One of the great distortions in the selective college admissions process is the extent to which young people who desire entry to highly selective institutions treat the process like a prestige commodity purchase. They know that getting into a top school is not one of life’s necessities. No, it is a highly desirable bauble – an all important confirmation of one’s status in a materialistic and prestige-driven community.

There are two problems with this – one obvious and one perhaps a little less obvious. The obvious problem is that in treating the college selection process like a prestige commodity purchase, young people obtain a distorted view of the institutions they are considering. They tend to look at the wrong things – for example, the opulence of a dorm room on the college tour – and overlook important things that will actually impact the quality of their experience once they get to college.

The less obvious problem is that in taking a consumerist approach to college admissions, young people actually diminish their chances of getting in. The admissions officers who function as gatekeepers generally do not live in super-affluent communities, are not highly paid, and recoil from the thought that their institutions are little more than prestige commodities. The worst thing you can do if you actually want to go to one of these institutions is to telegraph through word or deed that you see entry as primarily a glittering prize.

None of this is particularly new or earth-shattering, but I’d like to add an additional thought. Although admissions officers recoil from the idea that their institutions are nothing more than prestige commodities, their marketing products – the elaborate viewbooks and on-line animations – can (inadvertently) reinforce that perception. With skill and savvy, it is possible to use your marketing to do the opposite – to undermine the commodification of higher education and convey a sense of an authentic educational experience. What a wonderful New Years resolution that would be – to make an effort to be conscious of and resistent to the role marketing plays in the commodification of higher education. Happy New Year to all. I hope it offers many opportunities to make a difference in our lives, families, and communities.

So the question arises – how long is one of these things good for? Or alternatively, if I produced an identity system a while ago, does it need to be refreshed or can I just stick with it?

The answer is you should refresh it. If you produced an identity system more than five years ago, you should undertake a review of the system and consider updating it to fit evolving design tools and sensibilities.

What I am not talking about here is changing your logo. That’s not a refresh. That’s a new identity system. You only want to do that when the previous work was inadequate or inconsistent with your current strategic goals.

But even if you think your identity system is working well and you like your logo and your colors, it’s worth updating it to extend its useful life.

The main catalyst for such a review are dramatic developments over the past few years in font design and capabilities. The greatest of these is the ability, through services such as Typekit, to employ a wide range of fonts on the Web. Five or six years ago this capability did not exist, and most designers spec’ed Verdana, Georgia, Arial or similar fonts for Web applications. Today, the world of print typefaces has opened up for Web application. That doesn’t mean that all of these fonts are appropriate for the Web. But it does mean that it’s worth reviewing your system to see whether there are new ways to build a stronger shared identity between your print and Web communications.

There have also been enormous strides in font design over the past few years that give designers many new tools for excellence in design. Adobe, among others, has produced new font families that support corporate branding goals much more comprehensively with both serif’ed and sans-serif’ed communciations. An institution should not make a change simply for novelty’s sake. Consistency of appearance is what a good identity system is all about. But if you are operating with a set of fonts that a communications firm gave you several years ago, the chances are good that there are new fonts that might give your institution a better tool kit.

While you’re undertaking this review, it’s worth looking at the new colors that Pantone has released to see whether any of those can support your color system.

None of this is radical, or indeed, high priority work. I worry, therefore, that most institutions won’t go to the trouble However, if you want to keep your communications professional and effective, it’s worth reviewing and  updating your identity system from time to time – not to alter the design sensibility or intention, but to take advantage of new resources and the ways that design is evolving.

Before you assume I’m a complete radical you should know that I’ve got a project rolling out for another client that features a large, beautiful viewbook. I’m very excited about that one too. For me, marketing solutions are situational. No solution is right for every circumstance. The viewbook should do wonders for my one client while Tufts, I hope, will thrive without one.

We didn’t just eliminate the viewbook for Tufts. We got rid of the entire suite of traditional admissions publications. There is no search brochure, visit brochure, financial aid  brochure, mailing postcards, as well as no viewbook. They are all gone. Finito.

What we replaced them with is not a radically new idea. It’s been around for a few years. We created an admissions magazine that will be produced trice annually and mailed to everyone in the admissions funnel. This saves enormous cost and direct-mail headaches. A printer with a high-speed web-press spits out the magazine in two weeks and mails it the next day. A great advantage of the magazine approach is that it enables us to be much more responsive to changes and trends at the university. We don’t need to wait for a semi-annual viewbook update to feature a new program. We can simply feature it in the next issue of the magazine.

I would never have gone down this road if I could not simultaneously realize another, ultimately more important, goal – integration of the Tufts Web and print marketing campaigns. Our new magazine, entitled Jumbo, can be found both in-print and on-line at the brand new Tufts Admissions Website. Everything hinges on the user friendly CMS produced by my colleagues as Fastspot, and provided to Tufts through Door. No. 2. This CMS  enables the magazine’s writers and the entire admissions staff to regularly update content without any help from IT. The CMS offers a platform for building social media community around Tufts admissions. So, no, print is not made obsolescent in the new era of Web-based marketing, but it does change its stripes. Print becomes more flexible, streamlined, and nimble. It reflects the tone and pace of the Web which is becoming the pace of our world. Jumbo is our attempt to keep one institution up with the trends. Let’s see how it fares.

1. You can learn about colleges from a summer visit. I mean, I guess you can if by “college” you mean the buildings, the proximity to a major airport, and the comparative skill of the admissions staff. But if you want to understand a college, you need to visit when classes are in session. How else will you be able to meet current students and understand the student culture?
2. It is valid to judge an institution of higher education based on the impression you draw from the student tour. This is one of the most ridiculous things I hear in the course of my work. It astonishes me how many well-meaning and supposedly sophisticated parents buy into this. But no, it is not valid to cast judgment on a college based on your experience of the tour. Think about it – even the smallest college has resources and social groups you won’t fully discover in four years on campus. If you want to conduct a good college selection process, you need to keep an open mind and understand that an institution of higher learning is more than just the tour.
3. You are shopping for a college. No you’re not. If you are in the market for a highly selective institution, they are shopping for you. Time to get a little more humble. Your accomplishments are not as special as you think.
4. You could be happy anywhere. Not true, actually. Usually students say this to justify spending a lot of their time focusing on reach schools and being indifferent to their targets and safeties. The savvy college shopper takes those latter two categories seriously understanding that, at the end of the day, he or she may end up at one. And, no, if you don’t take your targets and safeties seriously, you could in fact end up at someplace you will not like.
5. The prestigious schools are good at everything. It’s amazing how common this one is but, of course, it is not true. Even the most prestigious schools have inconsistent quality in certain programs and majors. If a program, such as electrical engineering or philosophy, is truly important to you, you should not simply assume it will be well-covered at the prestigious college of your dreams.
6. All the top schools provide the same generous need-based financial aid. In fact the differences between even top colleges on financial aid awards are substantial. The problem here is that the fine-print is so confusing that it is simply impossible for even the most informed and diligent consumer to figure these differences out. If need-based financial aid is important to you, it will be necessary to apply to a good number of institutions and understand that at the end of the day you will be comparing varying financial aid packages as part of your admissions process.
7. The food is o.k. at colleges. It’s not. At most place it sucks. You will quickly tire of the food, and if eating a healthy diet is important to you, you will be seriously challenged. The gyms are not universally so great either.

Let’s look first at the college-going culture in the affluent, elite enclaves of our country. There the intensity with which families compete for entry to highly ranked institutions is stunning. They play the selective higher education game with an amazing amount of knowledge – what my daughter would call “cultural capital” – and resources.

I remember last spring I was sitting in an information session at Wesleyan with my son. There was one high school student in the group who was hard to miss. He was sitting up front oozing enthusiasm, dressed in expensive, hip, yet at the same time understated, clothing. After the session ended I overheard him saying to the presenter that Wesleyan was his first choice and that he’d specifically travelled from southern California just to be at the school a second time. His slender, casually though well put together mother hovered in the background. The admissions officer engaged him in conversation.

Kids from more modest backgrounds have no idea about this intense press for a spots at the selective private colleges. Nothing in their background or their communities leads them to understand it. And I’m not just talking about poor kids or students of color. I’m talking about middle class kids who don’t occupy the cultural elite. I’m talking about the other 99%.

These students fail to understand the intense jockeying and packaging that goes into an application to an elite institution nor can they put themselves forward the way this young student at Wesleyan did. They don’t know that you need to take the SATs multiple times, and that if you don’t do well, you switch to the ACT. No one tells them the value of contacting the college rep assigned to your region and making your interest known to him or her. They have no idea, unless they themselves attend an elite private school and sometimes not even then, of the amount of “shaping” of a student’s record and activities that goes into a polished application.

Now here’s the rub – because the elite institutions receive such a large surplus of applications, and because any competent  admissions officer has to be mindful of yield (i.e. the candidate’s likelihood of enrolling if accepted), it makes a significant difference in admissions outcome if a candidate expresses a passion for that particular institution, like the student did at Wesleyan. Admissions officers see a huge number of prospective students, most of whom will not attend their institution if accepted. They pick out those who seem to indicate a genuine interest in going to their institution.

Most students from the other 99% don’t understand this. They’ve gone to public schools and have never been treated with such a selective lens. They think you take your classes, get your grades, sit for your standardized tests, and apply to college.

If individual elite colleges are not just going to rely on programs like Posse and Questbridge to do their packaging of the other 99% for them, then I think they need to change their admissions practice.. They must be willing to accept more students of modest means who do not seem to have such particular knowledge or passion for their institution. They’ll need to accept normal, not just exceptional, students. I’m not sure it’s realistic to expect this or not. The countervailing force of the elites is great and they are so much more effective at advancing their agenda.

In the past few years, youth culture has converged around two opposing stereotypes – the hipster and the bro. Both have been around for quite some time but more recently they’ve become common parlance at the high school and college level. Hipsters and bros define themselves in opposition to each other. I was recently conducting research with a bro at a certain college and I mentioned Wesleyan University. He said, “that’s that place with the skinny jeans” meaning “that’s that place with the hipster guys,” meaning that’s the place he wouldn’t be caught anywhere close to.

Although hipsters and bros are antithetical – The hipsters revel in irony, wear scarves and skinny jeans, and congregate in Brooklyn. The bros detest irony, wear baseball caps, and are geographically attuned to wealthy suburbs – there are essential traits they have in common: both are expressions of affluence and privilege. And, although both are open to individuals of differing skin color, both are essentially White. Less weighty perhaps but certainly crucial in their eyes, both celebrate cheap beer.

The hipster-bro cultural axis leaves all kinds of students out – young people who are neither hipster nor bro. It would be tempting to call these students “nerds” and often the students themselves identity in this way. But the group of neither-of-the-above is broader than self-identified nerds. It includes kids who are not particularly socially outgoing. Those who don’t drink. Good, solid kids who occupy our high schools and colleges. The ones who mainly want to grow up, get on with their lives and don’t feel the attraction of either of these strongly socially defined groups. They find both hipsters and bros intimidating and off-putting.

I attribute the recent success of some hot colleges such as The University of Chicago and Tufts University to the fact that they offer comfortable homes to good solid students who desire to be neither hipster nor bro. These neither-of-the-above students are looking for a home and what schools like U of C and Tufts offer is a fairly down-to-earth, not highly stylish student culture. This is a market niche. It’s not necessarily one that schools would deliberately cultivate. But it is important to remember that the vast majority of young people, especially young people from public schools, more modest economic backgrounds, and non-White families do not have the cultural resources nor desire to be either hipster or bro. The stereotypes leave them out. Luckily there are many fine colleges where they can find a home.

But that’s not me. I believe that a brand strategy must be built on an extensive foundation of market research. Without it, one cannot achieve the results that are trumpeted for brand-based marketing.

I know I’ll never win this argument and, indeed, remain politely silent when others speak about this other idea of brand. But let me take a moment and try to explain the different deliverable a school or university can expect to receive if it engages someone who uses market research to build a brand strategy versus someone who does not.

If you hire a firm to develop a brand strategy based on market research the results will likely be more concise and less flattering than one developed by a firm that believes brands are inherent in organizations. You’ll probably find that the recommendations seem obvious, indeed, unimpressive. The thinking will be streamlined and simple. And it will be conveyed with an air of definite certainty.

This is because the firm that bases a brand strategy on market research is focused on one thing – how to move the marketplace to that it inclines toward your organization and you can better achieve your marketing goals. The research firm has gone out to the marketplace and assessed its perceptions and priorities. Generally at that point the fulcrum for moving the market becomes fairly small. Given the limitations created by the real culture of your organization, you find there are few options for moving the marketplace. The research shows you that you will be most effective if you put your energies behind one particular theme or approach. In a crowded and cluttered marketplace, specificity and a clear narrative are crucial to marketing success.

Yes, flattering an organization is important. No institution is going to adopt a brand strategy if it does not feel that the strategy reflects well on its culture. But there will be much less emphasis on a self-serving, flattering narrative from the research-based firm than one that is not. This is because the firm that does not conduct rigorous research is essentially dependent on the organization to buy in to its recommendation for it to have a satisfied client. It doesn’t really know what will work. Such a firm is using its instincts (good though they may be). In that situation, who wouldn’t build into the brand narrative material that reflects the perspective and priorities of leaders of the organization? So a brand strategy not based on research will be longer, less concise, and more flattering. You’ll also be revisiting it four years later since without the research, brand strategy is little more than a mere advertising campaign.

I do educational marketing. Schools come to me saying, “Help me sell my school. Help me get more students, or raise more money, or build great public awareness, or all of the above.” I help them in part by doing something they can’t easily do themselves: gain perspective from beyond the walls of their institution. How do they look to high school students considering college, or parents considering a day-school, or alumni considering causes for their philanthropic dollars? To make the sale more effective, institutions need to understand the perspective of people beyond the fold, people who have not yet chosen to fully affiliate with their institution.

Everything I’ve said above is commonplace, known to virtually everyone who is involved with educational marketing. The part that’s less commonplace, or maybe it’s a matter of denial, is the extent to which the solution to more effective selling involves turning inward, how it involves the institution being willing to reengineer actual functions and activities to be more effective. This is the third rail of marketing. It’s the root of many anti-marketing sentiments within the academy: “If I listened to you marketing people, you’d force me to compromise my values for the whims of the marketplace. But I’m an educational institution. My job is to educate people, not cater to their desires.”

Yes, but . . . marketing has its own kind of integrity. You can’t say something unless it is true. Selling on false pretenses is shortsighted and ultimately counter-productive. In truth, marketing does want schools to compromise their values. It asks them to reengineer themselves so that they are truer to their values, so that what they say has a better fit with what they deliver.

I can help you sell but I can’t be very effective if you view marketing as purely an external function. It needs to turn inward as well as outward. Then we can truly close the sale.

Nonetheless, the temptation to apply lessons from other institutions is great. One factor is resources. Market research, which is the backbone of any true marketing effort, has costs. Even leaving aside the issue of cost, it is challenging to execute high quality market research in the educational setting. Issues are complex and nuanced. It is easier to find work done at another institution and hope it applies to your institution. After all, educational institutions do share close sibling relationships. College A is really not that different in its offerings, history, personnel, and ambitions from College B. Applying such work is better than nothing – isn’t it?

Here is one reason why I don’t go along with such an approach – why I’ll want to do my own unique work-up for each institution, even when I’m constrained by limited resources: in my experience, the market for independent schools, colleges, and universities, is more stratified into social micro-niches than common wisdom or the national press would allow. We all know the shortcoming of the U.S. News and World Report rankings, which combine institutions from across the country into national rankings as if they all share the same goals and audiences. In this regard, the highly influential educational reporting of The New York Times is equally, if not more, at fault than USN&WR. The NYT regularly features articles about national trends among colleges or private schools, using the same group of “usual suspects” for its sources.

The thinking that schools exist on a single scale and play in a single pond has pervaded much thinking about educational markets, even the tactical thinking that goes on at particular schools or colleges. But when it comes time to design a marketing strategy, when the economic well-being of an institution is truly and genuinely at stake, then such thinking needs to be abandoned. In truth the social layers into which schools and universities fit are much more finely grained and segmented than public perception or articles in the NYT allows. School A does not in fact cater to the same audience as School B. And, here is the key point:  not only can it be wasteful, it can be destructive for School B to make marketing decisions based on the assumption that it shares an audience with School A. The task of market research for schools is to define accurately the market within which the school operates. Without the research, schools can go off in the wrong direction. Whatever expenditures they make on marketing will prove futile and counter-productive.

For me, that means I’m walking clients through multiple redesigns of the covers of their new viewbooks.

My firm produces viewbooks. We’ve been doing so for well over a decade. We are fairly confident that we can work successfully in this longest of long-forms of graphic design. And our clients are happy. But still there is always the tussle over the viewbook cover. The insides are fine. We change a picture here, alter a quote there. Make sure the facts in the fact-sheet will pass muster. Then we spend two or three weeks dragging the cover through revision after revision after revision.

I know why viewbook covers are so problematic. For me, the cover is a wrapper. It needs to set the right tone and induce the recipient turn the page. I think the best viewbook cover that was ever produced was that for the Yale viewbook of the 1990s which was simply a field of blue with the word “Yale” knocked out in white.

The client wants the cover to convey all the meaning and substance of an institution –  to convey the message that will close the sale with a prospect. And the client is anxious. Other people at the institution are going to be looking at the cover. That’s not an anxiety that I share at all. I’m focused on whether the viewbook will work with its intended audience. That’s who we are designing it for.

My goal during those two or three weeks of cover revisions is to make sure that we don’t end up with something weaker than what we started with. That is no small challenge, since graphic design and the cover’s function as a wrapper are not uppermost in the client’s mind. It usually turns out fine. I always offer to test the cover in focus groups in the fall and prepare a new one for the following year if the results are not positive. So far, no one has taken me up on the offer. The academic year starts. Anxiety about the viewbook cover recedes. We move onto our next project.