A visitor named Genevieve commented on my article Effective PR Blogging and I wanted to highlight the exchange.
Comment from Genevieve:
Hi, me again.. As I mentioned earlier, the Australian university system certainly has some of this intangible marketing power, but we are in the unfortunate position of having had almost free university education in the mid-70s and having returned to a highly unpopular student loans system ( which is actually fairly reasonable by international standards).
It might be fair to suggest that university buzz is coloured differently according to certain social conditions regarding access?? which may vary from country to country. Also I would suggest the buzz varies vertically through universities everywhere. So, a President from MIT or a Vice-chancellor from the University of Melbourne may well be able to draw on the power of an email address or an acronym for life, however a senior lecturer in both universities may have published in prestigious journals for free ( no fee!) all his life, but is still at the mercy of the very powerful electronic publishing companies who control access to his work online, in an increasingly arbitrary and very expensive fashion ( just ask an academic librarian how much electronic journal licenses have increased in recent years and you’ll see what I mean).
PS I am not sure what is provided to the Vice chancellor at MU which would be equivalent to the MIT email address - so don’t quote me on that please. But I’m sure there would be something, I agree with you that they are powerful people.
My response:
Genevieve, I never intended to suggest that I was even remotely referring to the president or chancellor of MIT or Yale! I mean, they already have international name recognition by virtue of their positions and influence.
What I am saying is that a noname person who has smart ideas reflects positively on the owner of the email address, which is to say, the University of Melbourne, which I know is a fine university.
So, that is why the Universities are brilliant because in every nice car with an MU decal on the rear window, and for every smart presentation associated with every MU coffee cup, and for every smart post on USENET associated with the unimelb.edu.au domain name, there is marketing.
If you pop out smart graduates and you send your graduates out around the world to multiply, you have yourself a terribly powerful guerrilla marketing campaign.
And the reason it is so powerful is that you as an University or a College or a Prep School have absolutely zero control over the student when he leaves, and very little control over him when he is there, so the experience is more pure than in many marketing opportunities.
It is brilliant, really. I mean, there are hoodies, sweatshirts, boxers, condoms, scarves, decals, shot glasses, socks, thongs, chairs, hats, stockings, tie tacks, cufflinks, and tattoos that have college logos on them.
And if you give your students a crappy experience, they will wear none of them. That is never a problem for Yale, which spends as much time nurturing and spoiling its students — heightening the experience and the joy associated with the memory of going to Yale — as they do in delivering a world-class education.
I daresay that a University’s time, money, and energy is even better spent giving students good memories than giving students good educations.
Sad but true.
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Yes, you are right of course, I guess I was musing out loud that the academic writing and publishing papers to stay afloat does not necessarily benefit in monetary terms from this marketing. Not to the same extent as the leaders of the organisation, for whom the kickback would be substantial.
We now have some negative attitudes towards universities in Australia, I think, because of the funding issues I mentioned. It is rather worrying, lower middle class people (like my neighbours and family) are discouraging their children from attending university because they will incur a debt. In the seventies there was a substantial relocation in social terms due to the free university ed. available at the time. This is no longer happening ( nor was it economically sustainable). More parochial musings than should be voiced here, I suspect. But the ‘brand’ suffers in a society with egalitarian aspirations, if people feel cut off from it in some way.
MU used to be called ‘The Shop’ in the early twentieth century, very snobby (it is my alma mater and I adore the place actually). If the feepaying situation continues it will return to that ( and aptly named too). Only the rich and thick will get degrees, and the general public will treat most of them with that fine contempt which is rampant here. And the brighter kids will not come through from the sticks, which is a shame.
Sorry to rant, I guess this is a bit off-centre really.
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