College Admissions as Metaphor: Lessons for Consultants

As prospective students were learning this week if they'd been accepted early admission to colleges and universities around the country, those same institutions were letting many consultants know whether they'd been accepted as well. I don't remember so many RFP decisions coinciding with early admission season in the past, but for some reason the last two weeks have brought a number of yeas and nays to me and several colleagues.

Because I often team up with other firms I have been in the interesting position of knowing not only how I did but of seeing how other consulting friends have fared. One colleague, a talented golden boy, has been "accepted" by every school to which he applied including the Ivies. Another colleague was wait-listed -- make that short-listed -- at an Ivy, rejected by a little Ivy and accepted by a great public. As for me, I was accepted by an Ivy, rejected by another, and accepted by two top-tier liberal arts colleges. (Yes, I'm pleased.)

Now that the waiting is over, like families whose kids were accepted and rejected, these colleagues and I have been discussing the whys behind the decisions. I've taken away these lessons for consultants:

• In the end, no matter how talented a consultant is, institutions that want to sell prestige choose prestige. Whether consciously or not, institutions "trade up," choosing consultants who have worked with the institutions they admire. This can hurt you with "reach" schools but also help you identify schools that would welcome your counsel.
  
• The old adage about not judging a school by the tour guide works here too. To have a sense of whether you'll win the business, ask yourself if you have a great connection with more than one person at the school. Even if that one person is the dean of admission or chair of the board, it's not enough if you are not a good fit with the rest of the team. You may still win the business but if that key person leaves the value of your work for the institution can erode dramatically.
  
• Never let 'em see you sweat. While every institution wants great value, an over-eager or Avis we-try-harder approach can backfire. Especially in this economy, institutions want turnkey results and a sure thing. Rather than instilling confidence, revealing too much of the inner workings of your operation and decision-making can detract from a perception of out-of-town expertise, translating to weakness.
  
• If you're going after a reach school -- meaning you don't have similar institutions on your list -- you better have a special talent your competitors don't have. For prospective students that may mean being an Olympic fencer or holding a patent at the tender age of 17. For prospective consultants that can mean having a formula for successful search results or proven social media ROI.

I've often said that families choose schools that strike the right balance of prestige, cost, and outcomes. And so it is with institutions selecting consultants. When I consider the consultant choices made by several institutions this season, inevitably they each chose the consultant whose client pedigree, proven outcomes, and cost was right for them. Four years from now it will be interesting to see how many believe they made the right choice.

The good news for talented consultants, like talented kids, is there are so many fantastic institutions in this country -- a great match is possible for everyone.

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3 Mistakes Alumni Magazines Make

Want your alums to read more than class notes? Here's some advice from Swarthmore College's award-winning alumni magazine editor, Jeff Lott.

Jeff chaired the CASE Annual Publications Conference in Pittsburgh this year. After seeing him in action during a fast-paced critique session he calls "Triple Play" I asked him to write this guest post.

From Jeff:

One of my favorite sessions at the conference was an America-Idol version of publications critiques in which a panel of three experts is given just three minutes to offer some cogent criticism of a publication submitted by a member of the “studio audience.”

The beauty of Triple Play is that your school’s piece is under the gun for just 180 seconds. In reality, you don’t have that much time to impress your actual audience before your publication is headed for the recycling bin. A lot of the publications we saw were magazines with three common problems.

Design Overload.
This is not a new criticism, but today’s designers have way too many tools at their fingertips—a hundred fonts, a thousand graphical elements, a million ways to layer more images, colors, and information onto a page. Some can’t resist what I call exponential design: “If something looks good, square it.” Cut it out! Readers of teen tabloids will pore over these kinds of pages. But your educated, college-graduate audience needs a break. Calm, quiet design coupled with cool, easy-to-comprehend editorial will give them a chance to think.

Editorial Hierarchy.
A number of magazines ignored the following reality: Almost no one reads your carefully written articles, no matter how good they are. Research shows that only 10 percent of readers make it past the first paragraph of your body copy. So how can you get your message across? Most of us are skimmers—it’s how we cope with the flood of information we’re bathed in every day. So, if you’re designing or editing a magazine, tell your story through the following hierarchy:

• Catchy headline with an active verb (avoid gerunds)
• Summary subhead that, if it’s the only thing readers take-away, tells the story
  
• Crunchy, fact-filled callouts that help fill in the details
• Captions that don’t just name who or what’s in the picture, but tell something about them or it
• Short, engaging sidebars, lists, and charts that provide additional entry points to the story
• Last and least—the story itself

Magazine Architecture.
Go to a good newsstand and buy 25 different consumer magazines—from The Atlantic to The Bark, from Smithsonian to People. It will cost you about a hundred bucks. Back at the office, pick them apart. What are the common organizational elements? You’ll find that there’s a standard architecture to great magazines, just as there is to great buildings. And if you deviate too much from the expectations of readers—the conventions set by the magazines that they actually pay to read—you do so at your peril. Whether you start reading a magazine from the back or the front, architecture matters. Too many institutional magazines ignore the defining details that make readers comfortable, risking the impression that your publication is not a “real” magazine. To be taken seriously, you must be real.

If you would like help with any of these concepts Jeff has kindly offered to receive questions via email at jeffrey.lott@gmail.com

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When You're Out of Ideas

Stuck on a concept, theme, brand development or story? Try some wisdom from the design world that works just as well for writers and marketing communication folks.

Michael Bierut's "Lazy Designer's Guide to Success" featured in Azure.

Andrew Bosley's The Brainstormer (possibly a new iPhone app).

Word-of-Mouth and Storytelling

How do you prepare your chief storytellers? How do you take advantage of the natural storytellers within your leadership? How do you help everyone to be on story, even if it doesn’t come naturally to them?

These are the questions the director of communications at an independent girls’ school says he's been thinking about lately. “One of the things I’ve come up against is the idea of prepping people to ‘tell’ stories, not just to write them,” he told me last week.

A few years ago, before Facebook, Twitter and YouTube defined the way we think about stories moving from person-to-person, I wrote a piece on word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. Turns out it’s a recipe for face-to-face storytelling. Here's an excerpt with the best of the advice.

Story First, Brand Second
Mark Hughes, author of the book Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff, says it’s counter intuitive, but in word-of-mouth marketing the rules of engagement are story first, brand second. Good stories go viral, he says, because they are interesting and therefore make the teller interesting. “People want to be in the know. They want to start a conversation with “did you hear’ or ‘you’re never going to believe,’” he says.

According to Hughes, the same topics that get people talking also get the media writing. The five stories that appear on the front page most frequently are surefire conversation starters:

• David and Goliath stories
• Controversies
• The outrageous and unusual,
• Celebrities
• Stories that piggyback on an already hot story

Hughes says if he were a campus communicator he would focus on the remarkable and the David and Goliath stories—“the kid who came from Bulgaria with five bucks in his pocket and won the Nobel Prize. Everyone wants to hear a story about making it.” Define the institution’s niche and find the compelling stories that exemplify that niche. “If you give [people] a good story to tell when they get together with friends at a cocktail party,” he says, “they will carry your message.”

Cocktail Talk
Denver-based public relations firm JohnstonWells’ signature program “Cocktail Talk” is designed to do just that. Cocktail Talk trains board members, staff members, and volunteers how to incorporate an organization’s messages into social conversations—not by spouting off facts and figures but by becoming good storytellers. The program begins
 with some basic branding techniques—defining an organization’s distinctions and backing them up with proof that they can then translate into a memorable acronym. But Cocktail Talk’s innovation lies in allowing participants to connect their organization’s brand attributes to their own stories.

“[As we work] through every piece of the acronym we ask them ‘Okay, tell a story that really exemplifies this point,’” says GG Johnston, president of JohnstonWells. “Incredible stories unfold—many of which participants haven’t even told each other.” The process builds internal consensus among leadership, staff, and volunteers that is critical because people seldom successfully use messages handed off to them. Rather, they communicate messages enthusiastically when they’ve had an active role in creating them. One can easily imagine how powerful such storytelling sessions could be for admissions tour guides and alumni and parent volunteers because they would have the opportunity to make an institution’s brand story their own.

When asked if volunteer participants balk at being encouraged to promote their organizations in social situations, Johnston says, “It’s not about asking people to dominate conversations with organizational messages. These are smart, busy volunteers who are passionate about where they spend their time. What happens is they gain practice talking about things that are important to them.”

Joshua Searle-White, a professional storyteller and psychology professor at Allegheny College who has taught many storytelling workshops and classes, says the one common element he finds in good stories is that they connect with some truth about the teller. “Something in the story feels important to the teller and the listener senses that,” Searle-White says. “The listener has a sense of being invited in.”

Structured for Results
That invitation is exactly the kind of opening Sametz Blackstone’s Andrew Maydoney* says is missing from a lot of today’s brand stories. “It’s probably the most important part of the story for a word-of-mouth campaign,” he says. A brand story has four parts, he says, but most institutions stop at the first one: facts and history. “They leave out how that institution differentiates itself from its competition. They leave out the institution’s value and meaning to the world. And finally, they leave no room in the story for the role that the alum, the student, the prospective donor, the post doc, or the new faculty member will play in the story.”

Maydoney worked with a liberal arts college in New England that wanted to expand the geographic diversity of its student body. The college draws students from the region and two additional areas outside New England due to a critical mass of alumni who have settled in those areas and are spreading the word. Campus leaders would like to leverage that success by accelerating good word-of-mouth. The Sametz Blackstone team met with alumni, guidance counselors, and prospective students and their families in those two areas to get a sense of what they understand about the campus. After comparing what constituents know to what institution officials hope they know, the team started writing stories aimed at alumni in target areas to help them tell an authentic but better story about the college.

Once the firm finished the research, it developed “cheat cards” delineating five easy ways to tell the story. The cards are not prescriptive, but principles-based, and they outline an exchange between storyteller and constituent that begins in “empathy” and ends in “follow-up.” For a real dialogue to build, Maydoney says, “you can’t lay out rules that don’t acknowledge everyone has his or her own way of telling stories.” Alumni of different ages will tell the story in their own vernacular, as will people from different backgrounds. “It’s not as straightforward as a publication,” he says. “You have to get out there and talk to your constituents and do some role-playing. The work is actually in the dialogue.”

While Maydoney emphasizes that word-of-mouth campaigns shouldn’t tell people what to say, they do revolve around memorable messages that people can make their own in part because constituents have helped develop them. For an education organization serving disadvantaged youth aspiring to go to college, Sametz Blackstone developed the tagline: “Get in, graduate, go far, success depends on you.” Without coaching, those affiliated with the organization began folding the messages naturally into their language. The campaign is credited with bringing coherence to the organization’s story—a coherence that doubled donor support.

*Maydoney, is no longer at Sametz Blackstone but is using his talent for storytelling as an artist.

If your school was a novel what would the opening line be?

Describe the hero of your school’s story.

What’s the plot of your school's story?

Choose a place on your campus and convey your school through sensory details – the way it looks, sounds, tastes, feels, and smells.

You have 10 minutes. Go.

The goal of this exercise is to practice using fictional techniques to tell your institution’s brand story. As much as we think and talk about brands as stories, we often fail to consider the essentials of a good story—character, plot, dialogue, scene, place, point of view, and sensory detail.

Next week, I’ll be leading a brand storyteller’s workshop formatted like a writers’ workshop at the CASE Annual Conference for Publications Professionals. Participants will dive into these and other exercises and I’ll be sharing some of the ways fictional techniques have helped me develop brand stories for William Penn Charter School, Swarthmore, Yale, and others.

This kind of workshop is something I have always wanted to do. I'd love to know if the idea intrigues you.

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What a Little School Can Teach Higher Ed

Andrew Careaga wrote a wonderful post this week about the future of higher education in the U.S. A must-read. Interestingly, Andy's "4-Step Prescription" -- Put students first; Make innovation the norm; Invest in our future; Worry, but not too much -- is precisely the way an independent preK-12 school I visited last week has gone about reinventing itself.

Twenty years ago it was on the verge of collapse. Then a Harvard-educated Southern entrepreneur saved it. His innovation and entrepreneurialism have become part of the school's ethos. The teachers, the administrators, the kinds of families who are attracted to the school embody it. This ethos has led to students being at the center of everything the school does. As a result, the faculty has become expert at differentiated learning — acceleration, enrichment, remediation, style. I kept asking, "How do you do all this so well?" The answer from parents, teachers and administrators always came back to putting students first.

The school's entrepreneurial savior and others pumped a ton of money and resources into it — investing in its future. These resources and a willingness to be innovative are what have allowed the school to put students first -- hiring great teachers, embracing new technologies and best practice pedagogies. Their entrepreneurial ethos enables them to be strategic and nimble all for the sake of their students.

In just two decades this independent school is better run and more successful in terms of student experience and outcomes than many of the other schools I’ve seen that have been around for more than a century.

Students first, innovation as the norm, investment in the future -- I've seen it in action and it works.

Little Red School House Image Credit

Give the Second Person a Rest

When I first started writing college admissions communications, no one addressed "you" the reader. It was all about "we" the institution. I spent a lot of time convincing institutions it was not only okay but would be more effective to break the fourth wall and talk directly to students. Now I wonder if we've gone too far.

A high school senior recently handed me a bag stuffed full of college search brochures he'd been sent. I spread them out on my office floor. Almost every one was some version of "Picture yourself here." "Fill-in-the-blank university and you." "X university is coming to you." "Your future." "You are bright." "You are extraordinary."

In this sea of publications, the second person no longer sounded warm and personal. Rather, the use of "you" hit me as cliched at best and presumptuous or cynical at worst. Out of the entire bag of brochures only one coverline made the institution itself stand out as a place confident enough to tell me what it cares about.

I've always counseled clients to answer the question, "What's in it for your prospect?" We try to answer this question powerfully and originally but head on. Indeed, I've just completed two admission campaigns that incorporate "your" in the tagline. These campaigns have been working, I believe, because their two- and three-word titles name what's essential about the institution and call it "yours." But I'll think twice the next time I use "you."

"Remember your reader!" One of my favorite writing teachers used to say. In other words make your reader care. Most great writers know how to make you care not by addressing you directly but by telling you a great story. I believe brand storytellers can do the same.

But then, you knew that.

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Forget Your Elevator Speech

Here’s a theory I’d like to test with you: The old idea of an elevator speech – a pitch you can deliver to someone summing up what’s great about an institution in the time it takes to ride an elevator – doesn’t work.

It’s the summing up part that is misguided. Here are two reasons why:

1. Your listener doesn’t want to be pitched.
2. Your listener can’t absorb and won’t remember a whole elevator speech.

Most listeners do, however, want to be intrigued, inspired or enlightened. So, when you have the opportunity to talk about your institution try this instead. Rather than attempting to sum up what’s great about your institution, give your listener one compelling fact or statement that makes them think “wow.”

Here are a few intriguing statements that apply to some of the institutions I work with:

• Even the presidents of other universities say this university does undergraduate education better than any place else.
• It’s one of the only women’s colleges ranked among the top 25 by U.S. News & World Report.
• It’s one of the best places in the country to do undergraduate research.
• You can graduate debt free and earn two Ivy League degrees for the price of one.
• That one small campus is the birthplace of blogging, hypertext, and the technology behind online shopping – and it’s a liberal arts college!
• It’s been ranked one of the top colleges in the country and one of the most beautiful – they say brains and beauty come together there.

My theory is these intriguing statements are short enough and powerful enough to be remembered and better yet, repeated. I also think they are more likely to engage your listener in wanting to know more.

As the conversation continues you can deliver more wow statements, eventually enlightening them on all the points you might have included in an elevator speech. Only with this approach they want to listen to you and you’re summing up what’s great about your institution in a way they’re more likely to remember.

It’s a theory I’ve been trying with some success. I’d love to hear how it works for you.

Tier Jumping: How Do Colleges Do It?

One of my clients recently fulfilled a long-term ambition: jumping to the top tier of the U.S. News rankings. Being part of the top 25 reminds me of the difference actors talk about after they win an Oscar for the first time. It doesn't make their lives magically perfect. The general public isn't always even aware of the win. But their peers pay them more respect and they get offered more and better roles.

Similarly, I have spoken with college presidents whose institutions have made a jump to or within the top tier. They say flat out it has made all the difference – they get more respect from peers and feeder high schools (sometimes begrudgingly) and they have more and better students knocking at their door.

So how does an institution tier jump? If I look at the clients I know firsthand and the institutions I’ve watched from afar it seems to come down to a simple but hard-to-achieve formula:

Selectivity: As one president told me, we just stopped taking some students. That made some of our alumni unhappy and it made some of our feeder high schools unhappy. For that particular institution the gamble paid off because of the next ingredient – money.

Money: At the risk of stating the obvious, to be selective, institutions need the resources to provide significant financial aid, to attract top faculty, and to build distinctive programs. As a leader of another college that has made the jump told me, “None of this could have happened if it weren’t for very strategic donors who saw the importance of investing their time, money and energy in strengthening areas of the college that would move us forward and make us what we are today."

Abandoning Generic: The tier-jumping college mentioned above used to talk internally about being a college on the move. But how did it know where it was going? How did it attract and capitalize on strategic philanthropy to arrive in the top tier? By abandoning the idea of competing on generic excellence.

If there is a formula for tier jumping this is certainly the trickiest part. Being among the top tier of colleges or universities bestows generic prestige and reputation on an institution. But in order to earn that generic reputation for excellence, the first step is carving out a specialty. As one college president who has been at a top tier liberal arts institution and is now at another liberal arts college trying to make a tier leap says, “Every successful institution has an identity, brand if you will – something readily identifiable that marks what is unique to it. For us, that is a combination of mission and place (the college is in a very dynamic city). That brand is, in part, a way to become known and to attract interest from students and from donors. In both these areas, the efforts we have made to connect mission to place have already paid off.”

As this president knows, while students and donors are essential to making a transformational leap in prestige and reputation, successful branding is the springboard that comes first. Next week, I will be talking with my tier-jumping client about how their generic seal of approval from US News is one more element in what must continue to be a very non-generic brand.

The Frugalista School?

I've always seen a connection between fashion branding and school branding.

High fashion and elite education are both luxuries but clothes and school are necessities. If a pair of jeans can cost $14 or $400; if you can go to high school for free or for $40,000 a year, anyone selling these luxury options better be able to explain why they're worth it.

When it comes to schools, each family uses its own subjective set of scales to weigh and balance a school's prestige, cost, quality, experience and outcomes to determine if that school is worth it. By necessity a school's brand tries to weave the perfect blend of these same factors to attract its market.

For some people, prestige trumps cost. They'll go into debt to get it. For others, affordability is king. But what if you could have both? That's the allure of elite magnet schools and public honors colleges. And that's the sweet spot of the new Target "Frugalista" campaign. For several years, Target has done the seemingly impossible -- marrying cachet and low prices by bringing top designers to Target without cheapening the prestige of those designers (Anyone remember the disaster of Halston and J.C. Penny?)

But now, Target has gone further, giving its affordable prestige brand a persona -- the Frugalista. Emerging victorious from the post-2008 economic wreckage, she's just right for our times. She's a Mini Cooper not an Escalade. She believes, as Oprah declares in this month's O Magazine that small is the new big. The frugalista's sensibility is one that the marketers of elite private schools, colleges and universities should pay close attention to.

The crucial fact to note is that the frugalista is not a wannabe wearing knock-offs. She chooses not to spend more but she still wants the real thing. (Look, there's Project Runway's own Nina Garcia now loading up a red Target hand basket with frugalista chic to prove it.)

So how can schools, colleges, and universities market affordable prestige? First of all your school has to have the elements of legitimate prestige -- successful outcomes, excellent faculties and programs. Second, to be a real frugalista you have to make cost and affordability a key message. I'm working with an Ivy League institution that is marketing two degrees for the price of one and graduating debt free as part of its primary message. Another Ivy League client is heralding "the good news about cost."

Schools that are in the best position to take a frugalista approach are those that produce great outcomes but really do cost less than their competitors. I've worked with two independent schools that have superb college matriculation lists (face it, these lists matter to parents) and are priced more like parochial schools than their independent school competitors. Now is the time for schools like these to forge a single powerful message out of quality at a low price.

How does Target do it? By getting fashionistas like Nina Garcia to embrace the ethos. Schools have known for a long time if they can get one influential family to value their program more will follow. So, once you have your affordable prestige message in place, who are the frugalistas in your parent and alumni community who will spread the word?

Entrepreneurial Toolkit – What would be in yours?

What does it take to venture out on your own in the field of higher education and succeed?

In a couple of weeks I will be speaking to a group of women administrators in higher education who might be interested in starting their own businesses and nonprofits. I’m sharing a panel session with Ginger Fay who started her own college counseling practice and Madeline Yates who has launched her own nonprofit -- Maryland's chapter of Campus Compact. The panel, called Encouraging the Entrepreneur in You, is the brain child of Maggie Margiotta Melson of St. John's College. It is designed to arm participants with useful questions, resources, and tools when considering striking out on one’s own. Ginger, Madeline and I will share our stories – the rewards and dangers of “solopreneurship.” We’re also going to share our own toolkits or secrets to our success thus far. What would be or is in yours? Here’s mine:

Alignment: Being an independent agent, free to work on my own or in collaboration with creative partners and institutions, suits my talents and work style extraordinarily well. I thrive on project-oriented work, I like to be recognized for my individual talents, I like some ownership and control over my work, and I like to connect those talents with the talents of others as a team. (Alignment is about knowing yourself. Fantasize about your perfect professional day. Even if you have no concrete plans or ideas for an entrepreneurial venture your fantasy day can point you in the right direction.)

Relevance: Being able to provide value is the key to success for any business, organization or consultant. You can’t provide value without understanding what your market wants and what you have to offer that meets that desire. In my case, while effective communications have always been valued in higher education, communication used to be the advancement stepchild. Today, being able to articulate an institution’s relevance and value in effective and exciting ways is essential. I have been in the lucky position of being in the right field at the right time.

Expertise: I have thought about developing on my own business since college but it never quite worked out until I had the expertise gained through experience to really have something to offer clients. Once I gained experience as a writer and media relations specialist for national publications and organizations, as well as five years on the senior staff of a college – where I had been part of strategic planning, new identity development and a capital campaign – I had the right portfolio of expertise to venture out.

Distinctiveness: Perhaps your service or product is unique and that is what makes it distinctive, but uniqueness isn’t essential to success. Distinctiveness is really about quality – the effectiveness and enjoyment that comes with buying or using your product or service. When I can delight my clients with quality of insight and finished work – exciting them about their own institutions – that’s where my distinctiveness comes through.

Credibility: The caliber of institutions I have worked with has definitely opened doors for me. But the relevance and range of my experience has kept me in the room. The question I often ask myself is how do I know what I know? What are my proofs of effectiveness? Answering these questions yields the proof points I need to communicate my credibility.

Passion: I really enjoy what I do. Writing and education are two of the most enduring passions in my life. Writing is my calling. Education is a story worth telling – a constant inspiration.

Space: This is about both the physical and psychological elbow room you need to do your work. Comfort zones differ. What works for me is my own office that is somewhat secluded within my house. Having a dedicated space – and professional supplies, equipment and technology – allows me to be purposeful, avoid distractions, and tell distractions (my family) I’m working – this is a place of business.

Support: Being alone in an endeavor can be the greatest thing and the hardest thing about solopreneurship. For me it’s been essential to have professional and emotional support for my work. The professional support comes in the form of a technology whiz for a husband, designers who barter graphic design work in exchange for writing services, and reliable accountants, copyeditors, transcriptionists and delivery services. The emotional support comes from a husband, parents, children and friends who understand what I value about what I do. They show their pride in my successes and they encourage me when I go through challenges.

Network: My entrepreneurial network began in 1997 with former colleagues who had moved on to other institutions and a key college connection – an alumna who went to my college was in a position at CASE to recommend me as a freelance writer not only to CASE CURRENTS Magazine but to other institutions where she had worked. Over the last decade my network has grown to include clients, partner firms, college presidents, those I’ve interviewed for my articles and the advancement and admission practitioners who read my articles. More recently, my network has expanded through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as people connect with me directly and also share my articles, blog posts, and Twitter updates. This network fuels my business through referrals and partnerships. It also gives me a community of colleagues for idea sharing and support.

Continual Growth: Working on your own allows you the nimbleness to incorporate new ideas and push out in new directions far more easily than you can while working within an organization or institution. Building in ways to keep developing your skills is rejuvenating and ensures continued success. Workshops, conferences, taking on projects that scare me, and the research I do for new client projects and CASE CURRENTS articles keep me fresh. (I also love the growth ideas in Seth Godin’s post on effort vs. luck.

Ways to Refuel: When you work on your own the job is never done. Never. Working 24/7 was a constant way of life for me until it began to take a physical toll. Now, I know that I will be of no use to my clients if I am depleted. Yoga is my fuel of choice four to five times a week. I also recharge through family dinners every night, weekend dates with my husband and totally non-working vacations during winter holidays and summer.

Audacity: You have to have a little audacity to create something out of nothing. When everything else in your toolkit works you find the Emperor does indeed have clothes.

Leadership vs. Success

Writing for schools, colleges and universities means that the words “leadership” and “success” come up a lot. I may not always use those words, but conveying that schools deliver an education that develops leaders and successful people is behind most school stories. In fact, I think a lot of people unconsciously substitute the word “successful” for “leadership.”

It’s not a leap to think that if you’re successful you’re probably a leader of some kind – a leader in your field, a leader in your community, a service leader. But while leaders may be successful, there are lots of successful people who are not leaders. A Seth Godin passage on "discomfort" from Tribes made this clear to me. He says, “Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.”

When I read this, I immediately thought of Brad Rourke. Yes, he happens to be my husband, but this post isn’t about patting him on the back. He just happens to be a great example of Godin’s point that I’ve seen up close and personal. Three years ago, Brad started a city blog called Rockville Central. The success part is that the blog has quickly become the second most read local blog in the state. Brad’s won awards for his work. RC has been featured in conferences and articles. In short, the blog and Brad have become influential in our town, especially in local politics.

The leadership part however is that on a regular basis I’ve watched Brad struggle with polarizing community debates, miffed and even angry friends, and personal attacks on his character. I see him weigh the pros and cons of how to keep RC politically neutral and how to keep the conversation open but civil. In short I’ve watched him repeatedly step up despite daily discomfort.

Next time I write about leadership for a school, I know I will think about its meaning differently. I will also wonder if most parents really want their kids to go through the discomfort of being leaders or do we just want them to be successful?


Photo by flikr user aloshbennett

30 Articles -- A Lovenote to CASE CURRENTS

As I was zipping through an online list of my CASE CURRENTS articles, I happened to notice a little number at the bottom of the screen -- 30 articles.*

Whoa! 30 articles? I started writing for CURRENTS ten years ago. My first editor, Andrea Gabrick, liked to give me the stories that had a lot of complicated, moving parts. Making sense of those issues has been an amazing education for me. I've had the chance to write about everything from the high cost of tuition to institutional image to spirituality and a new era of advancement, to millennials, helicopter parents, missions, branding and mascots. Each article has allowed me to dip into the collective wisdom of a smart, talented and goodhearted school and higher ed community. Literally scores of sources who have shared their experiences and insights.

Thank you to CASE, thank you to my editors, and thank you to everyone who has ever answered one of my emails headed: "CASE CURRENTS Interview?"

*Not all my articles are on my site but you can find them at www.case.org

Is Your Twitter Movie as Good as Your Trailer?

"Loved the trailer, hated the movie" is a sad truth that happens everyday. I've been having a similar experience with a new Twitter connection.

Some initial tweets intrigued me enough to check out the Twitterer's Website. What I found were blogposts and trend stories focused on giving me a direct line to teen thoughts throughout the college counseling and admission process. While there are other sources for such information, I immediately fell in love with this site. I was wowed by its look and feel and the story behind it. Best of all the person who launched the site is a young and successful college admissions consultant. I was delighted by the whole package: relevance to me and my work, an appealing and distinctive look and feel, and credibility.

But to continue the movie metaphor, not only does my new source's Twitter feed not deliver on my hopes for a great film, sometimes I wonder if I've stumbled into the wrong theater. Rather than getting the inside teen scoop I was hoping for, I get a flurry of news headlines often having little to do with admissions at all. And the voice on the site is mute on the feed.

In her "5 Common Sense Twitter Tips To Keeping It Real On Twitter", CarolAnn Bailey-Lloyd counsels Twitterers to be clear about their goals. If your Twitter agenda is professional, give consumers value and "provide quality and relative information regarding your product (or service). "

How do you determine that value and relativity? It's a question I'm constantly trying to answer in my own feed. Because when people click "follow" they've bought a ticket to your show. And we all know it's easier to make a great trailer than it is to make a great movie.

The end of the story is that I'd just about given up on my new-found Twitter connection when into my feed today came a real gem of information. I'm such a sucker that I fell in love with the brand all over again. I decided -- at least for now -- it had been worth sitting through the movie for that one great scene.

Working with Freelance Talent

I'm a big fan of Seth Godin but I think his recent post on working with freelance talent could lead to frustration and mediocre results if taken too literally by schools, colleges and universities.

In my view, he's got two main points:

1. There is more great freelance talent out there than ever before. Use it.
2. You better do the difficult, internal strategic thinking you need to do before hiring that talent if you want results you can use.

As that freelance talent, I couldn't agree more. Institutions hire me for message strategy and writing. When they know what they're trying to accomplish we can do great work together.

My quibble with Godin is that he posits: Either give the freelancer "a clean sheet of paper." Or say, "Here are three logos from companies in other industries, together with the statement we want to make, the size it needs to be, the formats we need to use it and our budget, go!" He concludes that the second option will definitely yield results you can use.

I suggest a third option: Do the difficult strategic thinking about what you want and need to accomplish, what your institution is truly great at, what you think your message buckets are and what your budget is. But if you need help answering some of those questions, freelance talent who knows your competition can get you there. And being so specific about the details of look and feel as to suggest size may miss the point of hiring that talent. They're partners who need to collaborate with you. Not people who simply fill in your blanks. I say this having been both an institutional client and a consultant.

I think about Yale Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeff Brenzel. When he hired Pentagram partner Michael Bierut, Bierut's colleague Yve Ludwig, and me to do the new Yale viewbook, Brenzel's team had already done the hard thinking about their goals. Walking away from our first meeting, we knew what the key messages were. We knew the audiences. We knew what we wanted the audience to feel when they held and read the viewbook. And then he said "Go!"

In some ways, I've never had so much specificity and so much freedom.The results hit every one of the goals and then some.

How Will the Message Be Consumed?

Last week, I helped present a new brand story to a great university. The story was very well received and everyone around the table was excited. Then one member of the client team asked, "But how will the message be consumed?" Indeed.

Certainly, you want a great story to tell but moving prospective students from one phase of their decision making to the next, in my view, has always been the hardest part. I've seen many admission offices struggle with the management and timing of message delivery. Even when we were only talking about a one-dimensional paper communication flow (search to viewbook to application to yield) that pushed prospects through the traditional admissions funnel from inquiry to visit to application to matriculation. Now with a longer recruitment cycle and social media in the mix, prospectives have seemingly endless jumping in and jumping off places. "How will the message be consumed?" can be a perplexing and anxiety-producing question for many admissions teams.

While some have decreed the traditional admission funnel and its accompanying communication flow all but dead, Brad J. Ward has come up with a brilliant take on the admission funnel a la social media. It is the best visual and explanation I've seen yet of how an admission office might channel their stream of communications in consideration of all the tools now available. He and other higher ed social media experts caution against a one-size fits all view of this funnel. Still, it's a great starting place for any admission team to think about moving prospects from bite to bite of their message and keep them coming back for more.

Photo by theogeo

Friday Favorite. (weekly featured link from me to you)

As a writer, sometimes the quickest way for me to get into a project is to be inspired by visuals. I keep shelves full of maps, museum guides, postcards, books, ads, and magazines. Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New York Times T series, New York Magazine, J Crew's little collection of look books, my daughter's teen novels, and back issues of Communication Arts can always be counted on to ignite some kind of spark. So what a joy it is to dip into Design Observer, founded and edited by Michael Bierut, William Drenttel, and Jessica Helfand. DO is writings about design with plenty of inspirational visuals that tell me why I'm so inspired by what I'm seeing.

Is It Worth Printing?

Whether to print school publications or not has become an old saw. The financial crisis has made fence sitters consider the question more urgently. Harvard recently announced an end to a print version of its course catalog and other publications. I'm not going to tell you whether you should print or not -- who you need to reach and how you need to reach them will dictate that. (Although I have written about this for CASE CURRENTS.) But if you do choose to print, make sure you're giving people something worth printing.

The Best Test
Will they want to keep it? Or is it a throwaway? I was reminded of this when I saw Lois Kelly's post about brag books. The post is about a real consumer product, but the series of books she mentions reminds me of the approach I try to take with viewbooks and case statements.

More than a Brochure
As I write these publications, I want to give people more than a "brochure." My goal is to give them a useful keepsake that tells the institution's story at the same time:

• For Oglethorpe it was a how-to change the world guide and a collection of personalized maps to Atlanta.
  
• For Chestnut Hill Academy it was separate how-to guides to middle school and high school.
  
• For William Penn Charter School, the case statement was a series of four little books asking provocative, relevant questions like "How do you define success?" The series became extraordinarily popular. One alum requested copies to give to people at his church.

What I like about these publications and those I admire that others have done (get your hands on the Yale case statement if you can) is that they are highly successful in achieving their goals, but they also intrigue, inform, and entertain their readers. They strive to be worthy of the special institutions for which they have been created.

To print or not to print? There's more than cost to consider when you ask, "Is it worth it?"

Early Adopter in the House

Living with an early adopter of new and social media is one of my professional secret weapons. Not so secret anymore given that I'm posting it here.

I'm married to and work in an office adjacent to Brad Rourke. In terms of new media, this is sort of like being in the advanced math class and sitting next to the class star -- it makes you better but it also shows you what's possible that you're not doing. Brad has been blogging since the 1990s, before the term was invented, and now has a popular city blog, a professional blog, and is experimenting with a micro blog focused on philanthropy. He had one of the first MP3 players (a Rio that held four songs), the first digital cameras and iPods, and a Flip video camera long before even the trendsetters buzzed about it. He was Facebooking and Twittering when it was something only "the kids did." Since then he has incorporated Skype and Seesmic. Now he's helping civic organizations use these tools and the big concepts behind them to further their missions.

What all this means for me is that by osmosis I find myself ahead of the game. I'm more likely to know what's out there before many others do and I get to see someone who's very adept at using these tools figure out how to maximize their potential. Using them myself can be another matter. While I'm no technophobe, I'm not a gearhead either. And coming from a print media background I've always had long lead times and many rounds of edits to get everything just right. So, it goes against my natural impulse to put things in writing on the fly in the way that social media outlets require. But I'm learning. Proximity to the early adopter also means that I can get frustrated when my adoption of these tools is less than smooth. I have to ask for help with simple things even as I see the next new tool coming around the bend.

What I'm learning is to focus in on the tools that are right for me right now, expecting that I will add in more as they make sense for my work and goals. For now, that means daily and frequent use of Facebook (where my professional and personal lives meet), Twitter (only professional), microblog posts fed to Twitter and FB, and, new to me -- a short blog for which I prep a few posts at a time and schedule ahead.

When Brad and I first got married we did a lot of mountain biking. It was new to me but I loved it. The hard work, muscle and focus of climbing the big hills was my favorite part as opposed to zooming down the other side and feeling out of control. Brad would sometimes ride behind me on the downhill, urging me to let go and fly faster. Sometimes I did and sometimes I waved him on around me. Ultimately, we arrived at the same place in our own way.

While you may not be married to an early adopter, chances are there are some in your organization. Like the math whiz, get a seat next to them. And if you're the whiz, save a seat for an eager colleague.

Photo by: Flickr user Ian Wilson

Friday Favorite. (weekly featured link from me to you)

What role will "feral" versus "social" cities play in education in the year 2020? Will neighborhood schools no longer be physical spaces but rather a system that combines homeschooling, seminar classes, and community internships? For the answers, check out KnowledgeWorks Foundation's "Map of Future Forces Affecting Education." This multi-layered, interactive map explains future societal drivers like "grassroots economics" and "smart networking" and trends such as "cheap mobile devices" and "bio distress" and their combined impact on "family and community," "markets" and "institutions." Beyond education, it is simply a fascinating glimpse of the future in general.

5 Storytelling Essentials

(Update: 5/15/09) If you are coming from The Recruitment Minute, Welcome and thanks for reading. You might also be interested in Ask Better Questions and Is It Worth Printing?

As much as we think and talk about branding and storytelling these days, we often fail to consider true storytelling elements—character, plot, dialogue, scene, place, point of view, and sensory detail. Good stories have tension and conflict. Even the heroes have flaws. So how can you persuade readers of an institution's virtues and still tell a good story?

Protagonist and plot. Every campus's brand story is a mythic archetype with mythic heroes: the revolutionary, the discoverer, the change agent. As you begin a branding process, look for the plot lines in your institution’s big story from founding to now -- plot lines that make your heart beat, that have elements of risk and excitement. Once you understand the big story, everyday heroes will reveal themselves as well: students, faculty, and alumni who live and embody the brand.

Great beginnings. Good stories open by drawing the reader in emotionally, sometimes with childlike anticipation. But even intriguing openings should act as practical "doorknobs" that, with a turn, allow the reader to enter the story's world. Some of the most effective openings can be both emotional and practical: "What matters to you?" "Coming here was like seeing the entire world all at once." "Put yourself in the way of opportunity."

Sensory details. Once the audience enters your world, you must make them experience it. Whatever the medium—text, photos, film, web—the more you get out of the way and let your audiences experience the story for themselves, the better. In the best stories, action, description, and dialogue stand on their own. They have settings and scenes you can see, touch, taste, smell, and hear.

Scene, dialogue, narration. Institutional stories require scene and dialogue just as much as compelling fiction does. Think of photos as scenes, quotes as dialogue, blogs as the internal voice of a character, institutional voice as narration. How are they working together to communicate the narrative arc of your story?

Strong finishes. Endings are just as critical as beginnings. They can resonate and reverberate in the reader's mind to project an imagined future that continues to play even after a book is closed or a film has ended. That's just the response we want to evoke in prospective students and donors—an imagined future.

Novice fiction writers typically hear that no one will ever care as much as they do if their stories get written. Accepting this harsh truth is the first step to telling a story good enough to lead to true communication. No one will ever care about our institutions' stories as much as we do. We have to make them care by telling good stories. Only then do we have a chance of making our stories theirs.

Ask Better Questions

I collect good questions. I've gotten them from StoryCorps, Teri Gross, Deborah Solomon, creative writing exercises, and colleagues, and interview subjects themselves.

One of my favorite parts of the job I do is to "discover" a school's* story. While focus groups with students, teachers, alumni, and parents are de rigeur in my line of work that doesn't mean all focus groups are created equal. To tell a school's story i.e. market a school in a non-generic way you have to ask questions that will get past the similarities between schools. You have to ask questions that will reveal what is compelling about that particular school's programs and culture.

That means asking questions I don't already know the answers to. If I ask, "What makes this school special?" Nine times out of ten, a student will say "the people," which gets me nowhere. But if I ask, "What impresses you about this school?" the answers are not only more specific to the school but are often different for each of the individuals in the focus group.

I have some tried and true questions. My favorite is asking faculty and school leaders, "Where do this school's ambiguities lie?" It always gives me gold in terms of revealing an institution's particular culture and any communication challenges that exist. But I'm also on the look out for new questions.

When I saw Seth Godin's "FiveTips for Better Online Surveys," I immediately wondered if they applied to in-person interviews and focus groups as well. Indeed, they do. "Make the questions entertaining . . .Boring surveys deserve the boring results they generate" is a good example. You want to ask questions that are intriguing and fun. "If this school didn't exist, would it need to be founded today?" falls under the intriguing category for most teachers and school leaders. "What's your favorite place on campus and at what time of day?" always brings a smile to students' and teachers' faces.

One of my all-time favorite questions came from an article I read about Anna Deavere Smith helping emergency room doctors ask better questions of incoming patients. The question was simply, "What happened to you?" I don't ask it just like that, but that question underlies many of the questions I do ask. If I can get a student to tell me what happened to them (what did they learn about themselves and about the world, who did they meet, how have they changed and why is that meaningful) at a particular school, I'm on my way. After all "what happened" is the plot in any good story.

*In this blog "school" refers to independent schools, colleges, and universities.

Friday Favorite. (weekly featured link from me to you)

Whenever I need the equivalent of a change of scenery before getting back to the project at hand, I head to The Daily Beast's Buzz Board. It's my favorite of all the sites claiming to offer the inside scoop on what's cool. The best part is the truly eclectic mix of notable folks passing along their recommendations for everything from mascara to art exhibitions, causes, getaways, novels, philosophers, and films. After checking out the Buzz I feel like I've had a refreshing walk around the block. Buzz Board is updated daily so I can usually find at least one to several new items during each visit.

So what does this have to do with schools and colleges? A university president from a well-known institution is a perfect candidate to buzz. Who wouldn't want to know what the president of Carnegie Mellon, NYU or Penn is reading? Schools with famous alumni and parents, who are big fans of the institution, can consider pitching those purveyors of taste to buzz about a favorite campus gallery, rare book collection, team, course or program.

Whether buzzer or buzzed, I'd love to see schools and colleges as part of the Buzz Board mix.

College Media Coverage: The More the Merrier?

Given the media's insatiable interest in college admissions, has it gotten easier to pitch higher ed stories?

From 1992 to 1997, I was the director of communications for Scripps College. My big media coup at the time was riding the wave of "the Hillary factor." Hillary Clinton had just become First Lady and the fact that she'd gone to Wellesley boosted the popularity of women's colleges significantly. Scripps, the women's college of The Claremont Colleges, wound up in Newsweek, Glamour, and featured on The Jane Pratt show. It was a big deal because back then colleges weren't big news, especially small liberal arts colleges.

So, I began to wonder what it's like for college PR folks these days when media outlets like the New York Times and Daily Beast now devote huge amounts of space to college stories. Jodi Heintz, director of public relations, at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, gave me this insight:

"I think the media is very interested in telling a certain kind of story about higher ed. Generally, it is true that because of the bad economy local and national reporters are actually beating down the doors of colleges looking for stories and people to interview. The bad news, in my opinion, is that they are only interested in telling one story -- the story of how bad everything is. They are singularly interested in covering crisis -- falling applications numbers, or conversely, overwhelming application numbers, endowment catastrophes, hiring freezes or lay offs, tuition increases, etc."

Heintz recalls one New York Times article about liberal arts college admissions deans wringing their hands over drops in applications. The article only briefly mentions at the end that, at one such dean's college, it was still their third-highest year in total number of applications.

She says that while she has indeed seen an increase in the number of reporter inquiries from the top media outlets, she's actually chosen not to respond.

"I'm concerned that collectively we are feeding the frenzy. I understand that many colleges are facing difficult circumstances but there are far more nuanced stories to tell about the economic challenges. And, I'm sure we PR professionals in higher ed could do a better job of educating reporters and helping shift the conversation and coverage."

Diving In

I keep telling school and higher ed colleagues that the only remedy for their anxiety about social media tools is to dive in and start using them. But diving in also means you're going to have some belly flops along the way. For me, someone who really wants to "do it right," those flops can sting. Little things have tripped me up: not realizing that I had to put a space after "retweeting" on Twitter so that the person I quoted would see the message as well RT@bobjohnson for example. Not knowing that the comment I posted to a blog and then pointed others to would not appear until the owner of the blog okayed it. Not adding tags to blog posts to increase the chances that anyone would see them much less read them. Tethering my Facebook and Twitter updates and then not knowing how to untether them. The result being several erroneous and irrelevant updates on both sides. All of these are minor slips along my learning curve. No doubt there will be more.

I still vividly remember the day I learned to dive as a kid. Lots of belly flops, but I wouldn't let it go until I got it. Then once I had the hang of it, all I wanted to do was dive in again and again. With social media it's the same feeling for me just a different pool.

Photo: Mike Warren

You Are What You Do

In recent years, pop psych wisdom has counseled us to remember that we are not "human doings" but human beings. I have subscribed to this notion myself. The idea being that one's self-worth is about more than achievement.

But two sages from different worlds -- Aristotle and Seth Godin -- advised me this week that, actually, what I do is who I am.

Sunday, as I pondered whether to work on a creative project near and dear to me or to tick off my to-do list, I was reminded of Aristotle's quote: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." That's all I needed to hear, I immediately chose to work on the project because that is who I want to be.

I was struck by this idea again this morning when I read Godin's post on authenticity. He concludes, "You could spend your time wondering if what you say you are is really you. Or you could just act like that all the time. That's good enough, thanks. Save the angst for later." Again, I chose to do what I want to be.

The same can be said for organizations. As a school branding consultant, I spend a lot of time working with institutions who want to be known for being excellent. I say, prove it. Tell me what makes your claim true. Tell me how you do excellence.

Connect the Dots

Between a few choice quotes and headlines from this week’s higher ed dailies and blogs.

“In his opening remarks [a college president] said [to the panel] that ‘perhaps the independent college sector has hit a tipping point when it comes to pricing.’”

“Americans Increasingly See College as Essential and Worry More About Access, Poll Finds”

“The more you sound like your competitors,” said a higher ed marketing consultant, “the more students will make decisions based on cost.”

“‘No Frills’ Campus in New Hampshire Saves Students Tens of Thousands of Dollars”

Big picture: Families have long based college choices on their own assessment of value (a personally subjective equation of prestige+outcomes+experience+price). Higher ed marketers have long made the case that “the experience” of one school over another makes a higher price “worth it.” But there’s no “perhaps” about the pricing tipping point. More than ever, price trumps “experience” and often prestige. A good deal can be prestige and experience in and of itself.