Shift Happens: Positioning Your Campus for Change
Campus communities are infamous for many dubious distinctions; among them, being averse to and especially suspicious of anything new that smacks of marketing. So how should the enlightened, well-intentioned, campus-based marketing practitioner position her campus to modify foolishly cherished paradigms?
As noted English theologian, author, and preacher Richard Hooker observed in the 1500s, “Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.” Humans haven’t changed much in the 500 years since. Change remains seldom easy. But you can grease the skids by making your campus community aware of the reality of your ever-increasingly competitive marketplace, especially within the context of your institutional vision. In our experience, eye-opening data-honestly gathered and professionally presented-can go a long way toward mitigating the emotion and anxiety that can otherwise derail good marketing work.
When Bain & Company, a global business consultancy, recently surveyed executives from 362 firms, findings revealed that 80 percent believed they delivered a “superior experience” to their customers. When they asked the customers, however, they heard a very different story: Customers said only eight percent of companies were really delivering.
That 80 percent (perception) vs. eight percent (reality) gap surely sent a shockwave through the executive community. While some chose to ignore or deny the findings, we can only hope that among cooler executive heads the data served as a wake-up call. It’s exactly this kind of remarkable discovery that can help to create not only a mood for change, but a sense of urgency, throughout your campus community. A word of advice: Don’t dabble in marketing and run the risk of having your faculty colleagues take potshots at your methods, sample sizes, or analytics. If resources are limited, do smaller scale projects well rather than large-scale projects halfway.
The best news of all…you have a wealth of research experience and wisdom at your fingertips. You’ll find them peppered throughout your faculty. If you can’t muster the funds to outsource your research (and likely get it done more quickly and efficiently), build a three- to five-member research team from faculty who teach research methods, statistics, marketing and organizational theory and behavior. Why someone from organizational theory and behavior? How, when, and to whom you present.
Photo by: sookie
