Value  =  experience ÷ cost

A college or university, then, has a choice between two routes to increase its perceived value:  it can increase understanding of the quality of the experience it offers, or it can lower its rates.  The latter path leads to smaller budgets, squeezed faculty, reduced opportunities, and a slow and painful death spiral. The former goes right to and through the brand.

Why is it that seven of the ten most selective universities in the country are Ivies?  Are they really that much better than Duke and Chicago and Vanderbilt and Emory and University of Virginia, whose selectivity rates are as much as four times that of Harvard? And how can that august leader-of-the-pack command $50,000 annually from the families of eighteen-year-olds itching to walk its hallowed halls?  The answer:  brand power—and in the case of the Ivies it extends to the whole family, with all eight member institutions being ranked in the top fifteen universities nationwide.  Harvard, quite simply, owns the idea of best-in-class in this country, to the extent that it makes headlines if the top slot in U.S. News isn’t colored crimson.

Reliable studies place the “added value” that consumers are willing to pay for a premium brand at 6%-20%, depending on the category—and higher education may well be at the top of that range.  If a consumer (parent, prospective student) believes that his or her future will be fundamentally better by attending a power-brand college or university, the relative cost difference is marginal compared to the longer-term gain.  So the assignment is theoretically simple:  improve perception of the brand so more people are willing to pay more to associate with it.  The execution, however, is more complex.

Understanding and activating your brand potential begins with a clear-eyed assessment of where your brand sits now—in the mind of the beholder! It’s not enough that you think you know what your brand is or stands for; if nobody shares your opinion, you’re living in a fool’s paradise and your branding initiative will splat like gefilte fish on granite.  You have to know where your prospect places you in the pantheon of organizations or institutions from which he or she could get a similar service.  If the prospect is not looking for a lifetime value brand, but wants a commodity—an individual course or simple certificate—then he or she will go elsewhere. And that’s fine.  We’re not trying to sell all services to all people.  But if your prospect is looking for a value brand, a badge that can be worn proudly as an entry on a c.v., a lapel pin, or a work-out hoodie, you have to deliver a clear, accurate, and compelling portrait of how your brand links to your prospects’ ambitions—and the prospects will pay the price.

So you start by doing brand-focused market research, determining how your prospects see you, how they differentiate you from your competitors, and—importantly—what they value.  With this knowledge you can begin to build your brand platform, develop a creative brief and effective brand expression, and lay out your brand marketing plan.  All easier said than done, I know, but do-able nonetheless.

And then, most importantly:  you execute the plan, keeping track of the effect of each of its myriad strategies and tactics by the results they generate and by an ongoing program of market research.

We have seen this create phenomenal results at the University of Cincinnati, Northern Arizona University, University of Texas at Arlington, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and elsewhere.

At Cincinnati, a brand-based “Every Student Counts” campaign reversed a decade of faltering enrollments, brought them to an all-time high in FTE student body, reduced their discount rate, and triggered alumni enthusiasm that contributed to the success of an $800 million capital campaign.  Moreover, tracking research showed that public perception of the University shifted from “big” and “basketball” to “quality education” and “excellent faculty” over the course of the branding campaign.

At Northern Arizona University, not only did enrollments skyrocket even after tuition jumped up 40%, but the whole gamut of stakeholders—from prospects to students to faculty to staff—registered significantly greater agreement with fundamental brand messages such as “faculty as mentors” and “good fit” as a result of an aggressive branding campaign.  And the “Mountain Air Makes You Smarter” campaign also captured the attention of William Franke, a successful Phoenix businessman and philanthropist who made a commitment of $25 million to name the NAU College of  Business because of its undergraduate orientation and success at educating first-generation Hispanic and Native American students—attributes he first learned about through the branding campaign.

The University of Texas at Arlington has seen enrollment skyrocket more than 33% in the three years since the “Unbranded” brand campaign was launched. University of Chicago Booth School of Business has claimed and held the top slot in EMBA education according to Business Week rankings.  University of Minnesota Morris reclaimed its position as the top-quality liberal arts option in the UM system.  University of Miami has climbed into the top 50 national universities according to U.S. News—withstanding many a storm along the way—due in no small part to the gale force of President Donna Shalala who epitomizes the Hurricane brand.

Brand campaigns work. They’re not easy; they take diligence and investment; they have to be continually reviewed, assessed, measured, and freshened—but they work.  They deliver dollars to the bottom line because they align an institution’s “offer” with the values and interests of its constituents, and those constituents are therefore willing to pay more.

Bottom line:  a brand campaign is the best investment you can make to improve your bottom line. A tautology, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

— Rob Moore, CEO and President

For more insights on branding in the higher education space, read Rob’s book The Real U: Building Brands That Resonate with Students, Faculty, Staff, and Donors.

All told, he’s right on target.  I wrote the book to meet both a beginner’s needs and a mid-level professional’s interests in learning more.  And hey, he ends up saying, “the final product is a worthwhile how-to resource for higher ed marketers.  I plan to share it widely with members of our branding and marketing team, and maybe even with some administrators.”

Thanks, Andrew. Your autographed copy is on the way.  Bound to be worth at least $2 more than the face value, someday.

-Rob Moore, President and CEO

Céad míle fáilte: While the Irish greeting for “100,000 Welcomes” hasn’t translated exactly to  that number of new client relationships in 2010, we have had quite the busy first two quarters at Lipman Hearne establishing new partnerships. We are proud of, and excited by, the collaborations that are underway and would like to take a moment to properly welcome the following nonprofit organizations:

Advocate Health Care
Alverno College
American Medical Association
California State University, Northridge
Council for a Strong America
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
George Washington University
National Defense University
Northwest Area Foundation
Rhodes College
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Schoolnet
Seton Hall University
Society of Actuaries
University at Buffalo
University of Alabama in Huntsville
University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business
University of Virginia Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy

The number of Tufts applicants choosing the video option has been significant, but not overwhelming – about 1,000 of the 15,000 applicants this year submitted videos. The responses range from students showing off card tricks to day-in-the-life montages to flying a remote-controlled blue-elephant helicopter (representing Tufts’ mascot, Jumbo the Elephant). Some of the videos have even gathered a YouTube following – the most popular one features Amelia Downs; her video has gotten more than 6,000 views.

So what does this all mean? Will videos ultimately replace the written essay? Tufts admissions staff insists that they remain “committed to the traditional essay-writing requirement” and that videos are genuinely optional. But this is clearly the year of the video for colleges and universities – between the “Lipdub” phenomenon and Yale’s YouTube musical “That’s Why I Chose Yale,” universities’ staff and students are increasingly turning towards video as an effective means of marketing their institution. So it seems natural that prospective students are likewise using this medium to market themselves. Only time will reveal to what extent video and other social media vehicles will come to dominate the higher education communications sphere.

What do you think about colleges allowing prospective students to submit application videos? Do you foresee the end of the traditional college essay? Share your thoughts in our comments section.

The Real U represents the first book-length manuscript I’ve written since completing my doctoral program, which was largely focused on modern and contemporary American fiction.  And as I was finishing The Real U, I found myself contemplating one of the lasting questions of my doctoral work:  has the Great American Novel been written?  For those of you not part of this particular academic debate, the nature and presence of the GAN has been batted around like a shuttlecock by generations of literary critics, with the usual candidates being The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, and other texts.

My argument in my comprehensive exams was that the GAN hadn’t been written because I hadn’t written it yet.  Writers are nothing if not arrogant.  Now, nearly twenty years later, with no more novels having clattered under my fingertips, I’ve revised my thesis.  The Great American Novel is not a novel, it’s a brand.  It’s a brand in that any novel purporting to carry the GAN label has to meet certain established criteria in order to qualify.  But on a whole other level, the Great American Story – which is what any qualifying tome attempts to relate – may not be a novel at all, but may be, instead, a brand.

Our nation has always been about ambition, about establishing something new and making it last.  From John Winthrop describing our “city upon a hill” to Charles Wilson declaring “what’s good for General Motors” to Ray Kroc and Walt Disney and Howard Shultz and Phil Knight and Steve Jobs creating iconic entities, there’s been a long and strong convergence between the essential enterprise of America and the effective force of market-driven organizations.  Our big brands – McDonald’s and Disney and Starbucks and Nike and Apple – contain the American story, with all its strengths and faults, in a way that few if any books have been able to accomplish.

And if you really think about it, America itself is a brand – carrying with it the promise of an experience that we as a people, as an entity, must fulfill if we’re to live up to our collective aspirations.  So buy The Real U, sit down with a venti latte, power up your Mac, and do a Google search for “top 10 brands.”  You’re living the quintessential American dream.

- Rob Moore, Managing Partner

The technique was created by a group of students at Hochshule Furtwangen University in Germany, who wanted to “show the whole world that studying does not have to be boring.” They shot a video in which students lip sync to a song, while the camera follows them through campus, resulting in a highly-choreographed musical university tour. This spurred the creation of the “University LipDub Project,” which challenges students of other colleges to produce their own videos and show what their campus has to offer (and to see if their creation is worthy of “going viral”).

What started as a European phenomenon gradually moved over to Canada, where the Université du Québec à Montréal’s “LipDub” video made quite an impression – it became so popular that it was featured on CNN and, to date, has received over 4 million hits on YouTube. Now, U.S. universities have begun to catch on, with Texas State University and Suffolk University being some of the first to embrace the trend.

A prime example that this phenomenon has the chance to transition from a grassroots amusement to a legitimate communications department marketing tool is Johns Hopkins University’s end-of-the-year “LipDub” video. Created to thank their donors for their continued support, it shows how the whole university community can collaborate and lend their voice to promote their community and showcase the spirit behind the brand.

The key to not killing this concept before it leaves the ground is to remain inclusive when it comes to who is primarily representing the university. It is ok for the university staff to have a stake in the video, but don’t lose the student-run feel. As with the popular strategy of featuring student blogs on admissions websites, like MIT does, it is the sense that it is providing an unfiltered, first-hand account of campus life that is the spark behind these videos.

Have other examples of social media trends storming your campus? Share them in the comments section.

-Erin Kelly, Marketing Intern

The launch caps a great year for the school. Recent rankings put Miami among the top 10 law schools for Hispanics and among the top 20 law schools in terms of the quality of the lawyers it produces.

Here is an account from an audience member discussing the presentation and why the findings are of interest to higher ed marketers.

It wasn’t just that Princeton had found a new way to appeal to students; this particular offer helped reverse a strange decline in matriculation at elite colleges among a particular subset of the college-bound population: high-achieving students from low-income families. A growing body of research tells us that these students—even when they know on an intellectual level what they might go on to earn in their chosen fields—are averse to debt.

As a demographic group, these students are more diverse than the college-bound population as a whole, and are also more likely to be first-generation students. They are also rare among subsets of the college-bound population in that they are growing in number, while the overall college-bound population shrinks.

In the years that followed Princeton’s announcement, the rest of the Ivy League colleges and several other highly selective institutions followed suit. Since 2001, the number of colleges replacing loans with grants for low-income families or all families who qualify for aid has more than doubled every two years, reaching a total of 39  in 2009*. Even as the policy adds pressure to already stressed endowments, many schools report that delivering on the no-loan promise remains a high priority. We haven’t begun to see, much less measure, the total seismic shift in applicant and admitted student demographics this change has brought, but some early signals are interesting.

At Princeton, 60 percent of students in the incoming class of 2013 will receive financial aid. A total of 487 students from minority backgrounds represent 37.4 percent of the entering class. That’s a minority student headcount increase of 60 percent over nine years ago, when just 305 students were from minority backgrounds. At the same time, selectivity has increased since 2001.

Lipman Hearne’s 2009 report High Achieving Teens and the College Decision offers insight into the values and motivations that drive students to make the choices they do. Particularly in this climate of increasing economic pressure on both family savings and college endowments, how critical is financial aid to high-achieving students? What do students need to know from the colleges that want them, and how, finally, do they choose from among their options? We’re far from knowing all the answers, but we look forward to beginning a lively discussion—with you.

- Tom Abrahamson, Managing Director & Principal

*Excludes another 23 colleges that make this offer, but limit eligibility by residency or GPA.

The project is a close collaboration between Muhlenberg’s internal web team and Lipman Hearne.