does require log-in access, as CURRENTS, like many association magazines, is a benefit to professional CASE members for which their institutions pay an additional fee above and beyond the costs for institutional membership. We make some career development and management content available at the CASE Career Center online without requiring professional membership. We are also assessing other types of content that we can make available without erroding the value of CURRENTS for those who pay to receive it.
We always welcome input from members.”
Categories: Uncategorized
I won’t say Ira Glass is my hero because the image, the concept of hero has been commercialized, overused and, (as Amerian media is wont to do,) driven into the dusty bargain bin of overused words, phrases and slogans.
But I’ve been following This American Life since it debuted on PRI in 1996.
I’m indebted to Director Tom for picking up this link from yet Idea Sandbox. Check out the Ira Glass promos–on YouTube– for his new show that begins airing March 22 on Showtime.
Ira is a radio pioneer, using the oldest concept in human history — the story — which I’ve talked about before.
Also, check the wikipedia entries on him. Fascinating information.
I have two favorite TAM shows. For pure laughs it’s the Squirrel Story told by a New York police officer. The second, for drama and insights into the human condition, is the story of inmates in a Louisiana (I think) penitentiary who stage a version of Hamlet. ( I did do a quick search of the TAM archives but just plain ran out of time).
Do you have a favorite This American Life episode?
Let me know. I’d love to do a post on favorite This American Life shows.
Categories: Uncategorized
I was intrigued and totally confused after reading “Tangled Up in Tech,” in the March 16 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. The reporter talks with admissions deans and media designers about the “promises and pitfalls of electronic recruiting.” The bottom line is no one really knows how to get to high school students electronically. IM has its down side (intrusion). Blogs by administrators don’t have total credibility. Blogs by students should be monitored. Creating a profile of your institution on a social-networking site is a bit like being “invited to dinner and you start selling Amway during desert,” according to Robert Sevier of Stamats, a company that advises colleges on marketing.
It was also notes that someone hacked into Roanoke Bible College’s My Space profile and linked it to a porn site.
By now it’s pretty common knowledge that students view emails as the way old people communicate.
Steve Thomas director of admissions at Colby College, has found that hiring students to log on to Instant Messenger has been very successful.
Campus tours on your Website are good but should be real. (One of the hardest things in higher ed marketing is total honesty. Who wants — or who is allowed — to point out your college’s weak spots or flaws even though high school students consistently ask for total honesty?)
Stamats and others strongly advise that we keep our printed materials because parents are more involved than ever in their child’s choice of a college.
At Mansfield University, the admissions director and I have been experimenting with post cards, addressing them to the high school student, knowing that in all probability the moms will also see them. Are they successful? As usual, hard to tell. We did a large mailing of post cards pushing our podcast show. I haven’t really seen a huge numbers spike. On the other hand we did get inquiries from the post card marketing our fisheries program, but that was targeted to a specialized audience.
I’ve read the Chronicle article several times now.
Conclusion: finding one successful way to reach high school students is like collecting a cup of dust in a rainstorm.
If you read the Chronicle piece, I’d be interested in your thoughts.
And if you’ve tried different successful approaches, such as post cards, YouTube, etc., it would be great if you could share them.
Categories: mansfield university
My wife’s mother lives with us.
My wife’s sister sent mother a Cold Water Creek gift certificate for $100. They ordered a sweater and top which totaled $114. My wife put the extra $14 on her credit card.
When the sweater arrived, they found it was the wrong size and sent it back. A Cold Water Creek representative called and said my wife’s credit card would be billed for $114.
What ensued was a 30-minute conversation with my wife explaining over and over that she was returning the top for a larger size and that $100 of that was from a gift certificate. The rep did not understand and said we’d be billed for $114. Exasperated, my wife asked to speak to the woman’s manager. At first the manager was cold and formal, but after 10 minutes did understand the problem.
My wife’s mother may or may not receive the right size top. We may or may not be billed $114.
Why do I say “may or may not?” Because we have no confidence in Cold Water Creek now. This probably isn’t fair. Maybe my wife just got a dud of a rep. But fairness isn’t the issue. The feeling is.
What are the short term effects of the communication lapse? Well, my wife will probably think long and hard about ordering anything else from there.
What are the long term effects?
Ripples.
My wife will tell her friends and relatives about the experience. I’ll tell folks in my office. Chances are pretty good that they’ll tell at least their spouses. Chances are very good that someone these people know will mention Cold Water Creek — could be tomorrow or a year from now. And one of these friends –two or three times removed — may well say, “Hmm. I have a friend who had a bad experience there.” They don’t even have to remember what the bad experience was. In this era of fast thoughts and short messages, “bad experience” is all a listener needs to hear.
Good and bad experiences apply everywhere — businesses, organizations, colleges and universities.
Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful and works both ways. The world is a very small place these days.
People talk, email, text message.
And they blog.
Categories: Uncategorized
The CASE article I wrote about yesterday, “User Generation” by Karine Joly, is now available
until April 15. So share it with your president, VPs and other decision-makers. CASE editors, thanks for making this important document available to non-subscribers.
Categories: Uncategorized
For the past couple years I’ve felt that if an article is in a monthly magazine, it’s usually at least six months behind info you can find on the web.
Okay, after attending the College University PR Association of Pennsylvania recently, I found, as I mentioned in a previous post, that most higher ed PR pros have not even wiggled their toes in Web 2.0 waters.
So, fellow PR people, read “User Generation,” an excellent summary of all 2.0 by Karine Joly in the March issue of CASE Currents. The collegewebeditor founder gives the background on 2.0 and breaks all aspects into understandable, bite-sized chunks.
She also rather brilliantly one-ups Marshall McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” by concluding that “the conversation is the message.”
Nice.
Karine also includes plenty of examples, sites and blogs to visit or subscribe to. She also mentions Mansfield University podcast and the University of Florida as well as a number of other universities and sites.
Really, you need to read this if you’re not in the 2.0 world because sooner or later you will have to be.
CASE Currents is a member-only magazine but most higher ed people are either members or should have access to it.
That’s right. CASE publishes an article on Web 2.0 communications and does not make it available outside its own paper pages.
Great irony. The CASE bureaucracy cannot keep pace with its own content.
Nevertheless, try to get the article. It’s worth the effort. If you can’t, subscribe to collegewebeditor.com and you’ll get all the information and more.
Next post, an equally important article by Joe Hice, University of Florida on “Hiding In Plain Sight.”
Categories: Uncategorized
Some stories spread like wildfire fueled by gasoline. The student narcissism story that made the rounds in early March was one.
Nearly all the students I know at Mansfield University are nice, considerate, polite and respectful. I’m talking about students holding a door for you (as I do for them). I’ve been in meetings with them, and met with them one-on-one. My work study students are models of hard-working, young people from working class families. I found the narcissism study hard to believe. So I decided to ask two of my podcast students. One is a general ed major getting ready for a semester in Mexico and one is a chemistry major with an emphasis in forensics.
Their answers surprised me.
They agreed with most of the study.
You can listen to the conversation on the Mansfield University Podcast. Hearing their ideas in their own words always provides new insight into their lives and thoughts.
Categories: podcast
