Words I Live By

For about eight years this photocopy has been taped to the wall of my office.


It's from a little promotional book produced by advertising executive Robert A. Wilson (father of the Luke and Owen).

On the opposite page I underlined the following: Audiences need insights. What can't be absorbed won't be remembered. Tell stories worth remembering.

Methods may have changed during the last eight years, but the wisdom of Wilson's advice is just as brilliant.

A Client’s Brand Primer

The best sign that branding I’ve done works is when those who live the brand really own its ideas and language and make it their own.

In terms of my own brand, I was reminded of this when Andrew T. Weller, Dean of Admission at Ridley College in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, told me what he tells other schools they can expect from working with me. I’ve worked on three school branding projects with Andrew (partnering with Turnaround Marketing Communications). He understands the process inside and out. He doesn’t use my language when he tells people what I do. Yet it is exactly what I hope clients get from partnering with me. His insights are a great brand primer in general.

Courtesy of Andrew Weller:

1. I assure people they are not going to be told who they *should* be or become but rather have reflected back to them who they already are.

2. I highlight the research done into other schools the client provides as well as the consulting team’s collective knowledge from experience. What’s the point in a brand someone already has?

3. I let them know that the work will distinguish between what is great about the school and what is great about the school that the market cares about. Who cares if we take pride in our plaid skirts from the 1880’s if prospective families don’t?

4. The end result will be market-friendly, market-digestible language – the school’s “insider” identity will be crafted in a way that resonates with the audience.

Read more Dr. Weller here.

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).

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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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?

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.