The Questionable Benefits of “Springer”nomics
If only I had a dollar for every college and university administrator or board member who suggested the use of TV advertising to fix a variety of issues at their institution. The tactic is age-old but misses two important points: viewing habits of prospective students have changed dramatically and, correspondingly, the cost of TV ads has skyrocketed.
So, how good of an investment are TV ads and what makes the most effective use of the medium?
My listserv subscription to Ad Age MediaWorks alerted me to a first time study by Neilsen Media Research on the television viewing preferences and habits of college students. Although college-age viewing patterns have been tracked previously, this was the first study of the age demographics’ TV preferences in settings outside of their parents’ home – and the results are intriguing. Neilsen confirmed that college students watch “a lot” of television after 11 p.m., averaging 30 hours of television viewed per week.
Coincidentally, Elizabeth Scarborough, our firm’s president, compiled a comprehensive online listing of TV ads colleges and universities have employed.
The timing of the two made me reflect on a conversation I had recently with a college administrator who suggested their institution might want to advertise during “Jerry Springer,” because they were losing students to those schools who advertise on daytime television.
Rather than suggest jumping feet first into television advertising, think strategically. If college students are watching an average of 30 hours of television per week and a significant portion of those hours are not daytime television, then what impact will your daytime media buy bring? How do you ensure your media buy is effective? Is it “Jerry Springer” or MTV? And truthfully, do you want your institution associated with that kind of programming?
Ask yourself this set of questions: how could your marketing dollars get more bang for your buck? Should you, for example, consider online advertising, such as Google ads, or beefing up your website – which is your single greatest and most important marketing tool? Where do you have communications holes that those dollars could patch? What external audiences are not being addressed by your current efforts and how could those resources help to reach them?
Finally, how do you ensure your TV ad is as effective as possible? We think all communications to prospective students should have intertwined goals of raising awareness while driving potential students to your website. Check out the lengthy list of TV commercials that have been employed in the recent past and good luck on your quest.
Comments
Advertise during Springer? Why not? While you're at it, how about a nice big display ad in the NYT Education issue?
When I was a college admissions dean, I had a handful of faculty members each year who wanted me to throw advertising dollars at some 'sure-fire' big-ticket advertising vehicle because it would boost the institution's image. But when I asked them how exactly it would do that, and how it would translate into something tangible (say, possibly, an enrolled student or two), I usually found that the real reason for the push to advertise was that the faculty member(s) in question wanted to work at an institution that their colleagues at other schools had "heard of." It appears that, if the school didn't regularly appear in the Times or some other big-name advertising vehicle, these faculty members felt that their pals at other colleges didn't value their work experience.
We need to go where the students' eyes (and minds) are, and that is to the web, text messaging, YouTube, and related venues. Get your college onto Second Life, encourage some creative students to post videos, find out if there's a MySpace of Facebook page that can attract students--do SOMETHING! But advertising during Springer? I'm not sure you'd want the students who would come into your inquiry pool from that source...
Posted by: Su Hallenbeck | April 23, 2007 05:18 PM