The Artist and the Firefighter

I was at a community event not too long ago where the high school seniors in attendance (about 7 or 8 of them) were brought up on stage from the audience one at a time to receive a joint round of applause.  The event, among other things, was honoring this small group of students by congratulating them on their upcoming graduation and sharing a bit about each person’s plans after high school.

The first, a delicate young lady in a long floral dress had been home-schooled and was heading off to a four-year school to study studio art.  The emcee, one of her mentors, warmly shared that a piece of her art, a pastel ocean landscape, was proudly hanging in his office.  He also gave her a plug and mentioned her other pieces were for sale online for anyone interested.  Hint-hint.

The second, a burly young man dressed in nice jeans, work boots, and a stylish hat took long strides onto the stage while hearing that he would be attending a professional school to learn to be a firefighter.  He smiled shyly while the emcee shared that it had always been this graduate’s dream to be a walkie-talkie toting first responder.  It occurred to me that this guy was probably going fishing as soon as this event that his parents probably made him attend was over.

The third grad, who we learned had recently put a bow on a successful youth baseball career, was wearing his Sunday best khakis and polo.  Headed to a nearby state school to study business administration, I imagined that he was already thinking about what fraternity he would pledge and what intramural sports he might play.

As student after student was called up and congratulated, I couldn’t help but notice how different each student was.  Showered with well-deserved applause, each had unique gifts, interests that varied widely in their future pursuits.  If it weren’t for this community event, these students would probably never be in the same room.  They’re certainly all great kids but they are unique kids.

I share this story because it illustrates a pervasive problem with student recruitment campaigns.  Afraid to lose one of these students, colleges try and craft messaging that reaches them all.  Said another way, collegiate marketing campaigns often try to put all of these students in the same room—the same school.  The messaging and creative ultimately casts a wide net that tries to appeal to them all.  In the process, though, it doesn’t appeal to anyone.

Safe or Sound?

The keyword in that scenario is ‘afraid.’  Ad creative and campaign themes are often watered down through the element of fear.  If we launch a campaign that appeals to the artist but not the fireman, we may miss out on the fireman.  The creative team then scrambles to create a campaign that appeals to the fireman as well but now it no longer appeals to the artist and only sort of appeals to the fireman.

Nine out of ten times, that’s the campaign that gets launched.  It gets launched because it feels ‘safe.’  Safe gets chosen because it doesn’t turn anyone off and doesn’t exclude anyone.  But safe often fails because it doesn’t turn anyone on or resonate with anyone either.  Safe often falls flat.

Growing up, we were all told that “safe” and “sound” worked together.  “Safe” is the same thing as “sound.”

But when it comes to reaching your audience, safe has an inverse relationship with sound.  Sound is effective and strikes a chord.  Sound is rooted in our values, our brand vision, and our mission.  Sound knows who we are and who we are here to serve:  our right-fit student.  Sound hits home. As seen in the chart below, the impact of your messaging increases as it meanders out of the safe zone.

To be sure, avoiding “safe” has diminishing returns.  There are brands in the market that avoid “safe” at all costs in an effort to stand out for the sake of standing out.  That can be suitable for some consumer categories (energy drinks come to mind) but likely not for higher education and the assembly of groups of serious students.  That would be reckless at best.