The Salman Rushdie Effect- Stamats Higher Education Marketing Blog

Mar 2nd 09 Posted by Bob Sevier in Integrated Marketing

The Salman Rushdie Effect

Have you ever wondered why so few people, and almost no media, show up to hear your nationally known speakers. The answer can be found in what I call the Salman Rushdie Effect.

Here’s the problem. Let’s pretend that you are a small college in the middle of Ohio. You contract with Salman Rushdie to present at your annual Great Speaker Series . Mr. Rushdie’s very savvy business manager then contacts all the colleges near yours and says, “Hey, internationally known speaker and writer Salman Rushdie will be in the neighborhood next November 15. Are you interested in having him come by for a speech?” As a consequence, what might have been a unique event at your institution has now become commonplace.

Last January I was at a school in Washington State. Salman Rushdie presented that evening to about 20 students and faculty. No media.

Interestingly, in the room next door was another speaker, The Date Doctor. He had an audience of more than 300

To help jog your memory, courtesy of Wikipedia, Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was at the center of protests from Muslims in several countries. Some of the protests were violent and Rushdie faced death threats and a fatwā (religious edict) issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of Iran. In response to the call for him to be killed, Rushdie spent nearly a decade largely underground, appearing in public only sporadically, but was outspoken on the fatwā’s censoring effect on him as an author and the threat to freedom of expression it embodied.

Photo by: yaffamedia

http://www.bjsmith.us B.J. Smith

Interesting description of the problem. Any suggestions for overcoming this S.R. Effect?
http://www.hendrix.edu Helen S. Plotkin

I have one suggestion: include in your contract that the speaker can accept no other engagements within driving distance of your institution for a period of time before or after the presentation on your campus. You may have to pay a little more, but you’ll get more bang for your buck.
http://www.kwbrand.com Kyndra Wilson

I saw Salman Rushdie at the Colorado College last year. The place was absolutely packed and people (including plenty of students and community members) had been lined up and waiting for 45 minutes before the scheduled event. Being a Colorado College alum and having had CC as a client, I know that Salmon Rushdie is precisely the kind of person that appeals to CC students–smart but edgy, creative but willing to get into trouble over his principles. I wonder if the success of the CC event was evidence of a good understanding of target audience and is further evidence for the need to go past demographics and get to the heart of the types of values and interests that make each student body and campus community unique.
http://www.educationleads-news.com Perry

Maybe Kyndra is right. It’s all about finding the right target audience. It’s just like working with education leads. You have to make sure that you can match them with the right offers. But then, it doesn’t really matter if you have 20 or even 300 listeners in front of you. The most important thing is that your message is understood by all.
Bob Sevier

Nice insights, folks. I think Helen, Perry, and Kyndra all nailed it. Contract language is always helpful. Salman is good fit for a school like CC. Also, there is not a lot of other private college competition in Colorado College. Bob