In the world of college selection, there are several crucial moments that help build customer perception (and thus brand): the campus visit, the application process, the FAFSA process, the recruitment campaign, and the list goes on. But there’s one moment that makes a larger, longer lasting and more life-altering impression in the minds of students than the rest of these moments combined, and that is the moment when they find out they’ve been admitted into college.

How you let your students know they’re your students is a question of tremendous importance. We’ve written about the admission process before and have made our feelings about admission decisions pretty clear: they’re a singular opportunity for romance, celebration, reflection and commemoration. While we acknowledge the growing trend to “go big or go home” with admission announcements, we contend that, as admission into college is a monumental occasion, it still needs to be presented in a way that affords its recipient the space and gravitas needed to let the news truly soak in. Here, we’ll walk through some of the admission decisions we’ve been privileged to work on with our clients that represent a range of approaches.

The simplicity of being bold.

One of our more popular and time-tested admission decisions was developed for Saint Joseph’s University (SJU) in Philadelphia. The beauty of this admission announcement is that it’s bold and striking while still being quite simple in execution: it is delivered in a signature red envelope, setting it apart from the pack while harkening back to the University’s official colors. A robust social media campaign has grown organically to accompany the announcement, cultivated via Twitter and Instagram by the University and students to share SJU admission stories. Prospective students are told early on that “the red envelope always brings good news” so they know what to be on the lookout for come admission decision day, building suspense and intrigue around the decision itself. In some respects, it’s easier and more meaningful for students to anticipate a red envelope than an admission decision. Students don’t simply recall the day they got into SJU; they recall the day they got their red envelope.

Greater impact through subtlety.

For Agnes Scott College (ASC), we took a different approach. At a time when admission announcements seemed to be getting bigger and louder, this was a deliberate zag to something smaller and quieter. We created a charm inspired by the etchings that appear in the main library’s fireplace, which was given to admitted students as part of their admission decision. It was packaged in a delicate purple box and nestled behind an understated card, scented with the same fragrance that is diffused throughout the admissions office. This card stated, simply: “Congratulations. You have been admitted to Agnes Scott College. Welcome, Scottie.”

Being mindful of the moment.

While each of these admission decisions are different—as they should be, since they authentically reflect the very different institutions they represent—they do have a few things in common. Both offer the admitted student a well-deserved moment of celebration and commemoration, both provide an interaction that accurately presents the values of the institutional brand and both lend themselves easily to storytelling (which reinforces and extends those important moments of celebration and commemoration).

There’s one more key commonality. In both of these examples, the transactional elements of a traditional acceptance package were eschewed in favor of emphasizing the more exciting, more endearing and frankly more important component of the acceptance package: notification that the student has officially been accepted. After all, isn’t this what the student and their families have been working so hard for? Enrollment and Admissions are for all intents and purposes separate entities now, so no reason to stuff campus housing and meal plan forms in the “fat envelope” alongside a congratulatory letter. Besides, most of the administrative information and many of the forms can be found and filled out on your website. There’s no doubt that this aspect of formal acceptance is integral to the process and requires proper consideration and attention, but including needless paperwork with the acceptance package dulls the elation and thrill of the occasion for the sake of administrative efficiency.

When you are thinking about how to let your people know they’ve been admitted into your institution, these are qualities you might want to keep in mind. Above all else, don’t forget to let students and their families savor the moment.

The post Let Your People Know—New Thinking on Higher Ed Acceptance Packages appeared first on RHB.

Naming opportunities are important for the financial health of most institutions. Partially because of this, a proliferation of sub-brands (distinct but related offshoots from the parent brand) often exists—by necessity—on most college and university campuses. For example, Indiana University is well known for its Jacobs School of Music; Northwestern for the Kellogg School of Management and New York University for the Tisch School of the Arts. Even Harvard, while probably best known for being, well, Harvard, also draws tremendous interest with its Kennedy School of Government. While we’re used to the convention of naming schools, colleges, institutes and programs for their fundraising possibilities (to say nothing of athletic programs, museums, campus landmarks and performance groups), there are other equally valid reasons to create sub-brands at your institution as well, and these have everything to do with the type of audience you are hoping to attract and the distinctiveness of the offerings you can provide them.

We are often brought in to help clients discover, develop, name and brand distinctive experiences. Often, these experiences are created to help attract new students, or new types of students (i.e. those who are primarily interested in STEM to a liberal arts college, or those who want to have a rigorous academic experience to an institution that isn’t primarily known for that, etc.). Because these programs are meant to attract an audience that isn’t necessarily drawn to the institution already, it makes sense to market the sub-brand in a way that sets it off, somewhat, from the parent brand (i.e. the institution itself). Examples of this would include Odyssey at Hendrix College, Summit at Agnes Scott College or Enduring Questions & Ideas (Q&I) at Concordia University Irvine.

A key feature of Summit is that it provides every Agnes Scott student with a travel experience (usually an international one) in their first year. Of the branded curriculums we’ve worked on, Summit is easily the one with the most abstract name. It is tied to the parent brand explicitly in the sense that we almost always speak about “Summit at Agnes Scott,” but taken on its own, “Summit” evokes a journey, a dialogue, a point of global interest and a sense of urgency and action. In the branded architecture universe, Agnes Scott’s decision to launch Summit was also a decision to operate as a blended house (see diagram).

Enduring Questions & Ideas (Q&I) is the name we arrived at for an exceptional core curriculum that we uncovered at CUI when we began working with them on a recruitment campaign. The campaign centered on the dualities that exist at the University; it’s a faith-based Lutheran liberal arts institution that’s known for being welcoming to both non-religious and non-Lutheran students; their scenic campus fosters an incredible Southern California atmosphere and maintains an environment of academic rigor, etc. The core curriculum—which at that time was simply called “core”—was interested in exploring dualities and interdisciplinary intersections as well. During interviews with faculty members and conversations with students in Circles of Influence, we learned that the program is composed of four pairs of linked courses. In each, students are encouraged to ask big questions and explore some of life’s biggest ideas, which led us to name the program Enduring Questions & Ideas (Q&I). As with Summit, the institutional name is not directly or explicitly tied to the curriculum name. Q&I was implemented by the team at CUI to attract students who hadn’t already formed preconceived notions, or misconceptions, about the University. It was also intended to enhance the academic profile of the school and help students reshape the way they viewed the liberal arts, which is why it was important to give this particular sub-brand the freedom of a name that was not expressly tied to the name of the institution.

Taking something that appears rather abstract (like the liberal arts) and giving it a perimeter that makes it easier for people to understand (like Summit or Q&I) is always a compelling reason to create a sub-brand. This helps turn a theory into something familiar enough that people can actually grasp it, which means they’re more likely to buy it. And if customers understand what they’re buying, that also means they’re much happier with the purchase (usually). In an academic setting, where we are often so used to discussing ideas and pedagogical methodologies, this is a particularly useful approach because it helps move us away from traditional talking points and provides us with provable outcomes. We don’t have to talk about rigor when we can, instead, simply point at a rigorous experience. Students who can see themselves in these experiences are generally best-fit students, which also leads us to better shaped classes.

A final example of a similar but different endeavor: recently we were enlisted to help Earlham College name and create brand strategy for a new academic initiative that launched this fall. Their program organically and thoughtfully builds on some of the College’s greatest and most well-established strengths: integrative inquiry, a spirit of collaboration and experiential learning. Because these qualities are so aligned with the brand equity already established by the Earlham name, it made sense in this case to name the program something that more directly indicates Earlham as its parent. Which is what EPIC (the Earlham Plan for Integrative Collaboration) does.

Whenever you make a decision to name something on your campus, whether it’s a building, a school or a branded curriculum, think about the effect that will have—and the effect you want it to have—relative to your parent brand. Do you want to attract new audiences? Are you trying to shed baggage? Are you hoping to build more allegiance? At RHB, these are the kinds of questions we always ask our clients. This chart helps us organize our thinking; you may find it useful, too.

Creating a sub-brand means you’re evaluating the value of your parent brand. For example, the decision to name IU’s School of Music the Jacobs School of Music is tantamount to deciding that students will be drawn to Jacobs regardless of their affinity (or lack thereof) for Indiana University; this is a conscious decision to disconnect, in some way, from the parent brand. The same holds true for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Both of these institutions are operating as a house of brands, which means that their sub-brands have the freedom to draw in distinct and often different types of students than the parent brand does. This also gives the parent brand freedom to distance itself from the sub-brand, should it prove ineffective for any reason, and creates permission for the sub-brand to have a shorter (or indeterminate) shelf life. If anything goes awry with the sub-brand in this arrangement, the institution can simply lop it off without causing much, if any, damage to the parent brand. Yale, on the other hand, operates as a branded house. None of its schools bear any name other than “Yale” because the decision makers there have decided that the Yale name carries more brand equity on its own than any alternative would. While this is a strong stance, it can also leave the parent brand (and thus the entire institution) more vulnerable should anything go wrong with any of its sub-brands.

Understanding the brand equity your institution has already established is a key consideration when making decisions about how to market your sub-brands. Here’s one final way to think about this: Does it matter that Wharton = Penn? Probably not; while Wharton has built a tremendous amount of awareness and buy-in on its own, so too has the University of Pennsylvania, and to a much larger degree. Countless students are attracted to Wharton’s business offerings regardless of its affiliation with the Ivy League institution that hosts it, just as countless more students are attracted to Penn regardless of anything related to Wharton. But does it matter that Summit = Agnes Scott? Yes, absolutely. Agnes Scott is an exceptional institution, but it doesn’t have the benefit of the awareness that’s automatically generated by being one of the world’s eight most notoriously prestigious learning institutions. It requires the additional interest, equity and attraction generated by Summit in ways that Penn—or any other Ivy, for that matter—doesn’t need the additional interest generated by its sub-brands, even the most recognizable.

Brand architecture theory has a strong foothold in higher ed. But when we make decisions about how to configure our institutional brands, it’s important that we pay attention to more than just funding opportunities. We need to make conscious decisions about our intentions, how they will be received and, most importantly, the audiences they will effect.

The post Why—and How—Should You Create and Market a Sub-Brand? appeared first on RHB.

One of the first and most pressing questions on the minds of most would-be college students and their families is, “How am I going to afford this?” This is neither new nor isolated; so many Americans are grappling with the issue of college affordability that Hillary Clinton has proposed free public college education as a piece of her presidential campaign platform. But ability to afford college isn’t the only thing students and their families are worrying about. “Is college worth it?” is the first predictive search term generated in Google for the phrase “Is college…”. David Theo Goldberg, in his recent Inside Higher Ed article “Coming to You Soon: Uber U,” addresses the source of this unease. He writes, “Once seen to be an investment in a reliably upwardly middle-class life for millions, higher education is no longer viewed as a presumptive public good.” In today’s climate, it’s clear that students aren’t just worried about how to afford college, but whether they should even bother attending in the first place. This points the way toward a more important question that, as higher ed professionals, we should always be striving to answer: “Is the educational experience provided by my institution a worthy investment?”

There’s an important distinction here between affording an experience and investing in an experience, but prospective students aren’t always able to see that difference on their own. There’s also an important distinction between actually being able to afford an experience and amassing many thousands of dollars in debt to pay for an experience. The average student loan debt for four-year colleges is currently $26,600, but that figure can balloon up to more than $200,000 for students at some schools. Which is why how we present our value proposition matters.

Consider how your experience dealing with a loan officer at Sallie Mae differs from your experience planning with an investment manager at Charles Schwab. Securing a Sallie Mae loan—or any college loan, for that matter—is a largely transactional experience. You often don’t even speak to an actual human being before committing to a loan agreement; you might know only enough about the process to understand that a loan is an immediate solution to a long-term problem (affording a college education) and so you visit the loan agency’s website, fill out an application for one and are awarded a credit result within 15 minutes.

Compare that to making the decision to meet with a financial planning expert who will, through a face-to-face conversation, ask you about what your goals are, how managing your money can help you achieve them and what you yourself deem to be among your life’s worthiest investments. In other words, a financial planner plans; a loan officer grants and collects on your debt. Rather than being purely transactional, a meeting with an investment manager is a collaborative experience that is directed, primarily, by your individual needs and wishes.

That’s how we should talk about investing in a college education—as a collaborative experience that will help students map out and achieve their individual goals. The key words in that sentence, by the way, are “collaborative,” “individual” and “goals.”

Collaborative:

A student shouldn’t feel alone in this process—financial planning can be overwhelming for most adults, so imagine how navigating loan, grant, aid and scholarship applications feels for teenagers. Here at RHB, when we work on financial aid communications with our clients, we never take it for granted that a prospective student will automatically understand what the FAFSA is or how to navigate it. Rather than “financial aid brochures,” we create financial planning guides with glossaries of key terms, easily understandable language that unpacks and explains different types of aid and frequent invitations for the student to meet with a financial aid officer in person or over the phone for help working through the process.

Individual:

Higher education is not and should not be a one-size-fits-all investment. Just as no two institutions are the same, neither are any two prospective students. We need to help students identify and understand what it is about our specific experience that will align with their individual interests, whether those are professional, educational, social or a mix of all three. Similarly, we should understand that their financial needs and abilities are likely as nuanced as they are, and work with them one-on-one to find the best aid package possible.

Goals:

To help a student understand whether or not the experience offered at your institution is a worthy investment for them, you have to understand what their goals are, and make them see how your offerings will help them achieve those aspirations. Say a student knows he wants to be a writer and has become taken with the romantic notion that living in Paris and working as an au pair for a year will provide him with better storytelling ability than a collegiate education will. Your job is to move him off his Moveable Feast daydreams and into a writing workshop where the professor teaches him how to do a close reading of Hemingway. Or say a student wants to develop the next Pokémon Go and thinks moving to Silicon Valley will better equip her to fulfill that ambition than studying computer programming. Your job is to point out that, at your institution, she can double-major in programming and business, developing the management acumen to steward her app successfully once she creates it.

In other words, a key part of helping prospective students understand the difference between affording a college education and investing in a college education is listening. Listening to what worries them, what they want, what they hope to achieve and where they see themselves. After you have listened to them, you can begin to advise them. But this isn’t something that can be done at them—brochures and links to government websites are not sufficient. It has to be done with them, meaning thoughtful (and preferably face-to-face) individualized conversations have to take place.

The post Affording Vs. Investing: How We Should Be Helping Students Plan For a College Education appeared first on RHB.

E.B. White and William Strunk, in their simple and seminal writing manual, give some sage advice: “Omit needless words.” The best way to say something is also the most direct way to say something. Yet often, in our quest to omit “needless” words, we omit the right words entirely and rely on jargon-powered insider shorthand instead. Part of this is habit; we’re accustomed to finding creative ways to express complex ideas (“NASA” is a lot easier to say than “National Aeronautics and Space Administration”). But jargon dependency also indicates a lack of two things that are critical to the success of any marketing campaign: confidence in our offerings and in our audience’s ability to understand them (we’re pretty content to almost exclusively associate “NASA” with rocket ships and space exploration; that way we don’t have to worry about spelling “aeronautics”).

Often in our work as higher-ed marketers, we encounter, and sometimes get taken in by, jargon. It has its place, though as someone who has spent most of her career studying words and their power to communicate, shape and help make meaning of life’s most important experiences, I’d advocate for less.

Some examples include:

• The impulse to name any new program, regardless of the physical space that houses it (or doesn’t), an “institute” or “center.” Colleges and universities themselves often don’t even know what they mean by “institute” or “center”—they just know it’s a way of setting off something that’s new or slightly different. The general institutional wisdom seems to suggest that an “institute” or “center” is elevated above, say, a “program” or “committee.” But most students (prospective and current) don’t see any discernible difference.
• The prevalence of acronyms in use at virtually every college and university in the continental United States—they identify campus landmarks, areas of study, professional titles, special events, traditions, etc. Acronyms are the “put a bird on it” of higher ed.
• Overly simplified/overly complicated language choices based on what we assume a young audience’s level of understanding to be (“Will a 16-year-old really ‘get’ this? Is this on their level?”) and what we assume they will find compelling (“Is this hip enough? Do teenagers think this is cool?”).

Language can alienate an audience as much as draw them in. At some marketing firms, my job would be called “content creator” or “content director,” which is part of why I don’t work at those firms. At RHB, I was hired as a “writer” and promoted to become a “senior writer.” Not only does the word “writer” more accurately describe what I do, but it also seems to honor it as much as “content creator” seems to devalue it. “Writer” conjures particular and well-formed associations (storytelling, thoughtfulness, research, etc.). “Content creator” is a newer and more ambiguous term that provokes more questions than associations (“What is content?” “How quickly can you make it?” “Do you have to read it?”).

Likewise, the words an institution chooses to represent itself convey more than meaning, though it’s important to remember that is their primary and most important function (if it’s an apple, don’t name it an orange—unless you don’t care if your audience trusts you). They convey attitude, approach and aspirations. As we’ve all heard many times, words matter. Words have power. Usually those adages are invoked to help us unpack some of the more loaded pieces of our shared lexicon, but it’s important to keep them in mind whenever you’re using words to communicate ideas, even when that idea is something as seemingly simple and straight forward as a job description.

There are, however, several instances where simple choices are just that—simple, but not particularly descriptive or all that straightforward. As it relates to higher ed, an easy example would be naming your core general education curriculum “Core.” Yes, it’s at the core of your curriculum; yes, it’s forged of educational experiences that get to the core of what your institution offers. But hundreds of other institutions offer similar programs that are named the exact same thing. A core curriculum at Institution X isn’t the same as a core curriculum at Institution Y, and its name should reflect that (if it’s a Golden Delicious, don’t name it a Granny Smith). Sometimes, a little bit of descriptive flash is more than just permissible—it’s necessary.

Ultimately, the rules that make us good communicators are similar to the rules that make us good people.

At RHB, we’ve experienced success guiding our clients in higher education with this approach, which includes some of the following pragmatic advice:

Have clear eyes and tell the truth.

What do you actually want your audience to understand? What can you actually offer them? Have confidence in your product and describe it honestly.

Be thoughtful.

Choose your words carefully—they should be descriptive, accurate, as simple as possible and as evocative as possible.

Be respectful.

Your target audience is your target audience for a reason; respect their ability to understand and appreciate what you have to offer. Simplifying is ideal; “dumbing down” isn’t.

Remember that words matter.

The language you choose to use does more than just describe what you offer—it describes you. Your attitude, your approach, your aspirations.

Don’t get so distracted by flash that you forget about character, but don’t be afraid to shine.

Flash should never trump substance, but it can be great in moderation. And the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. If what you offer can live up to a shiny name, give it one (i.e. Beyoncé, Magic Kingdom, Cheesy Gordita Crunch, etc.).

The post Say What You Mean appeared first on RHB.