Today, Kathy Cain Managing Partner at Zehno Cross Media Communications presented a session titled “The New Viewbook and the Web.â€
Amy Stevens, Web Communications Manager at MCLA, is one of the six very nice people who agreed to share their notes with all of us who couldn’t attend the EduWeb conference this year. This is Amy’s first scheduled post.
Speaking to a standing room only audience, Kathy Cain kicked off Monday’s sessions with a traditional Powerpoint presentation on The New Viewbook and the Web. The talk, which the program noted was formerly called The Death of The Traditional Viewbook, began with a look back at the good ole days, when colleges laid out glossy publications, staged photoshoots of smiling students on campus, laid out next to long, heavily edited testimonials.
But in the past few years, admissions offices have begun responding a new landscape. A trifecta of rapidly changing technology landscape, an increasingly competitive admissions process influenced by a national rankings frenzy and a media savvy “millennial” demographic mean that simple updating of viewbooks isn’t enough. The goal, now, is to look at the entire recruiting lifecycle and to strategize and implement a multimedia (print and web) campaign to reach, acquire, convert and retain students.
Ms. Cain ran quickly through a number of slides demonstrating the shifting trends — slightly retro is the new modern, funny is the new smart — complete with corporate examples and their academic counter-parts, before shifting to the heart of her talk, an insider’s look in The College Of The Pacific‘s shift in strategy to increase the quality of students the college was able to accept.
The guiding concepts for the project were that content and design of the web — NOT PRINT — publications would drive the project and the website would be divided into two distinct sections, promotional and informational.
The College of the Pacific took advantage of a large collection of student generated content in order to build a microsite that embodied their primary messages. By allowing for a multidimensional approach to their student’s experiences, they could hit on their big points, while maintaining a unified theme.
The site and print pieces were designed to deepen the experience for prospective students, not just inform them, but transform them — the voice changing from “I am Pacific” for student ambassadors to “You are Pacific” for accepted students. At Pacific, the recruitment cycle continued after acceptance through to matriculation.
The results were an increase in average GPA, SAT scores, number of inquiries, applications.
Ms. Cain then quickly walked the audience through a few more campaigns, specifically one for Tulane University’s MBA program in the month’s after Hurricane Katrina – all the while showing how the right combination of images, tight text and consistent branding – told a story about the kind of experience students would have, not just the educational opportunities on the menu.