What Students Really Want

I just spent a few days reviewing and analyzing input from a series of recent online focus groups.  The focus groups were with college-bound high school students – second-year to fourth-year – who we had asked to react and respond to four carefully selected college websites.

Online focus groups are a great – low-cost – way to crawl inside the heads of your target audiences and understand how and why they respond to your most important recruitment tool – your website.  You should think about doing these on a regular basis.

The Test
We had the focus group participants visit four comparator websites (plus the client’s site) and react to a series of questions about each.  We selected four very different websites for our prospects to review:

1. One was very sophisticated, with high-concept design using graphic treatment instead of imagery, clear navigation, and an array of multimedia and the latest applications on second-level pages;
2. One was businesslike, with a traditional block layout built around a high-impact, attention-grabbing image and prominent text/image teasers guiding users along focused second-level information paths;
3. One displayed a distinctive and inviting brand personality carefully targeting the priority audience segment with inviting, colorful design and intriguing headlines, followed by an extensive list of links to all kinds of information;
4. One was visually busy, filled to brimming with images and eclectic design and typography spaces, news, spotlights, highlighted by conspicuous, inventive links for specific audience segments.

Which of these would you guess got the highest marks for interest and usability?

Winners and Losers
While each of the sites generated positive comments, two of them jumped out at prospects as far-and-away superior in interest, impact, and usability:  The second and third of the four website described above (I’ll send you the urls we tested if you email me by clicking here)!   Surprised?

The website that communicated a distinctive brand personality (#3 above) created the strongest positive impact and “buzz” with participants.  And to address the obvious objection, it even fared well with those who weren’t in the target segment and didn’t resonant with the personality!  Everyone appreciated the fact that the college conveyed pride and openness about their distinctive world view.  “You know right away what’s important to them, and what they stand for.  That’s great,” said one.

Unfortunately, that website lost its appeal just as fast due to its extensive list of poorly organized links, which required too much reading to be worth the effort!   The students didn’t bother with trying to find information; they simply gave up, and fast.

The second winner in our mini-sweepstakes was the traditionally designed workmanlike site that gained power from a single, high-quality branded image and clean navigation.  Based in large part on the impact of the great image, students said the layout projected sophistication, prestige, and elegance.  And unlike #3, this site kept visitors engaged by presenting a clear, logical information flow.  Students liked the pathways to important information in quick, intuitive steps.

The biggest loser was the sophisticated, high-concept site (#1 above).  High school students are so used to reading and interpreting imagery that the absence of it turned them off.   They immediately judged the site to be boring and unimaginative despite the attempt at a chic graphic style.  Too bad, since most participants weren’t interested enough to get to the next level, which was engaging, attractive, fun, and filled with innovative multimedia attractions.   What a waste!

The moral of our focus group study?

Four basic factors have huge impact within 20–30 seconds of a prospect opening your page on their browser:

1. Conveying your unique brand personality through design, content, color
2. Strong, branded imagery that intrigues and/or conveys emotion
3. Concise, conversational copy that gets to the point fast
4. Clear navigational paths to the information that students want most

OK, so that brings up another crucial question:  What information do prospects want most from a website?

The answer – which may surprise you – will have to wait until my next blog post…stay tuned!

Tiny Turtles and Those Darn Sponsors

Within 10 minutes I came across two topics I couldn’t pass on discussing especially since I touched on both of the subjects recently. The first is about Terp pride at the University of Maryland and the second is about another sponsorship debate at the University of Kentucky’s Sex Week.

First, I came across a recent blog post on The Old College Try: Marketing Higher Ed, about one of my favorite subjects, guerrilla marketing, as mentioned in one of my previous blogs. The University of Maryland is currently implementing an internal marketing tactic to boost Terp pride and calm fears that the popular “Fear the Turtle” calling was going to be retired.  The University hid 570 tiny plastic turtles for students to find throughout the campus. Once a student finds a turtle, they can enter a code found on the plastic figure at the companion Fear the Turtle ‘09 website. Based on the code, a “tile” is flipped on the campus map on the Fear the Turtle website and the student has a chance to win a prize. According to an article in University of Maryland’s Independent Student Newspaper, “prizes range from ice cream cones, Starbucks and Applebee’s gift cards to iPods, T-shirts and tote bags.” There is also a “grand daddy” prize that has yet to be revealed. It was mentioned in the article that posters were placed around the campus to explain the tactic. As of writing this, 461 turtles have been found.

This is an excellent example of using guerrilla marketing that brings in many people in a non-traditional manner. It is fun. It coincides with the university brand. It uses a web-centric approach and also has the ability to share news on social networks. It brings the campus community together. Kudos to the University of Maryland team!

Moving on… last week I wrote about an odd sponsorship of a university athletic program and concerns about how that sponsorship was being portrayed. Before going on, I want to mention that the rest of this post talks about sex and may be uncomfortable to some.

This week, we find yet another odd sponsor of an educational event called Sex Week at the University of Kentucky. The Sex Week says that the week long event is to “increase sexual literacy by initiating an informed, open, and sustained dialog about human sexuality throughout the campus community.” As we all know, this is a great topic for a campus community that has been making the news recently as some universities are taking steps to regulate sexual activity in dorms, according to an article in U.S. News and World Report.

However, I heard in the local news, that one of the sponsors of the event is Pure Romance. The company is an “in-home party company which offers an exclusive line of heighteners, lubricants and bedroom accessories for relationship enhancement.” According to the event website, on Monday October 5, “Pure Romance will tackle myths and misconceptions surrounding bedroon accessories. Discover the truth before getting naked.”  While the sponsorship itself is a bit odd, the session itself may sound a bit more like a sales pitch than an learning opportunity. Also, according to news article published in Kentucky, it was suggested that some of the sponsor’s products promote violence against women.

Both the previous blog post about the athletic sponsor and the sponsor in this blog seem to suggest that there may be a concerning growing fad of allowing any sponsors in without worrying about whether or not the sponsor is actually appropriate to the audience, setting, brands, etc. As long as they have the cash, then it is okay to let them sponsor.

Could it really be possible that the NFL has more standards regarding advertising/sponsorships than some higher ed institutions? Below are NFL advertising guidelines found in their media kit,

The NFL will NOT accept advertising promoting the offering of or making reference to any of the following products or services (partial list)

• Distilled Spirits
• Tobacco Products (including cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff)
• Contraceptives
• Feminine Hygiene Products
• Fireworks
• Firearms and Ammunition
• Lotteries
• Gambling (including Horse or Dog Racing and products or services relating in any way to gambling)

High Flying Advertising and Sponsorships

As an undergrad and grad student in Albuquerque I have always loved this time of year because the beginning of October means it is time for the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. This annual gathering of hundreds of balloons is often considered the largest gathering of balloons in the world (about 750) and the most photographed event in the world. I have about 140 movie clips and photos of being there a couple times. Also, the pictures in the post are pictures I have taken during my past visits.

I have attended this event many times over the last ten years. But a hot air balloon flying around that had a banner attached to it for The University of Phoenix a, couple of weeks ago, got me thinking. You can see many balloons with advertising or sponsor logos and message in this post’s pictures: Wells Fargo (the wagon balloon and regular shape balloon), AOL, Star Wars (Darth Vader balloon behind the two bees), Creamland Dairy (cow shape behind the two bees), Oust spray can, Energizer, and various other companies. This is not to mention the other advertising/sponsorships on the ground at the event.

The part of The University of Phoenix balloon that got me thinking is – why does higher ed not sponsor/advertise at large international family-oriented events like the Balloon Fiesta? Events like the Balloon Fiesta, are great opportunities to spread your message to local, national, and international audiences.  Every state has some large family-oriented gathering that will allow advertising/sponsorships. At many events and at a certain price, of course, you can setup your own tent or “corner” to put materials out or do your own semi-related sub-event.

Here are some things to keep in mind when thinking of sponsoring or advertising at large events

• Who is the audience? What is the age, state/country of residence, purpose for coming, how are they getting there, how loyal are they (do they come repeatedly), etc? For example, at the Balloon Fiesta many retired couples travel to the event by RV and stay in a nearby RV park – a growing population that often goes back to classes.  Also, many international and national families travel into the local airport.
• How big is the event? For example, at the Balloon Fiesta, the event overflows off the event grounds and takes over Albuquerque for the entire week. While beer companies really don’t feel it is appropriate or can’t advertise in the event, one beer company places banners around the city and at restaurants welcoming balloon pilots and balloon fans.
• Get into the details of the event. What is the main event, how will it take place, who can see it,  For example, at the Balloon Fiesta, because of the Albuquerque Box, a balloon can stay over the city for a fairly long period of time and can pass over a certain location several times. Also, not only can the people in the event see the balloons, but people all over the city can see it. Imagine if there were advertising on one or more of those balloons. Also, certain roadways become clogged in/out of the event grounds near many billboards.
• How can you tie the main event to your institution? Is there something that makes more sense to advertise. For example, at the Fiesta, your sciences department could host/sponsor a tent at the event for hands-on experiences or experiments about the physics of air balloons for school-age kids or the history department host/sponsor a tent on the history of hot air balloons. Also, several other events take advantage of the large population influx, but are not on the Fiesta grounds or tied to the Fiesta in anyway. Both the Grecian Festival and the Rio Grand Arts Festival take place during the same week and pull in many Fiesta-goers.
• What is the bottom line? What is the goal of advertising or sponsoring the event. Is it to reach the international crowd, increase inquiries, increase applications, etc. Make sure you can measure the effectiveness and put a reasonable goal on the sponsorship. In the physics tent example above,  the goal could be to increase local science related inquiries for a particular age cohort. Then you can determine if you want to sponsor/advertise/hold an outside event again.
• Who else is sponsoring. Guilt by association could play into your advertising/sponsorship if you find yourself in a wrong crowd of fellow advertisers/sponsors. Again, at the Fiesta for example, beer and alcohol is kept to a minimum or is in certain location and not seen widely during the event. This makes the event more family friendly. However, if alcohol is a big deal at the event, you may want to reconsider.

Advertising/sponsoring at a large event could provide your institution an audience from around the country or world and it could be right in your own back yard.

Measure Brand Equity and Satisfaction

Serious brand managers know that successful branding hinges not just on how well and broadly you communicate your brand, but on whether or not your organization actually lives up to what you’re promising.

So wouldn’t it be great to have a low-cost survey that gives you hard data how well your organization is actually delivering on your brand platform? And at the same time quantifies how resonant and motivational your brand messaging is among your most important constituents?

That kind of sophisticated quantitative data is now possible at a cost low enough that any organization, regardless of size, can conduct the survey as often as needed. For the first time, brand managers can quantify progress in brand understanding and internalization and can even compile longitudinal data on the growth in internal brand equity!

An online survey methodology developed by EMG quantifies the depth of understanding and the strength of your brand among current students as well as faculty, staff, and alumni. It’s a powerful tool for marketers to measure both resonance and impact of brand messaging and delivery.

The quantitative research process identifies the strengths and weaknesses of brand commitment among various internal constituencies in order to plan effective internal communications strategies and tactics.

It quantifies how strongly each audience is internalizing the brand platform, how resonant the platform is among each group, and where and how the brand helps shape organizational behavior:

• Is the brand promise/platform being communicated to students and prospects?
• Is it resonant and motivational for them both?
• Do internal constituencies believe the brand promise is real or just a slogan?
• Does it shape/improve student life and the academic experience?
• Do faculty and staff know, understand, support the brand platform?
• Are they using it to shape the student experience and improve quality?
• Are brand messages getting through to alumni?
• What impact are they having?
• Do alumni reinforce these messaging points?

Important questions. Questions that used to cost thousands of dollars and many months of work to answer. But this new online survey process makes it easy and fast to obtain this kind of quantifiable data, and for less than $2,000.

It’s as simple as customizing the survey instrument to reflect your unique environment and brand platform, inviting stakeholders to participate online, and placing the survey link on your website. That’s it. The rest of the survey process – including data analysis – is done for you. The survey report includes cross-tabulations by segment to understand how each constituency perceives the brand and how well they are internalizing and supporting it through their own actions and behaviors.

Sign up for our October Brand Bounce newsletter if you’d like to get more information about this incredibly powerful – and cost effective – survey tool.

The Athletic Image

As many of you out there know, the athletics marketing team typically operates separately from the academic marketing unit  And we have been faced many times with the question of how the core brand should interact with the athletics brand. Sometimes the athletics brand is part of the core brand and sometimes it becomes an independent brand and at times it is somewhere in between. However the athletics image is connected to the core academic brand through brand architecture, there is a connection between the two entities in the minds of your audiences.

Back as an undergrad, I remember there was a team meeting for athletes that talked directly about how an athlete should conduct themselves and when and where they can wear university logos, sportswear, etc. For example, it was mentioned that no athlete should wear any athletic or university logos when going to a party or out to a casino or other non-favorable places. We were told that we were representatives of the school and should behave as such.

All of this came flooding back into my head when I recently came across a series of fan contest materials for the University of New Mexico. The idea is great, a “who-is-the-biggest-university-football-fan” contest to see who is Lobo Loco. Lobo fans are awesome and very loyal and the contest is a great way to pull them even more into the Lobo teams. So, I kept digging into the contest and saw who was sponsoring the contest.

The contest is sponsored by a local casino, with television commercials of a skimpy-clothed blonde and the university mascot.  The commercials are sexual in nature and the promotion directly ties the athletics program to gambling. The Lobo Loco promotion site says “The action continues all season long with Lobo Loco Free Slot Tournaments every Wednesday night throughout the season inside the Route 66 Casino. Players can sign-up at the Ultimate Rewards booth absolutely free. More than $7,000 in prize money will be given away each week”. Pure sponsorship would have been ok, but to directly tie the athletic image to a casino in a sexual nature is taking it a bit over board. Below are two commercials for the promotion:

After the meeting mentioned above and the athletic scandals at other nationally known universities in the past several years, I was surprised to see the athletic department itself sell its image to the casino. While there is no direct connection to the academics in the marketing materials, it is hard to separate the perceived connection between the athletics and the academic brand of the University.

After hearing some buzz from the school, I understand the University of New Mexico’s marketing team is going to launch a new branding effort in the near future and I doubt they were expecting this.  I also doubt that some of the messages put forth in the commercials are part of the University of New Mexico’s new brand. As this contest is only about a month old, I will interested to see how this will effect the academic brand in the near future.

So what does a university marketing team do to avoid this kind of issue with, not only, the athletics unit, but other university units and departments. Here are some helpful tips:

• Brand dialogue. While athletics marketing teams are familiar with branding, athletics is apart of the university’s core brand in some shape and form. There should be a discussion so both units understand each others goals, strategies, and tactics.  Also, to understand how the two units should interact together.
• Provide some brand tools. While the athletics marketing unit has its own materials and resources, they still need some brand tools to help consolidate messages and some of the creative elements (based on the brand architecture).
• Constant dialogue. Schedule some regular meetings to catch up on the two unit’s progress and how each other can help.  Is there some room for cross-over or collaboration?
• Set guidelines. With any brand, including the core, sub, extension, or independent brand, there are  guidelines to follow. How, what, where, and when each unit is to express their brand?

Also, while the sponsorship has been hailed as one of the largest sponsorships in Lobo athletic history, it doesn’t give the sponsor the right to go nuts. There must be some collaboration between the athletics, academic and sponsoring brands about what is appropriate and not appropriate so the sponsorship is a win-win for all entities involved.  How should the brands look, how they should interact together, etc? After awhile, a negative image, similar to the one portrayed above has the possibility to tarnish both brands.

I am interested if any else out there has had similar issues.

Allow Students to Tell Your Story

My colleague Ineke Caycedo and I just returned from a 2-day campus consultation for a client. We conducted a series of interviews with senior-level administrators and key communications staff to better understand the institution’s goals, current strategies, available resources (primarily related to Web), and overall vibe of the campus and community. From now until spring, we’ll be working collaboratively with the institution to develop a new website, and more importantly, helping to determine what message we’ll be sending on that website. This isn’t the easiest task given the truly unique position of this institution, but it’s an exciting one and we certainly made significant progress on that front during our visit. The sky really is the limit here.

A Free International Trip!?
As a result of our interviews, one important nugget of information we learned was that the institution has a healthy amount of ‘student-voiced’ marketing ammo that has yet to see the light of day. For example, this college offers one of the best international opportunities of any institution we’ve ever seen. During their second year of study, students are offered a free week-long trip overseas with their classmates. To no surprise, almost all students end up going. As part of the academic component (there is a large one, of course!), students are asked to write a journal documenting their experience. These entries are thoroughly looked over by faculty and the students are given feedback, but they never end up becoming public in any way.

A Huge Opportunity
Truth be told, there might not be a better way to present this unique international experience to prospective students than making these students’ journals easily accessible online! Promoting this type of content is a huge opportunity for colleges and universities. We know from our own and others’ research this is the exact type of approach prospects are looking for and resonate with.

What the Research Tells Us
We know from Edelman’s Trust Barometer that young people most trust people like themselves. This idea was further confirmed on our trip in the Web usability testing we conducted. We were straight up told by the students in several instances that they’re looking to hear from current students. It’s the best way for many of them to learn about different aspects of the college or university, as they can best relate to what they’re hearing.

The bottom line is, if you have any appropriate student-driven media (text, blogs, photos, videos, etc.) sitting around in the depths of your offices and computers, there may very well be an effective way to make that material work for you. And because the production cost is zero since the work has already been done, you’ll only have to spend time doing a little strategizing, editing, and uploading. So if you decide to do a little detective work, good luck! Here’s to hoping you are surprised with what you find.

Interactive Email – eMarketing Workhorse

Throughout the social networking fluff and flurry, a number of marketers I know have relegated interactive email tactics to the “old-and-worn-out” bin. “Nobody emails anymore…it’s sooo yesterday!”

If you’re in that category, it’s time you take a second pass at this tried and true tactic, which has re-emerged as the real workhorse of eMarketing. Don’t get me wrong, social networking in some form is here to stay. No argument that it needs to be a staple in the marketer’s toolbox to help create and support audience engagement.

But email is the real ROI generator, and new interactive and integration capabilities make it more versatile than ever. It is the engine that makes your social networking efforts work harder and pay bigger dividends.

Upside

1. Unlike social networking, which can be a black hole for staff, you can directly link bottom-line results to the effort needed to produce them
2. Like its old-school cousin – direct mail – interactive email directly reaches bona fide prospects
3. Integrating email with your website and social network presence enhances the productivity of all of these channels
4. Interactive email is cost-efficient
5. It is eminently trackable and refinable

Downside

1. Email – even interactive versions – is limited by relatively low open rates
2. It is easy – and probably always will be – for prospects to unsubscribe or identify your email as spam

Six Solutions

1. New, innovative design formats for interactive emails improve open rates – wide-screen format and bold branding ideas, for example
2. Solid database analytics and firm opt-in policies allow you to minimize spam problems, track individual audience behaviors, distinguish between hard and soft bounces, (a discussion here) and hone in on motivational design/copy choices
3. Strategic scheduling and database segmentation give you an incredible ability to manage touch points with critical audiences – by segment
4. Interactivity: Well-designed email campaigns offer stepping-stone interactivity that engages audiences (good discussion here)
5. Multimedia: While video still can’t be reliably embedded in email (Here is a good synopsis of why), the alternative – video GIFS (good example here) and links to your website videos – are effective options
6. Integration with web presence: integrating opt-in email campaign is a great way link your social networking platforms and website promotions

As always, one of the keys is to keep “run-and-gun” unit-driven tactics from taking over. By developing a clear, coordinated approach (here’s an award-winning example) to eMarketing, you’ll find a significant uptick in ROI.

Hey, That’s My Tagline!

Several of our clients within the past year have been surprised to learn that the strategic taglines and campaign themes we created for them were compelling and popular enough that competitors began using them, too!

So now what? While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, stealing your thunder is going a little too far. But there are lessons to be learned here.

The first institution in question had protected their tagline by registering it as a trademark of the university. About a year later they learned that another institution had started using the same tagline as a campaign headline. Since the phrase had been trademarked, the university attorney was equipped to send a cease-and-desist letter to the offending institution. The competitor demurred. Case closed.

Truth is, you can’t legally stop others from using your marketing idea. Headlines and taglines can’t be copyrighted, and a trademark protects only the execution of the tagline as it’s associated with your name, not the words or the idea themselves.

However, trademark establishes ownership. It plants a flag in the ground, and stamps a date on it. Most offending institutions, when alerted to a prior claim like this, wisely choose to drop their use without further ado.

Now consider a second case. This client launched their campaign using a consistent high-impact branding theme – they didn’t trademark it as a declared tagline, but simply used it is as a prominent recurring headline and guiding theme.

They learned a year later that a direct competitor had started using the same headline in their ad campaign. Which college owned the idea? From a marketing perspective, the key is “ownership” in the public perception.

One choice, for example, would have been to simply abandon the campaign theme to the competitor and create an alternative. Yet we advised the opposite.

Since this institution had a significant investment in the brand – months of intense research, consensus building, and a strategic rollout, a strong identity was already built around the branding concept. They owned the idea among internal stakeholders. We recommended that they quickly build robust opportunities for external audiences to see their decisive “ownership” of the phrase. Put it prominently on the Web, use it for SEO keywords and adwords, create banners, give it to faculty and recruiters as a primary talking point, use it as branded event theme, and in advertising. Connect themselves to it.

If a campaign theme is important to expressing your brand, it’s a matter of who best “walks the talk”? And when an institution establishes this level of ownership, competitors who use the same theme end up pretty much advertising for you. In short, while the idea may not be legally protected, “ownership” of the tagline and the essence behind it can carry the day.

But the real moral of the story is this: If a branding concept, tagline, or campaign theme is important in defining and supporting your brand promise and you would like to use it for several years or more, protect it through trademark as a strategic tagline. Internal legal counsel can do this for you.

It’s easy to check for prior trademark protection to see if any higher education institutions or large corporations have already laid claim to your phrase or idea. Just go to United States Patent and Trademark Office website or the Canadian Intellectual Property Office website and search for the phrase in question. If it’s not being used, pounce on it!

Health Care for Sick Brands

Now that “branding” has become entrenched as a buzzword with colleges, universities, and non-profits, a lot of the consultations we’re asked to perform focus on diagnosing what ails a brand, and prescribing corrective action. It’s really brand remediation, a sort of health care for brands – the BRAND ER.

Common Ailments
Hundred of illnesses can beset brand marketers. Here are a few of the most common ailments we get asked about:

• Obsessive-Creative Disorder – Creating brand new campaigns every year!
• Budganemia – No resources to do what you have to do?
• Old Brandage – Tired, outdated designs, photo style, palette?
• Psychosis of the Giver – Campaign doesn’t work for donors or influencers?
• Brandnesia – No one can remember what it is you stand for?
• Multiple Personalities – Umpteen entities, each with their own logo?
• Brandkenstein’s Disease – Umpteen entities, all living in one body – “It’s alive!”
• Brandiswine Flu – Pandemic messages that infect everyone and differentiate no one!
• Research Effective Disorder - Little, aged, or no research to point the strategic direction?

We’re obviously having a little fun with these names, but the symptoms are no joke. These are serious and complex brand challenges. And when you face them for real in the field, identifying what’s really going on – and what to do about it – can get pretty tricky, pretty fast.

The Treatment
Take Obsessive-Creative Disorder (feeling the need for new campaign creative every year or two), for example. Many colleges flit from one creative campaign to another – a costly idea. Consider: A corporation investing, say, $80 million in advertising each year might be able to get away with it, but a college investing only $1 million or less is throwing away hard-earned equity by changing too often.

While departmental clients often harp on the theme that “We need a new campaign,” no institutions I know can build reach and frequency at high enough levels to enable them to change campaigns annually. Again and again, data proves that most institutions begin to get good campaign traction after two or three years. So if you’re changing the look and feel of the creative every year or so, you’ll be starting over from scratch in building brand recognition. That’s enough to make any brand manager feel under the weather.

The best treatment for this condition is a program of brand evolution rather than creative do-overs. It is a way to strategically manage creative updates using new imagery, revamped formats, fresh headlines, and incremental design tweaks so that the campaign continues to feel fresh and new, yet builds on what has gone before. It’s a simple idea, sure, but it compounds the impact of your campaign many times over to help you better achieve the holy grail of marketing: Return on Investment!

We’ll be conducting more brand diagnoses in the August 27 Online KnowledgeBuilder – “The Brand ER, Triage For Ailing Brands.” If your brand isn’t as healthy as you’d like, think about joining. We’ll ask participants to describe the symptoms their brands are exhibiting, and then talk over the possible treatments. Should be lots of fun as well as informative.

Stay healthy!

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Nebraska Launches Distance Ed Winner

Last week the University of Nebraska (NU) announced an aggressive plan to re-engineer its distance ed programming and greatly expand online courses to capture a larger share of the growing national and international online market and to better serve in-state students.

It’s a program to watch, already getting some attention, and probably the best-engineered “re-launch” of distance education to occur on the national scene in a long, long time.  It’s the result of a 2-year study, system-wide strategic positioning efforts, and a comprehensive series of recommendations by EMG, done in close collaboration with NU System staff.

The effort calls for nothing less than a re-engineering NU’s distance education approach:

1. Strategically positioning distance education as an “Integrated Academic Enterprise” employing the same professors who teach on the campuses
2. Marketing distance ed programs at all campuses under a single brand
3. Leveraging campus support services such as financial aid, call centers help desks
4. Strategic expansion of online programs based on emerging market needs
5. Increased brand marketing initiatives to carefully targeted audience segments
6. Creating a unified website as the entry point for all NU System online courses
7. Restructuring the financial model to spur new program development
8. Increasing tuition in order to provide/support exceptional academic quality

“We offer students what they want,” says NU President J.B. Milliken: “the same professors who teach on campus, exceptional student services, current and relevant curricula and a sense of community. Whether students are in the classroom or online, they are part of the NU community.”

By marketing all distance education programs under a single brand, Milliken says, potential students will be better served and operating costs will be reduced.

NU already offers more than 1,200 courses and more than 70 online degree and certificate programs, ranging from bachelor’s degrees to PhDs.   Aggressive new program expansion will be guided by market needs.  For example, one of the first programs out of the chute will be a bachelor’s degree completion program in business – the first time an NU business degree will be available completely online.

A new brand identity, logo, and the distance ed website, now under development, will debut this fall.   Arnold Bateman, director of NU’s distance education efforts, also plans a more aggressive regional, national and international marketing strategy in support of the effort.

All of this requires investment, and NU has wisely determined to increase and codify tuition so that NU courses are competitively priced, yet still leverage the prestige of the AAU-member NU name for students who want premier quality.

News accounts have reported recent missteps in distance ed initiatives by a few big state universities.  These costly and embarrassing snafus resulted from miscalculations of marketplace needs and lack of understanding of the marketplace itself.  Unlike these efforts, NU’s initiative has been carefully and strategically planned, and aims to put NU into a league with the big boys of distance education – University of Maryland, Penn State, UMass, and for-profits such as the University of Phoenix.

With the strong foundation they’ve begun, we’re betting they’ll succeed handily.