The Winds are Blowing… and Advertising that Makes me go Hhmmm…

The winds are blowing as we are getting close to a milestone for the Summit, the Brand Manager’s Summit that is. Preferred registration tuition of $495 ends July 15 (50% off regular tuition). And this  year’s Summit “New Media or Die!” promises to be a not-to-miss event for higher ed marketers. We will have Kate Keene, Associate Marketing Manager, Education, Google, Inc. and John “CZ” Czwartacki, Executive Director of External Communications, Verizon to go over “5 Rules of Engagement for Higher Education Marketers” and “A Glimpse at Verizon“.  Everyone knows the awesome power of Google on the internet and Verizon was listed as one of the top 100 social brand in 2008.

It’s the year’s greatest opportunity for educational marketing and communications pros to learn state of the art brand-marketing strategies and tactics and to network with colleagues from around the country.  Opportunities to talk marketing and new media with outside experts, like Kate and John, is one of the most valued aspects of the Summit!  They’ll pass on the strategies and tactics that work and don’t work.

We will also have the International Brand Master 2009 on hand to discuss their successes, challenges, and strategies. Voting is over and the Brand Master will be announced soon.

To add more excitement to the two and half days, we included the Brand Challenge – a hands-on team competition allowing you to apply what you learn in a real-world setting, while providing valuable assistance to a worthy non-profit agency! Each team’s assignment will be to create an innovative new media campaign that achieves a non-profit agency’s marketing goals using the tools and skills discussed at the conference.

Register now for the limited attendance event of the year.  Preferred registration of $495 ends July 15 (that is more than 50% off regular tuition). Register now! There is also a fun chance to win a scholarship in the Brand Bounce newsletter sent around July 8. If you didn’t get it, sign up for it and it will be sent to you.

With that out of my system, I move on to Advertising that Makes You go Hhmmm…. I recently traveled to Washington D.C. and St. Louis and saw several things that caught my eye and that I thought I would share with everyone.

First in D.C. I saw an ad in the Metro for the Center for Disease Control. I can’t find it online, but it is a picture of a family being covered by a protective umbrella with the names of common illnesses falling like rain. The family under the umbrella is, of course, protected from the falling rain of illnesses. The headline read something like “the CDC has you and your family covered.” It was a nice advertisement. I just found it interesting the CDC felts it necessary to spend advertising money on emotional advertising like this and in the Metro of all places. Why not spend more on flu preventive hygiene and other protective measures.  It was one of things that left a weird feeling with me.

Also on the D.C. Metro, I finally had a chance to see something I have only read about.  It was a moving ad within the Metro tunnel. I glanced up and saw only a portion of it and can’t even remember what it was for.  But here is an example I found on YouTube. This example is from the New York City subway.

The last “hhhmmmm” advertising was in St. Louis. It was a billboard, again I can’t find a picture online. But I did get the website. It was for Don’t Move the Firewood. The message is great – don’t move around firewood cause it could carry and spread tree-harming beetles. A problem Colorado is all too familiar with. The thing that made me go hmmmm was the placement of the billboard itself. It was in the middle of the suburban St. Louis. Unless it was a value add for the organization. I may not be the only one, but picking up firewood isn’t that top-of-mind for me driving through a suburb.

Again, none of the advertising itself was bad. Just had something about it that made me go hmmmm and that I thought was interesting enough to share.

Get More Face Time on Facebook

On the heels of Travis’ recent post Get Engaged!, I started looking more closely at Facebook’s (FB) rapidly evolving advertising strategy. The two major spaces the company is focusing on are a beefed up ad presence on its coveted FB Home Page and on email pages.

For me, the jury is still out as to whether an increasing ad presence will hurt or help FB in the long run.

As a user, I’m not that thrilled – except when the advertising is fun and creative, then, I personally don’t mind it. And it’s presence on the sidebar means I can tune it out pretty easily.

However, as a marketer, I can’t (and I’ll tell you that you can’t) pass up the opportunity to use FB’s new offerings to advertisers to help build connections with your target audiences. I’d tell you, you shouldn’t rely solely on this space, but it definitely should be one of your mediums in a well integrated campaign to gen Y and gen X audiences. See the blog Facebook Experimenting with Video Poll Home Page Engagement Ad Unit.

The numbers make a pretty compelling argument to be in this space. According to FB’s Manager of Brand Market Solutions, Trista Handisides, the Facebook home page is the “most engaging page on the Internet” – with nearly 6 billion monthly minutes spent, compared to 3 billion minutes for Yahoo, 1.86 billion for MSN, and 700 million for MySpace. (check out her comments at the Facebook Marketing Breakfast).

Particularly intriguing to me, are the possibilities to incorporate video into ads. In a move that’s very on FB brand, the videos are combined with polls that ask something of users, as an engagement mechanism. These aren’t hugely widespread yet, but I suspect we’ll see a growing number. I know they certainly catch my eye more. To get an idea, look for the current Lexus campaign. It’s a nice combination of a TV driven campaign that is intriguing enough to give it a viral quality on the Web, i.e. by using the polls on FB to ask audiences what they believe is happening in the commercial. Answering the poll takes you to Lexus’ FB page, where you can learn more about the product, see the other ads, and, of course, read what others are saying about the campaign.

What a great opportunity for higher ed marketers to get creative. Taking the big picture view, you could go the Lexus route by using TV combined with other tools, including FB. However, you’d have to have a good question to pay it off. For example, our client, the University of Southern Maine is currently running a TV campaign with the theme “That’s Education My Way, this would marry nicely with a FB video/engagement spot that invites the user to choose what “Education Their Way” would look like and lead them to a University prospective student page that would further the conversation. You heard it here first USM!

Other opportunities on FB include using banner ads like the flash ad for Best Buy on the left. These appear mostly on your email home page.

You’ll also see polls included with intriguing still images.

The ads I’ve been discussing are all negotiated through FB’s advertising unit. If you’re doing these kinds of ads, it’s a good idea, to work with an agency as it will know the ins and outs of negotiating in this space and can give you some pointers on how to get the most out of this investment.

The ads you see most often, consisting of a headline, image, and a brief sell line below, are the kind you can create yourself right on FB. They come at a set price for view and performance. These are a great way to get started and, for the price, a good medium to incorporate into your ad buys aimed at younger audiences. But, if you can, step it up. It will pay off in terms of building engagement equity for you brand. The added bonus is that FB’s great metrics allow you to measure results in real time. But that’s a blog for another time…

On a side note… three finalist for the International Brand Master have been chosen: Andrew Careaga, Catherine Scruggs, and Jenny Beckman-Wong (in no particular order).  Now the voting is in your hands! Read about the top three nominees and their accomplishments in higher education below and vote for which person you think exemplifies their profession. Don’t take the voting lightly as the 2009 International Brand Master will be asked to speak of their challenges and successes at the Brand Manager’s Summit in October of 2009. Vote by Wednesday July 8 (click here).

Creative is as Creative Does

In some recent posts, we have mentioned that one way to be impactful, engaging, and do things inexpensively is to be creative. Well, I recently came across some typically dull things that many of use that have been improved with some creativity.

We all use business cards. Here are a few that are extremely creative and can get through the overload and clutter of the same-old same-old.

Many of us have used bus ads. Here are several bus ads that break the mold. They really utilize all of the textures, functions, and shapes of the bus to make their point. Just don’t stare too long at them, we don’t need anyone getting into an accident.

And below are some miscellaneous ads that really stick out. While many of them are all clever, there are a couple that may not always be in the best taste and appropriate for many cases, especially not appropriate for higher ed. It is often hard to be creative and not cross the line. You’ll know which ones I am talking about when you see them below.

The point is, make sure the creative still communicates your organizations brand while still pushing the creative envelope. And know your audience, who are you trying to reach with your radically creative ideas. With faculty it may be best to communicate with the radically creative ads and with current students it may best to communicate with traditional ads. And last, judge when it is appropriate to be over-the-top creative and when it is appropriate to be traditional. Just like one of those big special effects movies, don’t add the special effects just for the sake of adding special effects – make sure it fits in with the story line.

Who ever said Advertising is Dead?

A quick note to our many fans who are reading this from various higher education LinkedIn groups. Be sure to connect with EMG’s LinkedIn group as we will eventually post new Brand Manager’s Notebook blogs on only EMG’s LinkedIn group. You will be able to read and discuss higher ed branding news as well as win free seats to higher ed branding professional development.

Another KnowledgeBuilder has come and gone yesterday morning with some great discussion and participation. Advertising will always be around, but the mediums are constantly changing. Now more than ever many digital ad venues are popping up left and right. What are some of the best options out there? How to pick the ad medium for you? How can you track and measure? All important topics that were covered in yesterday’s KnowledgeBuilder.

After going through some basic overview material, we get to the meat. While there are many traditional players in advertising like outdoor, theatre, print ads, TV, and radio; several new players like digital/internet and mobile advertising have shown up over the last several years. We took a long look into the newcomers and focused on

• Google AdWords: are for awareness building, able to track effectiveness, it can target audiences based on demographics, ad placement, and search terms. It is flexible, relatively low cost, and a targeted solution to battle against competition.
• Banner and Pop-up/-under ads: are good at for grabbing attention on web pages, able to track effectiveness, and target audiences based on demographics, ad placement, and network placement. It is great at tracking audience’s action after the click and its ability to be creative and utilize animation and format variations.
• Social network ads: are good at getting your audience where they live (on social networks) and are trackable. It can be targeted by demographic, by ad format, and creative accepted. Ability to create various reports for measuring effectiveness. Has the ability to animate creative and utilize different format variations.
• Mobile ads: are interactive and convenient. Ad viewers have to opt-in for direct reach of target audience. Great to use in the context of the overall media mix.

Examples for each the above ad types include:

• Google Adwords:  See the sponsored links at the top of the Google search for “communications degree”
• Banner and pop-up ads: CNN.com has many different sizes of ads on its website. Most of them are on the right side of the page.
• Social networks ads: See the advertising on the right side of the Facebook page below

• Mobile ads: Clarkson University’s Clarkson gene ad. In an advertisement through the iPhone they asked an interactive question and were given downloadable games for their participation.

With so many advertising venues, with so many varying pros and cons we took the next logical step in the discussion. We explored the strategy for how to use the various ad mediums:

• Layered: use mix of traditional advertising like tv, radio, and out-of-home combined with digital web and mobile
• Unique source codes and landing pages: to track and adjust your online search words, banners, pop-ups, and mobile ads.
• Cross pollinate: combine paid exposure with unpaid options like Facebook, YouTube, and other Web pages.
• Creative: think out of the box and leverage your ad investment by thinking of broader uses.

What works and what doesn’t? With digital advertising it is often easier to test, measure, reevaluate, and redesign your advertising. We then went through the use of online advertising measurement, (all the tracking sites are all fairly similar when you get down to it) which usually include:

• Standard measurement tools: clicks, impressions, engagement etc
• Creative tracking: which sizes/executions with better results
• Action tracking: who did what when. It’s only when applicable
• Social action: Track whether ad viewers like or dislike the ad on FB
• Demographic targeting: for some digital ads you can track ad viewers by their geography, age and other content found in their profiles
• Time-tracking: what time is your ad clicked on the most
• Distinct URLs/landing pages: Which URL on your website do ad viewers click to most often

Special thanks to all our KnowledgeBuilder attendees: great questions and thoughtful discussion about your own advertising efforts and challenges!

If you missed this one, and would like a reprise or a custom presentation for your organization, just let us know.

And sign up now – before all the seats are taken – for the ever important July 16 Online KnowlegeBuilder, Integrating the Impossible: Managing Multiple Brands on Campus. We go through the details of brand architecture as well as the tips and tricks for protecting the core brand, sub-brand, endorsed brand, and more.

Brand Architecture

We were in western Pennsylvania last week facilitating the creation of a university sub-brand. The institution’s core brand was launched in late 2007; now the president and senior leadership reconvened to develop a sub-brand platform for the university’s satellite campus.

The day was a great success that accomplished two things: it reinvigorated leaders’ commitment to the core brand platform and it brought the satellite campus administration on board with the overall brand strategy.

It reminded me of how crucial a clear brand architecture is to building brand equity and sustainability. Brand architecture solves two big challenges:

1. Brand Free-for-All: In this scenario, every unit director lobbies for their own unit identity – the result is a weak core brand that is lost in a cacophony of confusing and fragmented unit identities;
2. MegaBrand Complex: Alternately, by trying to have one single identity encompass everything you do – multiple campuses, distance ed, research centers, incubators, etc. – the brand loses meaning and focus, and ends up standing for nothing,

Brand architecture allows you to strategically manage how your organization and its various campuses, centers, schools, colleges, departments, and divisions relate to one another and represent themselves in the marketplace. It’s used to position major product/service categories with their appropriately targeted audience segments. It allows you to protect the integrity of your core brand while you maximize each unit’s effectiveness.

The result is a harmonious family of brands in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Ask yourself: Which of your units/campuses/schools should be positioned as integral components of the core brand (brand extensions)? Which should be positioned as high-profile sub-brands with their own related-yet-different messaging/personality? Which need to be positioned as independent brands so that they can stand on their own?

When you don’t have a strong brand architecture in place, we’ve seen such decisions being made – by default – by the communications manager or publications director or even a designer! Little wonder these brands fall apart at the seams. Such critical strategy questions need to be the responsibility of the senior leaders, and should be founded on solid marketplace data and analysis.

Sub-brands, for example, should meet three criteria:

1. They should be high-profile and robust enough to create, maintain, and support a branding program of their own;
2. The products/services they provide should be substantially different from those provided by the core brand;
3. The primary target audiences should be different than, or a targetable subset of, those served by the core brand.

If you’re struggling with these or similar brand architecture issues, consider signing up for the July 16 online workshop: Integrating the Impossible – Managing Multiple Brands on Campus.

During the 90-minute workshop, we’ll lay out the basics of brand architecture, then walk through the specific issues facing each one of the attendees. Don’t miss it!

Get engaged!

Not the married type of engaged, but the engaged type that makes you interact with your social network followers.

That was last weeks poll question “How does your college/university primarily start interaction on their primary social networking page?” A majority said they talk or ask questions to their followers. The second largest group said they do absolutely nothing to interact with their followers while the smallest group of respondents did giveaways in exchange for their input.

Surprisingly, the people that took the poll did not chose any of the following options that were available as a response.

• Ask followers trivia questions
• Ask followers to provide pictures of them doing certain actions, wearing certain things, etc
• Ask followers to provide videos of them performing certain tasks or assignments
• Ask followers to do a treasure hunt of sorts around campus/community hangouts
• Put a “planted” student, staff, or faculty as a follower on the social network to constantly provide input to coax input from others

The chart below provides the full story.

With any social network, the idea is to create a community with involvement. I have seen many a network with absolutely no interaction and occasionally someone would write a comment “we need to put some content on here” or “this site is boring”. Little interaction on your social network site can possibly lead followers to perceive that your organization

• doesn’t know how to communicate with its stakeholders
• is boring
• can’t be that personable if they can’t even talk to me over the internet
• doesn’t know how to use technology or scared of technology
• doesn’t have anything new going on
• isn’t creative enough to do something fun

A negative perception due to a lack of interaction can do a lot of harm to your school’s brand, especially if your brand is known for using technology or being cutting edge or being hands-on.

Make sure to get people talking and have fun on your site by using some of the ideas mentioned in the poll above. It really is an exercise in how creative you can be. Games, trivia questions, flash mobs, contests, giveaways, video/picture participation, or treasure hunts with clues given via social network.

Some things to keep in mind that all us marketers probably already know:

• make it simple – No one will respond to something that makes their brains hurt
• keep in mind your audience – For example, creating a flash mob (see blog post on flash mobs) may be hard for those who don’t know how to use mobile technology.  Also, providing news clippings or providing little blurbs on your site may be all your social network audience really wants.
• be dynamic – Don’t do the same idea over and over and over and over again. If you do, people will be come bored.
• Don’t overstep boundaries – Don’t ask people to do things that are too personal. Many may find it uncomfortable and won’t participate
• For the masses – Don’t single out or alienate any group of people. For example, doing a particular event for engineering students only will alienate other students
• I won! – People like the occasional reward, especially cash strapped students. This can also be creative. Also make the reward worth the trouble of the task and give rewards as you feel comfortable doing and have the money for. For small tasks provide the small prizes. But for large tasks or contests think about using more exciting prizes.
• Lulls are okay – it is okay to have the occasional lull in the network. It sometimes can give the soft spoken members of your group a chance to speak up. It is also ok that members don’t login to your social network everyday. Pushing followers to participate constantly may be overkill.

Have fun and be creative to get your social network really cooking.

Be sure to take this weeks poll on the types of online advertising your organization uses. The poll is on the right side of this page.

Learning from Interactive Doughnuts

My friend alerted me to something snazzy Dunkin’ Donuts recently did. They gave you the ability to create your own doughnut (maybe I should say ‘donut’) and if it received enough votes, it would actually be available for sale in their stores come September. You could change the shape of your donut, its dough, filling, frosting, and toppings. They announced the winner on National Doughnut Day (June 5th, 2009). The contest is over now (congratulations to Jeff Hager!), though you can still create doughnuts, which I find to be strangely entertaining. I love doughnuts and all, but how I could sit here for 10 minutes creating digital replicas of doughnuts? How unique and weird can I make them while still feeling like they’d taste great? Perhaps it’s the combination of a major, well-known brand and the feeling of experiencing something I never have before: creating doughnuts on my computer.

And very quickly, another cool idea Dunkin’ Donuts is currently employing is their Keep it Coolatta Daily Giveaway. I learned about it first from visiting the Contests and Promos portion of their website, and then interestingly, they sent me to their Facebook Fan Page to learn more about it. That’s right, I couldn’t get all the details from their actual website, I needed to visit Facebook to learn everything. To sum up the giveaway, you take a picture of yourself drinking a Coolatta and post it online, giving yourself a chance to win a prize. Click here (Facebook) for the entire scoop.

There’s absolutely no reason why Universities can’t employ these same kinds of tactics, albeit much less sweet and fattening. Doughnuts are obviously integral to the Dunkin’ Donuts brand. What things are integral to yours? Say you’ve got all these creative ideas floating around, but there’s no consistency. This is the big challenge for us all. Now how can you push, perhaps student developers, to relate a fun idea to an integral part of your brand and come up with something memorable and positive for your college or university? We looked at some decent examples of utilizing Facebook during our KnowledgeBuilder session held last month, but the bar can (and will) go much higher. While institutions of higher education generally lag a bit behind in this space, they’re certainly closing the gap. I think we’re all going to be seeing more and more fantastically creative ideas coming from higher ed institutions.

So what are the primary concepts you should explore at your college or university? Go find those sparkly ideas and mix them together!

The Cost of an Education

What does it cost to go to your college or university? As we all know, the economy is still struggling, and the consumer is making wiser choices about where they spend their money. It would be interesting to see how higher education can illustrate and provide the value the prospective students and their parents are searching for at the right cost.

Below is a list of higher education institutions that would have little issue with student’s meeting the cost and finding value in their education as they are full-scholarship institutions. That’s right – all or most students get a full-tuition scholarship or very big chunk taken care of for them.

According to a 2007 BusinessWeek article, most of these institutions have acceptance rates below 15% many around 7%. And their ACT/SAT scores are through the roof. For example, at Berea College ACT score must be between 20 and 30 and SATs between 1410 and 1980. At the Webb Institute, the average student holds a 1370 SAT. Talk about getting the most bang for your buck. And several of the institutions have multiple phases or steps of applying to the school. Below you can find the list of colleges with full-tuition scholarships (quotes come from respective institution’s website and the estimated annual value of tuition listed for each institution comes from the BusinessWeek article mentioned above).

Alice Lloyd College: “No qualified applicant should fail to attend the College due to financial constraints. The College maintains a guaranteed tuition policy for residents of 108 central Appalachian counties” Estimated annual value of tuition: $7,000.

Berea College: “Here, we don’t think your income should dictate your outcome. That’s why we only admit students who have financial need—and then provide them with a 4-year tuition scholarship. Berea students graduate with less than 1/3 the student debt of other students nation-wide.” Estimated annual value of tuition: $23,400.

City University of New York’s Teacher Academy – “Each student who enrolls in The Teacher Academy is eligible for:

• Four-years of tuition and fees, leading to a baccalaureate degree in mathematics or science with initial certification to teach in middle and/or high school
• Stipends for internships during the school year and summer.
• A full-time teaching position within the New York City Department of Education upon successful completion of The Teacher Academy program including course work, field work, and pre-employment screening.

Estimated annual value of tuition: $5,000. Students can earn up to $1,600 annually for fieldwork in partner host schools.

College of the Ozarks: “College of the Ozarks is called Hard Work U for a reason. All full-time students work rather than pay for their tuition. College of the Ozarks openly discourages debt and doesn’t participate in any government loan programs.” Estimated annual value of tuition: $15,900.

Cooper Union: “The College admits undergraduates solely on merit and awards full scholarships to all enrolled students. Estimated annual value of tuition: $31,500.

Curtis Institute of Music: “Curtis provides full-tuition scholarships to all of its students, ensuring that admissions are based solely on artistic promise.” Estimated annual value of tuition: $32,500.

Deep Springs College: “Each student attends for two years and receives a full scholarship valued at over $50,000 per year.” Estimated annual value of tuition (includes room and board): $50,000.

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering: “All admitted students who enroll at Olin College receive an Olin Scholarship covering tuition during the eight semesters of the baccalaureate program. This scholarship is currently valued at approximately $140,000.” Estimated annual value of tuition: $33,600.

U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Coast Guard Academy and the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (various websites): Estimated value of tuition: $187,000 over four years at the U.S. Military Academy. Students get an average monthly stipend of $800.

Webb Institute – “It’s true: all students admitted to Webb receive a four-year, full tuition scholarship. Costs are limited to room, board, books, laptop and software.” Estimated annual value of tuition: $28,000.

There are also 10 states that have lottery scholarships that give full-ride scholarships to go to an in-state school. Those states are Tennessee, New Mexico, Maryland, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, New York, South Carolina, Missouri and West Virginia. Some states are merit based and some are solely residence based. But either way, it makes a huge difference to a potential student in these hard times.

There has also been a slight push in recent political campaigns that have pushed for students to get a full four-year scholarship to those who give a years worth of service to their country. Many other countries provide free higher education in return for citizens paying higher taxes or for the student giving their time.

The higher education marketers out there are realizing as more schools and states provide full-tuition scholarships for their high quality students, they are facing more competition especially during this economic downturn. What can you do market your scholarships and quality as higher ed institution. EMG’s Brand Manager’s Notebook has a lot of ideas on how to stay competitive so keep reading.

Big, Bad, Bold Brands and Why They’re Beautiful

Market positioning is a high-stakes game, part art, part science. Get it wrong and your campaign can go down in flames. Get it right and you’ll occupy a powerful leadership position that will provide competitive advantages for years to come.

Those are the issues that higher ed marketers discussed in last week’s Online KnowledgeBuilder on competitive positioning. The session began by discussing two fundamental truths of competitive positioning:

1. Market position is defined not by you, but by your audiences. You may aspire to occupy a certain position in the marketplace, but it won’t make whit of difference until audiences begin to think of you in that way. Your market position exists only in their hearts and minds.
2. The single most important factor in competitive positioning is differentiation. Young and Rubicam’s long-term study of brands proved that brand equity is determined by how well organizations set themselves apart from competitors. That supports what brand gurus Al Ries and Jack Trout first outlined in the seminal book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind! It’s more important now than ever before.

The discussion then outlined the research elements you need for effective positioning:

1. Brand Audit. Identifies the category in which you compete, your messaging, consistency, priority audiences, capabilities, resources, and your current position within your category.
2. Marketplace Analysis. Identifies competitors in the category, their messaging and positioning, who they appeal to, and overall market and audience trends and demographics.
3. Audience Research. Identifies audience segments, awareness, perceptions, and dimensions of your products/services that are most important in audiences’ decisions to engage with you

After the research, it’s time to identify the niche leadership position that fulfills two criteria: It holds great potential in the marketplace and it’s a position based your unique core values and competitive strengths. It’s done through a consensus-based Brand Platform.

The brand platform should include a positioning statement, brand promise, and brand drivers. Your platform should be

• Boldly Differentiating. If you can’t find a way to set yourself apart, you’ve got nothing.
• Intrinsically valuable. Audiences must view it as inherently valuable. If your platform is based on friendliness, you have to ask yourself: Is that important enough to motivate engagement? Will it trump prestige or career outcomes? It depends on the value system of your audiences, and the only way to know is research.
• Unique to your organization. Can you deliver it better than competitors? It doesn’t work if you promise something in which you cannot excel.
• Timeless. The platform must stay relevant next year, and the year after that. It’s counterproductive to support a position based on what’s “hot” and what’s not.

We explored samples of big, bold brands that have given their owners exceptional return-on-investment. Why? Because these brands set themselves apart within their competitive sets through innately important, timeless brand promises – which they deliver better than the competition.  Among them:

• Washington State University (www.wsu.edu) – “World Class. Face to Face.” differentiates WSU among public research universities by promising internationally known programs and individual involvement and face time with top researchers.
• Clarkson University (www.clarkson.edu) – “Defy Convention” sets this private research university apart on its ability to span boundaries through innovation and an extraordinary team approach both inside the classroom and out.
• Del Mar College (www.delmar.edu)- “What’s Your Dream?” is a campaign running for more than 10 years that differentiates this 2-year college based on the fact that it offers the largest program selection in their marketplace.
• University of North Dakota (http://www.go.und.edu) – promises and delivers a pervasive “Innovative and entrepreneurial spirit” that permeates the entire organization and provides a competitive edge for students.

Special thanks to all our KnowledgeBuilder attendees: great questions and thoughtful discussion about your own positioning efforts and challenges!

If you missed this one, and would like a reprise or a custom presentation for your organization, just let us know.

And sign up now – before all the seats are taken – for the timely June 25 Online KnowlegeBuilder, Advertising is Dead! Long Live Advertising! We’ll lead attendees through the brave new world of online advertising, and provide the skills and insider tips you’ll need to negotiate it successfully!

Icons… Visualizing your Way Around a Website

Icon navigation is nothing new. Icon navigation is the use of imagery to get around your computer, website, or provide a guide to your location on the Internet. You have probably seen it without even knowing it. Most computer navigation uses icon navigation to get around on a computer – the little folder image on My Documents, or a little disk as the Save button, or MS Word “W” icon. Favicons are used on websites, the little image that appears in the top left of the browser window and in the URL field.

Last week’s poll asked “Does your college/university use icon navigation/links on its website?” And a majority of respondents say no, they don’t use it. A quarter of the poll takers said they do use icon links, but only a couple. And about an eighth of the poll takers said they use icon links about half the time. The illustration of what the poll results is below. No one mentioned using icon navigation on more than half the links on their website.

Here are a few reasons why icon navigation may be useful

• Draw attention to certain aspects of the site like processes, different services or special offers.
• Adds a sense of visual interest and a visual “pop” to the site.
• Easily portray the type of information the user it going to. Like the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
• Extra illustration of the brand and provide a little extra “experience” to the website.

My Starbucks Ideas uses icons to bring visual interest to the process users go through to provide ideas for Starbucks. The images also add a bit of explanation to the information you are going to be seeing after you click on it. It also adds a bit of extra experience to the Starbucks website.

Yahoo’s website uses icon navigation to gain general visual interest and adds some extra visualization of its brand. They probably spent a lot of time picking out and illustrating the little images on the left nav bar and the nav bar on the right side of the page.

Fort Hays State University uses icon navigation in the bottom right of its homepage to draw interest to its social media websites and videos.

Old Dominion University pulls attention to various topics like myODU, ODU on YouTube, President’s Blog, and Campus Safety & Alerts on both the left and right side of its homepage with the use of icon navigation.

Keep in mind while utilizing icon navigation

• The icon being used should relate to the information it represents. A YouTube icon goes to your YouTube channel.
• The icon being used should compliment the visual/branded style on the website. The YouTube icon on Old Dominion matches their website while the YouTube icon on the University of Southern Maine’s site matches their website design.
• Don’t use clip art or generic imagery. This one relates a bit to the point above, but it has to be said. There are many sites out their that use generic clip art that doesn’t fit with the site may give a user a less then stellar experience.

Be sure to take the weekly poll on interaction and engagement on social network sites. It is on the right side of the page.

Now for a random plug, check out EMG’s Brand Manager’s Summit for details on the summer savings. Register for only $495 for the greatest opportunity for educational marketing and communications pros to learn state of the art brand-marketing strategies and tactics and to network with colleagues from around the country.