The congested college and university
marketplace means that every presidential communication must further
institutional branding and messaging. Contemporary
presidents are the public “face” of the institution, and competition for
audiences’ attention has never been fiercer.
Here are some suggestions from our
experience that will help you make every communication count while enabling
your messaging to stand out among others.
Communicate across multiple platforms to
tell your story.
Use of social media such as presidential
e-letters, blogs, Twitter, Flicker, LinkedIn and Facebook increase frequency of
communication to key current and future constituencies, including prospective
students, families and donors, at little or no cost.
Using such technologies, presidents can
foster and cultivate new relationships, expand existing networks and raise the
entire institutional profile. Further, a
great deal of mileage can be gained from reprints of such communications—in
fact, often more than from the initial exposure.
Raise your visibility.
Because the President is the public face
of an institution, it is important that the image he or she presents is both
reflective of the institution’s mission and values and in sync with its core
messaging and overall branding strategy.
The president is the
institution to most key publics, including the media. Perception is reality when it comes to such
marketing communications.
Communicate early and often.
In his 2007 bestseller Millennials Go to College, Neil Howe
observes that if prospective students don’t know your brand by the age of 13,
it is unlikely that they will consider applying when they are high school
juniors. Thus, it is critical that you
get your institutional brand out early and often. Just as the successful realtor’s mantra is
“location, location, location,” the effective communicator relies on
“repetition, repetition, repetition.”
Presidents need to be able to relate what’s been called the “30-second
elevator message” about their institutions in a concise, compelling way.
Consistency is key.
Many
communications experts have noted that when evaluating the efficacy of
messaging, they find that consistency and continuity often trump content.
In an
August 2012 interview with the McKinsey
Quarterly’s Allen Webb, Olympic decathlon champion Dan O’Brien observed,
“In the long run, consistency always wins out.”
O’Brien won a gold medal in the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta,
following three consecutive world titles in decathlon.
“Although
Dan’s commentary focuses on athletics, not business, executives may find
parallels between the competitive challenges he describes and those facing
their companies,” Webb notes. Simply
put, it’s almost impossible to repeat a message too often for today’s multi-taskers.
Cultivate compelling messages.
A vast body of research demonstrates
time and again that people act on emotion undergirded by fact much more responsively
than they do on the basis of facts alone.
Emotions and effective storytelling trump facts, data and statistics
every time. Personalizing, localizing
and using emotion to connect with audiences are the hallmarks of persuasive
communications that cause people to change their behaviors in ways favorable to
the college or university. We like the “SUCCES” formula for “sticky messages” advanced
by authors Chip and Dan Heath: compelling and memorable messages must be simple,
unexpected, concrete, concise, use emotions and tell stories.
So, as a college president, tell your story as often and in as many ways
as possible.
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Dr. Scott D. Miller is President
of the College and M.M. Cochran Professor of Leadership Studies at Bethany
College in West Virginia. Now in his
third college presidency, he has served as a CEO for nearly 22 years. He is
Chair of the Board of Directors of Academic Search, Inc.
Dr. Marylouise Fennell, RSM, a
former president of Carlow University in Pittsburgh, PA, is senior counsel for
the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) and principal of Hyatt Fennell, a
Higher Education Search Firm.
They have collaborated on nine
books, including “President to President:
Views on Technology in Higher Education (2008)” and “Presidential
Perspectives: Strategies to Address the Rising Cost of Higher Education”
(2012.) They are regular columnists for
Enrollment Manager. Both serve as consultants to college presidents and boards.
