The Higher Ed Marketing Blog

I love Animoto. I’ve written previously about doing several productions on commencement and alumni weekend, packaging dozens of photos with music using Animoto and posting them on Youtube. They’ve brought a whole new audiences to us.

Last week we discovered one more. As Christie, my student employee, and I stood out of the porch enjoying a break, a helicopter flew over and circled. “What’s up with that?” Christie asked.

“It’s for Camp Cadet,” I said, realizing I’d forgotten all about it. The helicopter landed behind the mountain on the football field for a demonstration. “Let’s send Matt up for photos,” I said.

Christie was way ahead of me. She and Matt spent the next three days photographing. Photos of the helicopter demo, the session with the drug-sniffing dog, covering a simulated crime scene, and lots of marching.

Camp cadet is sponsored by the State Police. The kids get up at 5:30 every morning, work out, eat breakfast and get on with activities, moving to each new spot in that well-rehearsed march which the kids seem to love.

“I have yet to get a picture of someone smiling,” Christie said after the third day. They were a pretty serious bunch. She went to the cafeteria during lunch. As she took photos she told the kids they were going to be on Youtube. The kids were excited. The counselors were excited. The State Police were excited.

At the end of the week, armed with several hundred photos, Christie spent the weekend producing two shows for Youtube.

Now I’m figuring that every kid will go home and check Youtube. They will text friends. Parents will check it out and call friends and relatives. It sounds like the state police will spread the word among their colleagues.

Again, these are new audiences we wouldn’t otherwise have had.

I’m not concerned about recruiting students. In this case I’m more interested in giving people that something extra, finding new viewers and underscoring that Mansfield is up on the technology.

And yes, we’re going to cover some more camps.

For this guest blog I asked Dick Jones of Dick Jones Communications for his thoughts on newspapers as the agenda setters and who sets the agenda as they continue to lose circulation. Here’s Dick’s response:

While most people no longer get their news directly from newspapers, the papers retain an important role as the agenda setters of the news.  That’s why it’s still essential for college and university publicists to get their stories into the newspapers.

At the local level, your TV assignment editors are taking many of their cues for the day’s news coverage from the stories in the morning newspaper—at least the stories that they think have some “visual” potential.  The stories that do not have video appeal turn up in text on the station’s website.  Zoning ordinance changes make bad television.

Too few local radio stations retain independent news operations anymore.   Where local radio news still exists they are reading wire stories (many of which were re-written from newspapers) and cribbing shamelessly from the local newspaper for others.  Sometimes this is done with attribution.  Not always.

Bloggers commenting on the foibles of the school board may have attended last night’s board meeting.  More likely, however, they read about it in the morning newspaper.  Or if they are commenting on a national issue, such as the relief efforts in the China earthquake, they got their info from a Google search which turned up a host of stories from newspapers and wire services.

It’s not much different at the national level.  The producers of the network television and cable news programs are scanning their agenda-setting newspapers for story ideas.  These include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA TODAY.

More often than I can count in my career, a big broadcast score has resulted after the story was covered by a national agenda-setting newspaper or a major wire service.   One of the more recent examples is a professor who wrote an op/ed for The Chicago Tribune about Presidents Day in February.  After it appeared he was interviewed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.”

So newspapers still matter even though fewer and fewer people read them.  That’s one reason why the collapsing economics of the newspaper business is  a concern.  If the newspapers go belly up who will be the agenda setters?

Something will fill the vacuum, of course.  Something will serve as the agenda setter for the news.  Something always has; always will.

As media relations professionals we will have to find whatever it is and successfully pitch them.

This year at commencement I practiced what I’ve been preaching. I went armed with Zoom H2 audio recorder, my Flip camcorder and my still camera. My photographer attended and my news director had his camera so I felt free just to roam and play.

The results? It was so windy that my audio was not usable. I shot some video of the band which turned out surprisingly well. I found a spot behind the stage where I could get still shots of our president congratulating and hugging the graduates with the sea of seated graduates and proud relatives in the background.

That’s it, from here on in, I’m traveling with my multimedia recording arsenal.

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Kyle James Stumbled my douchbags report. Kyle, it worked. I actually had a couple referrals from it.

I was expecting a barrage of visits from douchbag aficionados but really didn’t have any. D.W. did you attract perverts?

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Harvard and Yale’s struggle to attract low income students tells me two things:

-Their brand as elite Ivy League schools is so imbued that they’ll always have a struggle.

-Competition in the admissions area is getting tougher which means we in marketing have to work smarter.

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A new program which some of you may know about and are using. This from the press release:

Magnify has introduced a new service that promises to make it easy for Movable Type and WordPress publishers to incorporate media from a variety of sites.

Magnify Publisher is a native blog application that lets you search for video, text, and images, using key words and tags, and embed the content directly into a post, without ever leaving the WordPress or Movable Type dashboard. Magnify Publisher also offers Seesmic-like tools that let you shoot and publish videoblog posts using a WebCam.

If anyone has tried it, let me know how it works.

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A University of Leicester space scientist says text messaging is more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Space telescope—about 4.4 times more expensive.

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While I continue vacillating by “The Great Twivide,” I do want to share a couple interesting posts, one by Max Kalehoff, VP for marketing of Clickable on Why Twitter Matters and his five strategies for choosing who to follow.

In the comments, Ellen Leanse of Ellen Leanse consulting has a link to her blog in which she offers 10 really good Twitter tips.

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I found them, by the way, on TargetX’s Email Minute.

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While Stumbling last night I found a cool blog post on Cogent Metal on Firefox Smart Keywords.

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And this post by fortysomething on CSS organization for better efficiency.

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New Dick Jones guest blog coming this week. Dick is more knowledgeable about the print media than anyone I know. His thoughts and insights are invaluable and they continue to be read long after they’re posted. So, thanks Dick.

The Old College Try post on Super Villians Week: The New Media Douchebags sent me on a tour to find out more about the history of the term as a form of put-down.

My first stop was Wikipedia. Here’s part of the definition:

The word can refer to the rinsing of any body cavity but usually applies to vaginal irrigation, rinsing of the vagina. A douche bag is a piece of equipment for douching: a bag for holding the water or fluid used in douching (the term douche bag can also be used as an insult; see below for slang uses). To avoid transferring intestinal bacteria into the vagina, the same bag must not be used for a vaginal douche and an enema. . . . The slang usage of the term dates back to the 1960s.^[6] The metaphor of identifying a person as a douche is intended to associate a variety of negative qualities, specifically arrogance and malice.

I continued my search and found Saturday Night Live skits although this one doesn’t show the characters’ arrogance and malice as much as just being self-confident jerks.

I found videos on the subject that were so funny and well done I realized again that production quality isn’t as important as content which is why commercial TV is doing its awkward descent into fragmented irrelevance.

So this has been a real education for me. Douchebag is as entrenched in pop culture language as F— and M—F—- and it’s socially acceptable.

While the term seems to me to be really sexist, many women seem to have embraced it and use it along with their male counterparts.

So The Old College Try led me into sociology, the history of advertising, language (douche is French meaning “shower”), women’s history, birth control, “science” , hygiene and pop culture.

I’ll never be able to use it in my blog because it just doesn’t seem to be a good fit with higher ed (although every campus has its share of them ) but it was a great learning experience for me. The icing was the Lysol ads from 1928 and 1948 on feminine hygiene.

That’s right. Lysol and vaginal irrigation. Not a match made in Heaven but I finally have the answer to Why She Spends Evenings Alone.

Deborah Saline, chief operating officer at PR Works in Harrisburg, PA, taught a PR class at Bloomsburg University this semester and shares her observations of college students in Nexters Enter the Work Force Oh

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Ad Age blogger George Parker is catching up with the new wave of un-conferences, concluding that marketing conferences are becoming irrelevant.

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An interesting article in Advertising Age about adults spending more than half their media hours with TV. According to the survey, Internet advertising still is not faring very well. At the same time Wall Street marketers are ditching radio,TV and print for the Internet. What the survey doesn’t cover is the market that we’re interested in – the teens. And it does not address social networks. While it’s good information for what it’s trying to do, it does show that Advertising Age and traditional media are still catching up with what’s happening in communication today.

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Well, almost out of touch. They skim the market with this article, Is Your Consumer Using Social Media? They’re talking about a different marketing than what we’re looking at, but it’s worth the read.

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Interesting to see how Simmons Research breaks consumer categories into the “socially isolated,” “approval seekers,” etc. Don’t laugh. You’re probably in one of those categories yourself.

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The survey also showed that TV advertising overwhelmingly remains the most influential with 81.4% of the 25-54 adult segment, compared with advertising on internet (6.5%), newspapers (5.8%), radio (3.9%) and magazines (2.3%).

Those surveyed also overwhelmingly reported TV has the most persuasive advertising (69.9%). Only 9.5% of respondents said newspaper has the most persuasive advertising, followed by 8.1% magazines and 7.5% radio. Wow. Don’t tell the Wizard of Ads that.

To be honest, I don’t think the survey is even relevant. I’ve read too many articles that say the TV audience is bailing. The remaining are fragmented. What does it matter who’s the most persuasive in markets that are shrinking.

It overlooks a large and growing culture of people seeking information on products they’re interested in, comparing products and making their own decisions. How does nearly everyone find what they’re looking for? They Google. Google search. Google ads. Google world.

Traditional media and the corporate world are having a hard time making the transition from incessant message shouting to seeking consumer input and sharing information. (Am I too harsh here?)

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Two blog series I did – Drug Bust and Raging DJ – continue to be viewed, making me think that crisis PR is an in-demand subject. Over the years (oh, God, decades), I’ve dealt with a variety of crisis PR situations. I’ll do more posts on the subject in the future. In the meantime, if you don’t have your own blog and want to share your crisis PR stories, send them to me and I’ll publish you as a guest blogger.

Really! Give it some thought. Do it.

Email me at theperfectsong@gmail.com with “crisis PR story” in the subject box.

In my last post, guest Dick Jones wrote about the demise of newspapers, happening in part because they refuse to let go of their double digit profits. Ad Age has begun a series entitled Newspaper Death Watch. The first installment mentions many of the same problems Dick did. I’ll be following this series and provide a link to each installment. Intriguing stuff.

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Related to the death of newspapers and the huge transition we’re experiencing in news gathering- dissemination (and PR and marketing) is Chris Brogan’s post on Some Differences Between Pitching Mainstream Press and Bloggers. There are some marked differences and, of course, a lot of similarities.

Most revealing are the responses when Chris Twittered his friends for their opinions. Read this in full and think about it. There’s a lot about passion, opinions, homework, freebies . . .oh, yes, and pimping.

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Martin Weller is a Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK. I’ve subscribed to his blog, The Ed Techie for quite awhile but, like everyone else, I don’t get to all my feeds as often as I’d like.

In the virtual world this April 7 post, Whither the Blogosphere, might be considered old, but it’s relevant, well-written and thoughtful. It’s about the possible trend of bloggers moving away from the blogosphere and into different forms of communication on the Web. Martin writes in part:

What I think is happening is another example of technology succession. The blog was the primary colonizer for the barren landscape of online identity. The presence of this colonizer changed the environment, which made it more amenable to secondary colonizers. . .

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I found this interesting entry on The Ed Techie’s recent post, Making Connections 2.0

Blogger Tony Hirst was criticized harshly at a conference for having his laptop to do some live blogging. Both his account and the comments give some great insights into the schism between traditionalists and 2.0 practitioners.

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John C. Dvorak, VP at the former Podshow, explains the name change to Mevio. His post is short and to the point. The 68 responses range from agreement, to anger to thoughts on the term “podcasting,” branding, search engines, etc. Again, interesting insights into our fast-changing times.

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Finally, I need your insights and ideas.

Three weeks ago I did the three-part post on the drug bust. A week later I followed it up with a report on another one. As I posted them, each one attracted a larger-than-usual number of views. They continued to get a steady but lower number of views, which is the norm. Then, Friday night, views of these posts suddenly jumped way, way up. The views continued growing throughout Saturday, giving me one of my top five days ever. Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Any ideas as to why this seemingly untimely explosion of interest?

I couldn’t believe the timing of my drug bust posts with an actual second bust. What are the chances? One of the offshoots of the arrests that I didn’t mention in my last post was that the hits on my bust series doubled. Why? As people did searches for Thursday’s bust news they came upon my three-part series and clicked on them.

Hey, always a silver lining somewhere. . . .

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A big thanks to Ray Ulmer, vice-president for communications at Targetx who, in a post about good podcasting, used Mansfield University as an example, along with my initial goals that I have pretty much lived by.

I was familiar with TargetX but not with Ray’s blog. It’s concise, thoughtful and well-written. I’m a subscriber now.

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Drew McLellan at The Marketing Minute turned me on to Microsoft video that’s making the rounds on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, you must, along with his commentary.

On his latest post on Web Strategy by Jeremiah, the author lists some new search engines that track conversations about your company or school.

Just as interesting for Web and PR folks are the numerous comments, insights and questions.

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Just a general FYI as I record what I learn as I go, I’m changing the title to Lonely Girl, S*x, Mystery and Web 2.0. to Lonely Girl – the Creation Continues. We’ll see if that staves off the searches of the lonely, horny and perverted searching for something that has nothing to do with my post.

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Two Requests:

1. Our Web folks are getting ready to go live with a new web content management system. PR will be the first. The design is done. I’m looking for sites that have really cool category and content ideas. If you have some favorite sites – even your own—please send me the links.

2. I have to transcribe our podcasts. There are nearly 250, Has anyone used software like Dragon Naturally Speaking? If so, what was your experience? Our IT folks don’t recommend it and say it’s much better just to hire someone to transcribe. They’re probably right but I thought I’d check and see if anyone has used any electronic transcription programs.

Feedback, please!

Just when I think I have things figured out, somebody comes along . . . .

From everything I’ve read, the radio industry is imploding. I’m still placing regular spots both regionally and state-wide but have planned within a few years to shift all promotion to the Web.

Then Wizard of Ads guru Roy H. Williams comes along calling radio “the best value” of any type of media. “I believe 2008 will be a major growing-up year for radio and readers of the Monday Morning Memo need to understand what’s going on,” the Wiz says in a recent post. I respect Williams a lot. I’ve seen him person twice. On stage he’s dynamic, electric. In person, he’s quiet and shy.

He’s also an advertising visionary.

Check out his thoughts and see if you agree.

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I had also concluded that there’s not more of a handful of kids in the civilized world that read newspapers. Then last week a business professor friend stopped me on campus and said he had taken his class to New York City for a competition. He took pictures of them. “Several of them asked me if the picture could be in their hometown newspapers,” he said.

Maybe it was a fluke or maybe I’m off base on this one, too.

No. It was a fluke.

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Check out Advertising Age’s article, “Yahoo Makes Goo Goo Eyes at Google. There’s a strange dance going on among Microsoft, Yahoo and Google and it’s going to affect us all. Oh, and there’s Rupert Murdoch pacing along the edge of the dance floor.

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Good article in Podcasting News on podcasting, Madison Avenue’s Worst Nightmare and the phenomenon Willitblend which increased its business 500% with its zany videos.

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Also through Podcasting News I found a cool site entirely devoted to microphones. (Umm, yes, I love mics). Professor S.O. Coutant’s features information about a large variety of microphones used in broadcasting and recording studios.

The site delves into the most commonly used mics in broadcasting, as well as articles on communication pioneers. There’s also a page devoted to early celebrities and the mics they used, including the first host of the Today Show in 1952.

My favorite feature, however, is the play button below each photo which lets you hear how each mic sounds in the studio.

A lot of work went into this site.

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100 college presidents and athletic directors are lobbying NCAA President Myles Brand to rethink the presence of alcohol ads on broadcasts of games. They feel that college sports and beer advertising are a “bad mix.”

I gave this one some thought and, concluded: yes, I’ll drink to that. . ..

I was overwhelmed by the hits and thoughtful responses to my last post. It became obvious that the changing nature of our respective fields is on the minds of a lot of professionals. I would appreciate any other thoughts.

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Virtual manipulation! Watch your avatar! Fascinating article about an experiment with avatars and human behavior.

I was reading with mild interest until I hit this sentence: “That kind of manipulation can also be used by marketers and advertisers. And author Mr. Bailenson foresees widespread use of virtual reality by commercial interests to push products or services.” Fascinating in a scary sort of way.

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Andrew Careaga ribbed me for lifting his title and adding a “the” and “blog”. Here’s the story. Two years ago I thought I’d experiment with a blog just to see what it was all about. I had my Jedi Web Geek, Jared Barden, help me set it up on Word Press. We sat in my office after dining at MacDonald’s, his favorite restaurant. When we finished he said, “What do you want to call it?” I had thought about it but hadn’t come up with anything. I knew enough about blogs to know the title should relate to the subject. After a half hour of doing searches and finding all my ideas taken, we tried “thehigheredmarketingblog” because “higheredmarketing” was already in use. (Such a small world.)

My JWG argued against it because it’s long and clunky. I agreed and still do but in this world of change, I’m going to remain steadfast after working to build a community of readers. I told Andrew in a comment that occasionally I’ll ask my readers to go up to my url, delete “the” and “blog” and hit enter. Off they go to higheredmarketing.

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Congratulations to Andrew Shaindlin. The Chronicle picked up his posting on what alumni associations might look like in 10 years. You can find his original post  here or at BlogHighEd.

I’m a little behind because the last post took longer to write than I anticipated. Actually, a final draft that’s clear, concise and hopefully a little entertaining is, as Bush said about being President, “a lot of hard work.” (I think he said it 10 times in that one short speech, meaning being a Presidential speech writer is really hard work).

I know it’s against the quick-turnaround philosophy of blogging but I usually write something, set it aside, come back and revise 3-5 times. Why?

I’ll answer that in an upcoming post.

Okay, I’ve been wrestling with something for months and Matthew Herzberger’s recent post really pulled things together for me.  Well, actually it was the comments that brought things into focus. 

What I’d like is for you to go to his post, read it and the comments.  Then come back here.

(Time passes. . . .)

Okay, you’re back? 

Matt’s post was a well-done rant of a passionate, frustrated Web guy who needs to reach out and share his thoughts (and despondency) with others of us who have felt the same need to find a high cliff.

Several people agreed with him. 

Then Karyn entered. 

Whoah!  New spin on this discussion!

It was an extraordinary conversation, the kind we should be having more often. 

We have stats freaks.  We have Matt who likes stories and anecdotal evidence (same here, but I’m wading into the world of stats at the strong request of my boss). 

But most importantly, we have actual discussion among professionals from different fields of expertise.  

There are three groups today that should be merging and working as one team: The Web team, public relations, and admissions. 

As PR director, I work closely with admissions to motivate students to inquire about our university.  After they inquire, it’s up to admissions to lead them through the next steps.

We try to reach students through traditional advertising and, increasingly, marketing on the Web. 

So I need to understand how the admissions process works.  The admissions director has taken me through a full recruiting cycle.  I’ve gone out on the road with them to college fairs and high schools to experience the break-neck pace, the rushing crowds, smart students and students who should pursue careers as shepherds.

I need to understand Web folks, how they think, talk, and operate and the pressures they face daily.   They also need to understand my role in PR, marketing, and being responsible for the institution’s image.  We need not only to interact, but to actually work together. 

While each of us has several departmental goals, our common goal is to make a variety of publics aware of the university in a truthful, positive manner.

At Mansfield, the Web folks, admissions and PR have been talking more frequently with the development of a content management system.  I’m sure we’ll continue working together after it goes live. 

And I think discussions like the one on Matt’s post should continue. 

In his comment, Kyle  said : “We are the pioneers and the explorers.”  Okay, that means the rules are still being formed.  We’re still defining the terrain.  And, hopefully, we’re coming together as a team, learning each other’s language and experimenting our way toward a common community.

The beauty of the Matt post/discussion is that the various points  of view are presented in a civil, respectful way by thoughtful, passionate professionals.

It made me think.

And that’s what higher education is all about.

What are your thoughts?