Fifty-nine percent of Americans believe they can judge a company’s values by its online presence. That’s according to a new study by MS&L and reported in Brandweek. So, first, what’s your online presence (and we’re talking about more than just your Web site) say about your school’s values?

The study, which polled 6,000 consumers worldwide, also found that consumers are increasingly driven to identify leading companies as those that are “innovative, financially secure, ethical and possess the biggest market share.” This means traditional notions of competitive advantage are shifting, and that means how you communicate your values must shift as well:

The findings underscore the need for marketers to shift their business focus from being “driven by a coherent set of core values” to one that emphasizes how those “values [can] be communicated effectively at every touch point or companies risk undermining both their relationships with their customers and their long-term success,” said Mark Hass, CEO of MS&L Worldwide, a brand communications and consultancy network headquartered in New York.

Schools too often take their values as a given. After all, information about those Spring Break service trips are posted in the news archive and that page with the mission statement has been on the Web site for years. But the fact is, the values that an institution projects are generally (to extend Donald Rumsfeld’s epistemological categories) “unknown knowns.” That is, they’re things we don’t know we know because we’re too close to them. When we spend the bulk of our time talking to people who are equally invested in and knowledgeable of the institution’s values, we take it for granted that those values are apparent to everyone. However, what you say your brand values are and the values you project can be radically different. (And, at any rate, as this study indicates, consumers aren’t interested in what you say your values are; they’re inferring your values based on what they see or experience.) Take the example of the campus tour: How many schools tout their individualized approach to education–to large groups of prospective students and their families? Think prospects who are looking at everything with a critical eye–and who are hyper-aware of propaganda–don’t spot the disconnect?

Other findings:

72% of U.S. respondents believe that companies can have values just like the public does.

75% of Americans said companies have both a “higher purpose” and want to be financially successful, with honesty being a core component of that success.

56% of Americans said it is crucial for them to know about the values of the companies they do business with, while 33% said this was somewhat important.

Respondents polled in the survey also rated a company’s competition in the marketplace (87%) to be as important as environmental responsibility (82%).

While price and quality may be the primary purchase influencers in tough times, in the long run, it’s values that matter the most. 77% of consumers in the U.S. said they either strongly agree or somewhat agreed with that statement.

By now everyone in higher ed with an internet connection has posted about the misrepresentation in Facebook groups. (Inside Higher Ed’s summary here.)  At the Stein HQ we’ve been commenting that this is a great opportunity to explore the benefits of an institution building their own social network for admitted students.

Exclusive access to the community. If you can invite your admitted student pool with a unique identifier required to register, there’s no chance of any College Prowler interns posing and getting in. At the same time, the students know all their peers have been invited in, vs. facebook where only the over eager beaver types search out groups and join on their own initiative.

Insights and oversights.  Look for a product where you can see the discussions and address them appropriately. I’m not advocating that admission officers lead the discussions and that every staff member should have their own profile. But in a worst case scenario, you have the contact information on every member to handle any situation confidentially.

You might be wondering if the “official” presence would hinder the freeflowing conversation we have all seen on institution’s facebook groups and other online forums.  Stein has a social networking tool that has been on the market for five years (which actually predates facebook) and in that time, we have seen students discussing everything from their scholarship offers at other schools to what dorm they said they wouldn’t want to live in. Clearly it has not been our experience to see any reluctance from students to talk about whatever they wish.

Boosts yield. We have all seen that the extra excitement built around the school in online forums does help students along in their enrollment decision process. For one of our clients, 75% of the students who used the site ended up enrolling.

Now, this is not to say there isn’t tangible value to participating actively on existing sites like facebook. But to do so effectively, it is important to dedicate resources to maintaining your school’s presence. (See mStoner’s recommendations.)

While colleges and universities bemoan the admissions frenzy, high schools keep upping the ante.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on student athletes eschewing the use of private athletic-recruiting counselors, which can be quite costly. Instead, they are using do-it-yourself web sites to promote their talents to coaches at colleges and universities throughout the country. The burst of online methods available to help student athletes promote themselves demonstrates how the web continues to change the way prospective students participate in the recruitment process.

One of the hottest sites, according to the WSJ, is beRecruited.com. Students spend $39.99 to post their resume, along with photographs and videos of them in action. A huge savings compared to the typical cost of hiring a counselor. Of course, sites like beRecruited.com rely on coaches’ willingness to weed through a lot of information to land on talent they might ultimately want to pursue. Relying on a counselor to assist with the process is certainly a more direct, time-effective way to identify desirable talent. That said, if a school relies mostly on recommendations of this kind, they might be missing out on low-income students who can’t pay the $700 and up fees associated with hiring a private counselor or consultant. The availability of cost-effective, online resources can only help ensure that more students ultimately find the school that is right for them.

Brad Ward at Squared Peg has discovered what appears to be an effort by College Prowler to co-opt Facebook groups for stealth marketing campaigns. This is all still sketchy, but the evidence is pointing to interns for College Prowler joining Class of XXXX Facebook groups and gaining admin rights.

What the implications of this are isn’t clear, but if you have an unauthorized Class of XXXX group on Facebook (and, of course, you do), it’s worth checking out Ward’s list of suspicious names and paying attention to this.

UPDATE: The president of College Prowler has taken responsibility (this comment was posted to Squared Peg):

Yes, College Prowler has been directly or indirectly involved with the creation of multiple Class of 2013 groups. The original purpose was to use these groups as a way to inform students that they can access a free guide about their new college on our site. No employee or anyone else associated with College Prowler has used these groups to send out messages or wall posts.

Until about an hour ago, I was unaware that College Prowler was working with another company that may have been using fake aliases to create to these groups. The groups that College Prowler was responsible for creating were set up with real accounts. Here are the names that are associated with College Prowler, and they will all be removed immediately from the Class of 2013 groups(all other names are not controlled by College Prowler):
• Mark Tressler
• Ron Tressler
• Brenna Young
• Lisa Young
• Lauren Plavchek
• Jessica Lash

From a big picture perspective, having a marketing strategy using social networking sites (like Facebook) is something that is necessary to be effective in our business. We do pride ourselves on being forward thinking and aggressive. In this instance, in its current form, we have crossed the line and to reiterate, we will be removing our administrator privileges from all of these 2013 groups immediately.

NewTeeVee provides highlights of Deloitte’s “The State of the Media Democracy” report, which will be released at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show. In the meantime, here are some relevant data:

Millennials (ages 14 – 25) spend more time with media per week, but less time watching television, and mobile devices are primary entertainment channels for them.

Television remains the most impactful and influential advertising medium across all age groups, and watching television was the most preferred type of media for consumers as whole. Millennials were the exception with their media preferences scattered across TV, movies and the Internet; all were important to them

Fewer people are willing to pay for content in exchange for an ad-free environment. The percentage of people willing to cough up for no ads dropped to 26 percent in 2008 from 37 percent in 2007.

Millennials watch more UGC than professionally-produced content online, and they say they do so because it is more entertaining than traditional media choices.