This time of year is like an early Christmas at Stein. Client projects are finishing up for fall delivery, and almost daily we get in samples of completed publications. Here are some recent printed pieces that are standouts.

Wesley College

Welsey College was looking for a complete redesign of its admissions campaign with a goal of shifting perception from a regional college to that of an academically innovative institution. 

We took a no-nonsense tone with the copy and created a sophisticated design to appeal to students pragmatism and high expectations. One cool aspect of the concept is that it uses atypical sizes. The viewbook is about 6 x 9 inches and the visit piece is conveniently back pocket-sized.  

Bo Uzzle, design; Taylor Trussell, writing; Kathryn Spruill, account. 

Wesley viewbook and visit piece
 

Woodberry Forest

The Woodberry Forest project involved extensive brand research and interviews. From our research we developed a brand narrative and key messages, the first expression of which is a new viewbook that captures Woodberry’s strong sense of brotherhood and academic rigor.

Bo Uzzle, design; Taylor Trussell, brand research and writing; Jennifer Bagley, account.

Woodberry viewbook spread

Arizona State University

ASU is being guided by a clear vision focused on the concept of the new American university. Our goal was to present this bold vision but without hyperbole, which could diminish its validity. Our concept for the resulting publications was storytelling with a purpose, defining the vision in the context of real people doing real things to make a real difference in the world.

Bonnie McQuagge, design; David Harrell, writing; Jay Williams, account.

ASU prospectus spread

– Terry Hamrick, Stein

Contributed by: Denis M. Stokes
Director of Admission, Christ School

From Part I of this marketing article, we know that marketing is multidimensional, consisting of Product, Place, Price and Promotion. In the first article, we focused on Product and Promotion. From that discussion, we know that marketing is outward looking — recognizing unmet needs or underserved needs in the marketplace and the decision to meet those needs. And, we know that Promotion, while an important dimension of marketing, is just one dimension and thereby complemented by and dependent upon the other dimensions. In this article, we cover the remaining dimensions: Place and Price.

When discussing Place in marketing it is often in the context of distribution points for a consumer good or service. If you are selling a grocery store item, context of place is not only maximizing the number of stores carrying your brand — unless, of course, your strategy calls for somewhat exclusive availability — but it also pertains to product positioning within the store. Likewise, there may be other channels of distribution that add to the places at which your product is available.

With education, and particularly so since Place of our institutions is well established long before our arrival, our influence over this dimension is limited. This is not to say that we cannot influence availability of our service. Consider what some colleges and universities have done with distance education, for example.

The fact that Place for our service is well-established may or may not be a limitation. Is New York University’s location in Greenwich Village of Manhattan appealing to all? Is Swannonoa, North Carolina, home to Warren Wilson College, appealing to all? The point is to acknowledge that place is an important dimension and influences the very experiences we offer.

Leverage your Place as effectively as you can and let it naturally influence the experience offered. Know, too, that while important, Place is traditionally the dimension over which we have least control.

Price, on the other hand, is something over which the institution yields much control. One way to consider Price is to look at your institution in relation to your competitors using two dimensions: Price and Quality. (This graph and its analysis below is also considered a market positioning map; that is, an illustration of your institution’s position in relation to your peer institutions — your direct competitors.)

Positioning Map observations: Institution A is at a quality deficit in relation to its competitors. Institutions B & C, while perceived to be of equal quality, Institution B is priced at a premium. Institution D is positioned most favorably in relation to its competitors — its quality is strongest and its pricing is in line with relative alternatives. In this example, Institutions A – D are boarding schools, while Institution E is a day school, which explains the significant cost differential between a day school experience and a boarding school experience.

As the admission director at a boarding school, I must consider as competition my peer institutions — other boarding schools against which we compete directly — but I must also consider independent day schools and, to a lesser degree, parochial schools. The key here, in my case, is to recognize that we cannot compete with day schools on price. Therefore price, for me, is only a potential point of differentiation when I compete directly against peer institutions.

While Price should be reflective of the cost of delivering your service, it is also commonly used to position an institution within the marketplace. The ideal is to be positioned within proximity to your direct competitors. Being conspicuously more or less expensive than your direct competitors is seldom a wise strategy.

Education is an interesting service in that — with the exception of state-supported universities, which often represent tremendous educational value — pricing below what is expected for quality education can create negative connotations of perceived quality. Thus education is a service where price is an inverse relationship to quality. Two additional points about pricing and positioning:

While families take pride in gaining admission to the most expensive institutions — oftentimes the brand-name schools — and some readily pay the premium for the unique experience provided, there is evidence that families do respond to a lower price through acceptable ways of discounting, i.e., scholarships.

On positioning: Note the entire educational marketplace consists of schools ranging from perceived quality of 1 through 10 and the graph above simply looks at a segment of the market. Thus, unless your school is in the top tier, as you consider repositioning your institution, consider the related dynamic of how your institution may be repositioned. Note the second positioning map below, an example of a school desiring to compete against more selective schools (i.e., schools with more resources and with notably more selective admission standards).

Repositioning Map observations: Repositioned Institution A is now at a quality deficit compared to schools to be of perceived significantly higher quality. The outcome: It will be very difficult for Institution A to capture market share against its new competitors. Institution A is simply picking a fight it is likely to lose more times than not. If a school wishes to reposition itself, its best hope is to first assure that it is a recognized regional leader or market segment leader.

Each dimension of marketing plays a key role in your institution in advancing its mission. It is important to note that while a well-planned marketing strategy is necessary, such must be preceded by an honest institutional assessment of its strengths, weaknesses — things over which the institution has control, and its opportunities and threats — things over which the institution has no control other than to attempt to anticipate.

Marketing is discussed at great length on many campuses today. As an admission professional, it is important for you to not only be a part of that discussion, but to lead it, to foster it and to make known that true marketing goes well beyond cutting-edge Web sites, viewbooks, and fancy advertising campaigns.

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Denis M. Stokes is Director of Admission at Christ School, a traditional boarding and day school for boys, affiliated with the Episcopal Church, just south of Asheville, North Carolina.

Contributed by: Denis M. Stokes
Director of Admission, Christ School

Higher education has admittedly been marketing for more than 25 years. I’ve had the opportunity to witness the rise of educational marketing since the early 1980s when I started as a young admission representative and had the good fortune to work for one of the best promoters ever.

Robin Roberts, the Director of Admission at my former institution, had a brochure for everything and a tagline for just about everything. He put our small, invisible college on the fore of promotion. We were among the few, at our level of play, purchasing thousands of Search names, courting inquiries through a series of well-timed mailings, and following up — if you can imagine — by way of phone calls.

The results were a string of years where all the important numbers increased: inquiries, applications, accepted students, and enrolled students. The model served the institution well for more than a few years, in part because it recognized that attention to marketing fundamentals was critical — especially when most colleges at the time were not paying attention to the fundamentals, nor did they see the need to.

It didn’t take long before schools learned from each other and began promoting to a degree of new proportions. Hence, the capable sophomore or junior in high school now measures the amount of unsolicited college materials received not by the number of schools but, literally, by the box full.

In turn, the astute institutions began to recognize that marketing is more than one variable. Indeed, we know from Marketing 101 that marketing is multi-dimensional and includes Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

Promotion gets the most play in marketing because of its visibility and the creativity involved, whether in print, radio, TV, direct mail, or otherwise. However, the hard work of marketing is acknowledging and addressing its other variables. While most schools claim to have comprehensive, integrated marketing plans, I suggest they probably have something less. What they likely have are plans that articulate the tactics of promoting the institution.

Consider the task of creating and offering a new product or service. The creation of such does not begin with a well thought-out promotional effort. Rather, it begins first and foremost with recognition of unmet needs or underserved needs in the marketplace. Thus, the exercise begins by looking outward, beyond that in which the institution is already engaged.

In our world of admission, most of us are working for institutions that are well-established or at least that have been around for a long time. So, the idea of creating anew is unrealistic. The idea, though, of looking outward remains applicable, for there is still the question of which market segment to serve. An all too common mistake is for an institution to rely on the misguided notion that if they simply promote their school properly, they will be fine.

Practical Advice: Resist the urge to articulate only your institution’s uniqueness.

The reason most colleges and universities fall short of effective marketing: To do so would require courage, honesty, and patience. An article in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago had the following equation:

Success = D x V x C > R

D = Dissatisfaction with the status quo
V = Vision for the future
C = Courage to take the first steps
R = Resistance to change

Think about your institution. In relation to the above equation, what degree of success are you having in meeting objectives of enrollment, net revenue, reducing the discount rate, and fundraising? Consider each part, study each part, and then relate it to your institutional culture.

Tori Murden, the first American and first female to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, had this to say in 1999 shortly after her heroic feat of 81 days and nearly 3,000 miles: “Many of us lead lives that are too small, too confined, too constricted. I do not wish to do this.”

Institutions, like people, are guilty of thinking too small, too confined, and too constricted. Change — as well as success — begins with institutional self-awareness and an appropriate framework from which to operate. Setting goals is important, but so is a realistic sense of what can be accomplished.

If you are pressed to meet your institutional goals, use the fundamentals of marketing to begin the conversation on your campus about why you may be falling short. If honest discussion follows, then stay the course. Anything short of honest discussion will put you in choppy waters.

In the next issue of The Scoop, expect a continued discussion of marketing fundamentals, with a focus on Price and Place.

—
Denis M. Stokes is Director of Admission at Christ School, a traditional boarding and day school for boys, affiliated with the Episcopal Church, just south of Asheville, North Carolina.

Contributed by: Wade Marbaugh
Publications Coordinator, Georgia Perimeter College

It takes a team to raise a college’s image.

The Georgia Perimeter College Office of Marketing and Public Relations carried that theme to its professional organization’s national conference in March. Director Jennifer Stephens hoped to share GPC’s experience with members of the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations, which met in Austin, Texas.

GPC has seen its MPR office transform from lacking in teamwork and having a low marketing orientation to launching a highly effective branding campaign in 2005. The emerging teamwork necessary to launch the drive involved more than participation by Georgia Perimeter’s personnel. Vendors such as Stein Communications played a big part in the transition, which involved potential competitors working side by side for a common goal.

Promotion of GPC has not always been inadequate. Public Relations director Ann Knight did a great job from the 1970s through the 1990s. However, by the turn of the millennium, Georgia Perimeter was besieged with problems.

The college had grown from a quiet suburban community college — DeKalb College — to a diverse, bustling urban institution. Then suddenly the baby boom ended, dropping enrollment drastically and bringing the need for aggressive marketing strategies.

Knight’s premature death in 2000 left the MPR office in a state of transition and relative disorganization. Budget slashes came with the recession of 2001.

“The evolution of the office from a one-person PR shop to a large, fast-paced MPR office brought about some inherent problems,” Stephens says. “And there was too much internal competitiveness, aggressiveness, and lack of teamwork. Stress levels were high. We needed a marketing plan and a communications plan.”

When Stephens took the helm in 2002, she began building a stronger organizational structure and nurturing a culture of teamwork. The group attended leadership, team-building and creative workshops; internal and external communications improved; new employees strengthened the staff; the office held lunch meetings and had other fun activities at meetings; meetings became more productive.

GPC brought in a marketing consultant, Sandra Golden and Associates. Golden began to steer the office and the college toward a marketing orientation.

Subsequently, Stephens and Jeff Tarnowski, GPC’s vice president of Institutional Advancement, initiated talks with Latham and Associates, a firm specializing in branding issues. That led to extensive focus group studies by Latham at the college’s six locations.

What occurred next may be groundbreaking in business technique — at least it is unique for GPC. In May 2005, the MPR office invited all of its major vendors, even potential competitors, to an Institutional Advancement retreat at which Latham presented its findings and recommendations.

Gene Middleton, Jennifer Bagley, Bonnie McQuagge, and contract writer Scott Suhr represented Stein Communications among the vendors attending the retreat.

That Stein was invited is no surprise. Stein and GPC go way back (from Stein’s days as Phoenix Communications), as Knight contracted with them for many years to design and print college recruiting materials. Through the 2000s, Stein has continued to design and print exceptional promotional pieces for GPC.

Other vendors in attendance included EM2 Design, a Decatur firm that designed two annual reports for GPC that won first and second place in the 2005 NCMPR national competition, and J & R Kern, a Gainesville agency that has produced remarkable print and broadcast ad campaigns for GPC.

“We felt that we should get all the vendors on the same page with the branding campaign,” Stephens explains. “That way we would unify our look and feel in all our promotional efforts.”

At the meeting, Latham proposed a branding campaign that focused on everything from use of the school colors to primary messages. Having the various vendors present produced immediate results.

In fall 2005, Stein produced an award-winning recruiting package — including a colorful viewbook and search piece — that incorporates Latham’s branding recommendations.

“It couldn’t have worked out better,” says Stephens. “The recruiting pieces are in full conformity with the spirit of that branding retreat. Stein even came up with a tagline that we’ve adopted for all other materials — ‘Two years that will change your life.’”

Stephens is quick to point out that “we’re not there yet.” Much remains to be done to perfect the teamwork approach, but her office runs a much more systematic promotion and branding of the college than in previous years. Sharing the branding campaign with vendors at its conception contributed greatly to this success.

For more information on the teamwork approach and branding campaign, contact Jennifer Stephens at jstephen@gpc.edu or 678-891-2684.

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Wade Marbaugh serves as publications coordinator in the Office of Marketing and Public Relations at Georgia Perimeter College.

Are you passionate about the admissions counseling profession? Do you have a great story about students you have impacted? Would you like to be included in the only book of its kind?

Dr. Jean Norris, well known for her work in advocacy of the admission counseling profession, seeks nominations and submissions of college admissions counselors for inclusion in a book promoting the profession. If you, or someone you know, has worked in the profession for a minimum of two years, has an interesting story and would like to be considered, please contact Jean Norris directly at jean@nortonnorris.com.