RECENT INSIGHTS
In a recent meeting with a client who’s spent 30 years as a consultant to large education publishers as well as private colleges and universities, we started talking about the 800-lb question: How can the people responsible for marketing private colleges re-stage what the experience is about? Private college is expensive. Get past it. Any […]
It takes 1/5 of a second for someone to form an impression of your site. In another 2.6 seconds, they will have located the content that interests them. In that time span of 2.8 seconds the user has scanned the page, made some judgments, and is ready to move deeper into your site. Or move […]
Viewbooks are demanding, resource-draining, black holes from which neither light nor budgets can escape. They’ve been around in various forms since the 1860s, and yes, someone actually composed a history of viewbooks if you’re in an odd mood. Today it’s still an article of faith among many that having a sharp, hi-quality viewbook is a […]
Did you hear about the Zoe Kravitz Super Bowl ad for Michelob Ultra? The spot uses the sounds of near-silence – whispers, tapping finger nails, carbonated fizzing – to draw viewers into the ad by their ears as much as their eyes. The auditory phenomenon Michelob was leveraging is called ASRM, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian […]
Raise your hand if you dread the viewbook We understand. We work with many schools that still agonize over whether to continue to pour resources into what has become an article of blind faith: Thou shalt have a Printed Viewbook and It Shall Be a Thing of Beauty. Here’s our two cents on the viewbook, […]
The convergence of Gen Y and Z and the new job market. The idea of apprenticeship is an old one. The word alone takes you back to the days when the objective of an education was not a test score, but mastery of a process and pride in the outcome. It’s a concept that both […]
Online education has suffered from an image problem (for more than a decade) that is only now slowly being corrected. Enrollment is up. Favorable employer perceptions are slowly shifting. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are now charging fees – and getting them. To understand online students attitudes better, we performed a research study of 3 […]
Your students are your most powerful spokespersons For all the money and time spent on vanilla view books, tortured mission statements, and team logos, independent schools’ students remain their most meaningful ambassadors and opinion-shapers. They carry the message. They bear the standards. They are the brand. And when they graduate, they continue to represent you […]
Understanding online degree-seekers We recently conducted a research study of student personas for a leading, nonprofit, online college headquartered in the northeast (formerly part of the SUNY system). The results reveal 8 distinct types of online students (which scale up to larger groups of potential students), each with differentiating life challenges and personal characteristics. While […]
Generation Z doesn’t like you Generation Z – loosely defined as people born between 1995 and 2010 – isn’t interested in your marketing program. Nor are they interested in your “Values” or your Facebook page, which to them is dead as disco. If they want to learn about you, they’ll look at YouTube. Once they’re […]