A friend of mine sent me a link to this video yesterday from the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign, designed to raise women’s awareness of heart disease.

I watched the video, shared the link with my mom, my mother-in-law, and a couple of friends, put a link on my Facebook page, then visited the AHA’s Go Red for Women website for more information.  An hour later, I turned on my radio during the after-school carpool and heard a PSA on women’s heart health, part of the same campaign.  And now, of course, I’m sharing it with all of you.

In a matter of hours, this message hit me multiple times from different sources, encouraged me to take action, and spurred me to pass it along to numerous others.  From a marketing perspective, wow—this is how you do an all-out, coordinated awareness campaign.

But the truly important lesson here is this:  Heart disease is not just “an older man’s disease.” It is also the leading cause of death among women in the U.S.  According to the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease, nearly five times as many women will die from heart attacks this year than will die of breast cancer.  So know your risks.  Learn the symptoms.  Take charge of your heart health. And Go Red for Women!

Well folks, according to the stuffed groundhog posing in Dupont Circle this morning, we have 6 more weeks of winter ahead. For those of us in DC, that doesn’t mean much because our winter has been just dandy! In fact, the HQ staff went on a walk down to the waterfront in Old Town Alexandria yesterday to take advantage of the beautiful sunny day. If you are an art lover and haven’t been to the Torpedo Factory, I would highly recommend it. This place has artists packed in every corner, and we saw some amazing talent. Actually, we have a painting by a Torpedo Factory artist hanging in our meeting space! If you are ever in the Old Town area, and want someone to walk around/go have lunch with with, let us know. There is always someone here, and we could always use a good excuse to play hooky for an hour.

We are so lucky to work in such an amazing neighborhood. It has been a year since the fire (can you believe it??), and we have really come to love our new home!

How much do you wish you were here?

Beautiful Day!!!

SimpsonScarborough spoke with David Perry, Chief Marketing Officer at Bentley University, regarding Bentley’s branding iniitative.

Q: You arrived at Bentley University in July of 2011 and immediately kicked off a major branding initiative.  Why?
A: The key directive both from my observations during the interview process and from the President, key leaders, and select board members was that defining the brand was the #1 priority. The brand positioning influences and often drives a number of key strategic initiatives across the institution. So, this was the logical and most impactful place to start during my first 90 days. For instance, the brand-related research helped my team understand audience needs and priorities, and this is being incorporated into an overall marketing plan and fiscal year budgeting. It provides both proof and rationale for prioritizing certain academic departments and funding of particular programs. It also provides a great base from which to engage our board on the strategic marketing direction we needed to take and for us to better understand their expectations.

Q: Many universities conduct their brand research and then hire a creative firm to bring the brand strategy to life.  But you had your creative firm, Boathouse, at the table all through the image and branding research conducted by SimpsonScarborough. What impact do you think this had on the process and the end result?
A: I believe in integration. I think there is great benefit to having a creative firm or ad agency exposed to research and the data/results it generates. I also believe that having SimpsonScarborough involved with the agency was also beneficial. Boathouse leveraged SimpsonScarborough’s knowledge of key audience behaviors to help guide their creative work and Boathouse supplied lots of qualitative input from earlier fact-finding.

Q: You are currently in the midst of a fairly comprehensive concept test of the creative strategies developed by Boathouse. Why is the concept test so important to you and Bentley?
A: I think you need to figure out how a brand and its positioning come to life and how these are perceived by key audiences. We’ve defined three possible paths on a spectrum of positioning options, and the research will help inform the ultimate direction we choose. I will note that I don’t believe you can base *all* your strategic decisions on research, but rather that it should inform your strategy and your creative. You obviously want to try to avoid showstopper issues with images and words.

Q: How will you and Bentley measure the ROI of your image and branding efforts?
A: We have some benchmarks we will track over time that include awareness- and perception-related metrics.  I would like to see us track unaided and aided awareness across our key audiences, engagement levels among alumni, levels of positive or negative perception of our key messages and priority programs, and media including tone and manner of coverage. Perhaps the best ROI measures will be drawn from number of clicks, time on our site, the web response to calls to action, and donations made online. Of course, I am looking to ultimately link the branding efforts to increased enrollment yields and fundraising.

Q: You previously served as CMO of Seattle Children’s Hospital.  What can higher ed marketers learn from healthcare marketers?
A: There are a number of similarities:  we had faculty linked to an academic medical center, we served families, and we had donors. The key takeaway we can learn from healthcare is that competition for these services is increasing, and we need to find ways to lower costs to keep these services affordable for more customer sectors.  From a brand perspective, much of our marketing efforts at the hospital and research institute focused on philanthropy. I think it will be important for higher ed marketers to work with their advancement peers to leverage branding, using compelling, relevant storytelling and calls to action that engage alumni, donors, and external partners and ultimately get them to support their institutions, financially or through other efforts like increased recruiting of graduates.

Moody’s released its “mixed” outlook for higher education early last week. “The rating agency expects slower revenue growth, greater student resistance to tuition increases, and heightened public scrutiny requiring universities to operate more efficiently and to keep costs down.” Reading further, the report says that for about two-thirds of colleges and universities, the outlook is negative and, that our industry will remain “under the microscope” in 2012 and beyond.

As a follow-up, Hardwick Day posted a good interview with John Nelson of Moody’s. In it, Nelson made two points, in particular, that are worthy of a lot more discussion. First, he said colleges need to “tighten the belt when it comes to finding revenue and controlling expenses.” Second, Nelson said “the ability to pay tuition is largely stagnant. In that environment, colleges need to differentiate more than they have in the past.”

To address the first issue, we offer that there are many ways institutions can streamline marketing costs.  One is to review and evaluate your marketing vendors. At many institutions, there are various departments, units, or schools hiring their own marketing vendors. These could be freelance writers/designers, consultants, ad agencies, media buyers, and the like. Often, there is no one person on campus that’s even aware of all the marketing vendors that are billing the institution. In tight times, colleges should consider streamlining their marketing vendors. Not only would this improve progress toward an integrated marketing strategy, but there’s a good chance it would save money and achieve better results.

Another way to streamline costs is to multi-purpose your content. Because marketing staff are typically sprinkled across the institution, we have “content developers” in many nooks and crannies of the institution. Surely, the content they’re developing could be multi-purposed across a variety of audiences, social media strategies, and communications of many kinds. Much of the content being developed for alumni could be repackaged and used by the corporate relations team. Some of the content being developed by media relations might be repackaged and used with parents. This doesn’t happen as much as it should on university campuses because we are incredibly siloed. According to Moody’s, we need to think about that very carefully. How much longer is our current model going to survive? Institutions need to be thinking about how to create efficiencies in the marketing function and across the entire institution.

If you follow my work or the work of my firm, you will not be surprised that I jumped on Nelson’s comment about differentiation.  As I’ve argued many times in presentations and on campuses, institutions need to ask themselves the tough questions about what makes them different than their top competitors. It’s almost impossible to differentiate from every other college out there.  But, you CAN and MUST differentiate from the institutions you compete with most directly. Differentiators can come in the form of a tangible attribute but they can also simply be aspects of your culture. And, in fact, “differentiation” is the first of the two key principles of branding. The second is “integration.”  Once you figure out which differentiators you want to emphasize inyour marketing (which is not as easy as it sounds when you realize that you need your campus to agree on it), messages about those differentiators need to be woven into all (or most) of your marketing. Sounds easy, but again those silos become an issue.  The effort to work on your brand is worth it because a strong brand will serve to insulate your institution from the pressures Moody’s warned us about last week.

In Nelson’s words, “The vast majority of colleges have a challenge on their hands.” We would agree, but we are optimistic that higher ed is prepared to evolve in order  to preserve our missions while responding to the many environmental factors that are causing a major shift in our industry.

Elizabeth Scarborough

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Some of you may have already seen this video, but for those that haven’t, see what happens when Cincinnati, Ohio-based logo and brand designer Adam Ladd asks his 5-year old daugther her impressions on some popular logos.

My personal favorite is her response to the Repulican Party logo. This is both adorable and some of the most authentic field research (conducted with a sample of 1) out there!

– Renee Daly

Thanks to all the folks who attended my NAICU session yesterday.  The original and the redux in the afternoon. You fell for my tongue-in-cheek title. The moral of the story, of course, is that colleges CAN/SHOULD/MUST brand.  But I had to get you in the room somehow.  The title is actually “borrowed” from one of my favorite books on branding, Why Johnny Can’t Brand.

The reasons college’s can’t brand…..or rather, the hurdles you must overcome so you can, are:

1. Because every time we say “brand,” people think we are talking about our logo. (Your brand is the sum total of all associations that are made with your institution. Your logo and tagline are simply reflections of your brand.)

2. Because everyone on our campus wants their own logo and tagline…..and we let them have `em! (We haven’t been “minding the store” when it comes to logos. We’ve allowed almost anyone who wants one to develop their own. With each new logo created, your ability to manage your brand deteriorates.)

3. Because brands are built by what you do, not what you say. (As Michael Eisner said, “”A brand is a living entity – and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.”)

4. Because we are unwilling or unable to differentiate. (There are two key principles of branding. The first is “differentiation.” If you are not offering something different and better than your competition, why bother?)

5. Because we don’t have the right data. (You need your faculty to be involved in the development of your brand strategy or you will most certainly fail. What language do the faculty speak?  I rest my case.)

6. Because we have to integrate within a decentalized environment. (The second key principle of branding is “integration.” Your messages and approach must be consistent across all divisions of the institution. Sound challening?  It is….because of the way our institutions are organized. Your institution may not be able to centralize the marketing effort. But, you can [and must] coordinate or you will never be successful in developing your brand to its full potential.)

7. Because people on our campus think the marketing department is an internal Kinko’s. (We need to support our marketing department and allow them to evolve into strategic marketing innovation centers.)

8. Because our campus thinks a brochure is the answer to every marketing problem. (Can we please stop killing trees? Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because there are so many other ways to communicate these days. We need to relax our fixation on print.)

9. Because deep down, faculty wish we didn’t have to market our institutions at all. (Marketing is perceived as a necessary evil on most campuses. And, that’s fine.  It may be an “evil,” but it’s still necessary.  I’m certain that all non-profits wish they didn’t have to spend a dime on marketing. They would rather put all their resources against achieving their mission. That would be great. But it’s not the world we live in. An “if you build it, they will come” type of marketing strategy only works in the movies.)

These are obstacles your institution can, and must, overcome.

Elizabeth Scarborough

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A little humor for your Wednesday morning…

Video: Fresh Impressions on Brandmarks (from my 5-year old)

If you’re anything like me, your Sundays from August until early February are dedicated to football. The only requirements for the day are a big, flat-screen TV, friends, and pizza or some kind of take-out. Every Sunday, we’re barraged with hundreds of statistics – most are fascinating, some are kind of random. I’ve always thought how cool it would be to be an NFL analyst. I mean, you get to watch TV for work! While I’m no statistician, in honor of the big game this Sunday, I’ve made up my own Superbowl Sunday by the Numbers:

24 to 21 – NFC leads the series with 24 wins versus the AFC with 21

32,000 – the number of tickets that went unsold at the first Super Bowl in 1967

10 – the most number of times a city has hosted the Super Bowl (Miami and New Orleans are tied)

14,500 – the estimated number of tons of potato chips that are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday

0 – the number of times our fair city of Washington, DC, has hosted the Super Bowl

$42,000 – the cost of an ad spot during the first Super Bowl in 1967

$3.5 million – the cost NBC is charging for a 30 second ad this year

4 – the number of teams that have never made an appearance in the Super Bowl

2012 – the first year the Super Bowl will be streaming live online at NBCSports.com

Who are you rooting for this year – the Patriots or the Giants?!

Just took a minute to read my December Quirks, and came across a little blurb about the new Lego Cuusoo site, which allows the consumer to help to develop new products – either by designing  their own or voting on other submissions (crowdsourcing). So the little nerd that lives inside of me was super excited (legos – awesome, research – awesome), and I wanted to share it with you.

Happy Friday!

Meredith

With the exception of “What does the org structure of the marketing department look like at other colleges?”, this is the most common question I hear from our clients.  Our sense is that on most college/university campuses, the marketing budget is increasing.  Yes, increasing…..in spite of the economy and in spite of all the budget cuts you’re reading about in the Chronicle and IHE pretty much daily. This might sound odd but keep in mind that much of the change is due to a) the fact that many institutions were spending very little on marketing in the first place and b) the fact that with the sophistication of higher ed marketing operations, many institutions are simply collecting marketing dollars that were dispersed across the campus into a centralized budget. 

Outside of higher education, there is pretty good data on how much an organization should be spending on marketing. MarketingSherpa put out some data in June 2010 that said small organizations (less than 100 employees) typically invest 11% of their gross revenue to marketing. The investment for medium-size organizations of 100-1000 employees (which would be the size of many colleges) was 9% and large organizations were said to invest 6% of gross revenue.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) references an old adage….that 2% to 3% of your gross revenue should be dedicated to marketing.  But, they rightfully warn that this would vary dramatically based on an organization’s goals. If your institution is attempting to dramatically increase enrollment or change your image, you need to invest more.

Drew’s Marketing Minute says your marketing budget should be 2% to 8% and he notes that McKinsey is often quoted as recommending 5%. He says organizations with less than $5M gross revenue should be shooting for 7-8% while organizations with $100-$300M in gross revenue should be spending 3-5%. He also gives some percentages by industry:

• Consumer package goods:  Up to 50% of projected net sales to launch a new product
• Industrial B-to-B:  1% of gross sales
• Retail:  4-10% of net revenues
• Banks/Credit Unions:  2-5% of assets
• Law firms:  1-4% of gross revenues
• Pharmaceuticals:  Up to 20% of net sales
• Hospitals:  1% of net revenues

Higher education is often compared to healthcare…..so the 1% hospitals are investing is probably a decent benchmark.  However, almost all my clients are spending much, much less than 1% of net revenue on marketing.

Business Owner’s Toolkit gives some figures by industry. But, they list “education” as spending 5% of gross sales on advertising. I have no idea how the category of education is defined but I’m sure that’s not representative of your typical 4-year, non-profit institution.

Inside of higher education, there have been a couple of attempts to provide some insight into the issue of marketing budget size. In March 2011, LeadsCouncil announced the findings of a study it conducted with CUnet. The findings are based on responses from 293 professionals working in marketing at a college or university. I’m not sure how many actual schools this represents or what the distribution of respondents looks like by geography, type or size of school, etc. You might still be able to get a full copy of the report via email here. Regardless, you are going to want to take the findings with a grain of salt because they might only include for-profit schools.  I can’t tell from the press release.

In 2010, CASE and Lipman Hearne conducted a study on marketing spending; it reported on 212 CASE member institutions and included liberal arts colleges, master’s-level universities, research institutions, and 2-year schools. But, it also included independent primary and secondary schools. The median marketing spending was reported as about $500k for small schools of under 2,000 students, $800k for medium-sized institutions up to 6,000 students, and $1.4M for larger institutions. But, all of these figures are asterisked for small sample size.

The bottom line is that solid benchmarks on how much colleges and universities are spending on marketing simply don’t exist. But, the data above combined do provide a general sense of the norm inside and outside of higher education. It will probably require one of our professional organizations to get pretty serious about establishing some benchmarks before higher ed marketers will have real data on marketing spending by institution type. Any takers?????

Elizabeth Scarborough

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