Insights

Nice to knows and need to knows.

The hottest trends and latest insights from around the world of higher education.

admin

admin

Recent Posts

Digital vs. Traditional Marketing: What’s the Ideal Mix?

There’s no denying that digital advertising continues to grow exponentially. In its recent state of U.S. Advertising report, eMarketer forecasts that digital spending will grow 16% in 2017 alone....

Resources, Thought leadership
Creating Program-Based Marketing Budgets to Ensure Accuracy and Equity

Generally speaking, choosing a framework for developing a marketing budget is the ultimate exercise in navigating higher-ed politics and bureaucracy. And if you want (or more likely, need) to...

Resources, Thought leadership
Branding vs. Strategic Planning: Which is the Chicken, Which is the Egg?

Where do branding and strategic planning intersect? Better yet, where should they? I strongly believe that integration of the two efforts is critical. Yet, to date, the closest SimpsonScarborough has...

Resources, Thought leadership
Without a Creative Brief, It’s Going To Be a Bumpy Ride

People often ask me what’s changed the most over the course of my two decades in advertising and marketing. The easy (and politically correct) answer is the tools—the computers and the smart phones...

Resources, Thought leadership
Weathering a Storm: The Critical Distinction Between Brand and Reputation in Times of Crisis

An institution’s, company’s, or even an individual’s brand is interconnected with its reputation—so much so that the two terms are frequently used interchangeably. However, reputation and brand have...

Resources, Thought leadership
University Messaging Attributes: Are Yours Keeping Up with the Times?

While a college or university’s core brand should persist over time, the institution should continually monitor the resonance of the messaging it uses to express that brand. Keeping a finger on the...

Resources, Thought leadership
FERPA: How It Does (and Doesn’t) Affect Higher-Ed Research Studies

A recent study by Pew Research Center found that 64% of Americans have personally experienced a major data breach and 49% feel their personal information is less secure than it was five years ago....

Resources, Thought leadership
Filling the Gap: Keeping the Marketing Office on Track During a Leadership Transition

Movement at the director and VP levels of college and university marketing and communications offices is a fact of life, whether precipitated by an institutional leadership change or the opportunity...

Resources, Thought leadership
Take the Guesswork Out of Your Program Development Strategy

To be successful, an institution must continually develop, refine, and evolve its portfolio of academic programs to reflect the changing needs of learners and society. Historically, campuses have...

Resources, Thought leadership
Linking Brand and Philanthropy Can Lead to the Extraordinary

For many colleges and universities, planning and launching a comprehensive (or capital) campaign can be the catalyst for broader marketing and branding efforts. After all, if you’re going to try to...

Resources, Thought leadership
“There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.”

No doubt like Henry Kissinger, we all wish that we could just focus on the part of the job we love—developing creative, innovative, brand building strategies as opposed to thinking about, or worse,...

Resources, Thought leadership
Net Promoter Score and How to Truly Measure Brand Health

I've heard both sides—"I hate the NPS" and "I love the NPS." I understand the perspective of the naysayers. In 2003, when Fred Reicheld introduced the NPS in Harvard Business Review, he called it the...

Resources, Thought leadership
Not Just the Same-Old, Same-Old: Articulating a Distinctive Brand

One of my favorite episodes of the short-lived, late-‘90s sitcom Veronica’s Closet features Kirstie Alley’s lead character, Ronnie—the flashy, brassy CEO of a large lingerie company—blithely...

Resources, Thought leadership