Category: branding

A refreshing take on the work we do

Steve Virtue (@SteveVirtue) — who once upon a time worked in our world of higher education marketing — recently pointed me to a nicely done article about the PR business in higher ed. It’s a brief op-ed by Léo Charbonneau, the deputy editor of University Affairs, titled Spare a thought for university communications offices.

It’s a refreshing look at the work we do in higher ed marketing and PR, and I’m glad that Mr. Charbonneau took the time to spare some words about us. He points out how the PR problems we face can be “silly or just irksome” — and shares some examples of both. He points out that the job is becoming more complex, thanks to social media and myriad stakeholders, and how it can be a frustrating job due to “competing interests and the diffuse structure of [a university’s] governance.” But his conclusion — that all in all, higher ed PR is a pretty good gig — rings true to me.

Charbonneau’s thoughts focus mainly on the public relations side of our business — probably because, as a journalist, he’s dealing with our institutions’ media relations officers more than marketing managers or graphic designers. Still, I suspect that some of his key points hit home with other disciplines that find themselves as part of the higher ed marketing/communications enterprise amalgam — photographers, writers and editors, graphic designers, user interface designers, videographers, and so on.

His conclusion certainly hits home with me.

In my experience, there have been some very good, and some very bad, university communications departments. At one university that shall remain nameless, the constantly revolving staff was legendary and their default attitude towards the media was always suspicious. At others, there are familiar names who have been there for many years unfailingly doing their best to attend to the media’s requests.

Earlier this week, I began my 25th year in this business, all at the same university. And while some days on the job make me crazier than others, I still love this gig and hope I will for years to come.

Friday Five: Millennials (still) rising edition

It’s 2015, but here in Marketing World we’re still obsessing over Millennials like it’s 1999.

If you think these are Millennials, then you haven't been paying attention
If you think these are Millennials, then you haven’t been paying attention

Who knew that the most over-analyzed generation in history was still a thing?

Think tanks and marketers and brands and journalists and brand journalists, that’s who.

To wit:

  1. First up is FastCompany, which never misses an opportunity to flog a trend into the ground. In How Brands Can Attract Millennials Looking for Meaningful Work, published on the magazine’s Co.EXIST site, suggests that “mission-driven” (?) brands consider “non-monetary forms of compensation that they can offer, like a sense of purpose, opportunities for growth, and a quality work culture” as incentives for attracting Millennial workers. Meanwhile, a recent article on Money.com suggests that Millennials increasingly link money to fulfillment. Like many of the rest of us, Millennials probably just want to do meaningful work and be well-compensated for it.
  2. Move over, Baby Boomers. The Millennial Generation will finally outnumber Boomers in the U.S. in 2015, according to the Census Bureau and as reported by the Pew Research Center. This year, 75.3 million Americans will be Millennials, while 74.9 million will be Baby Boomers. Immigration has helped to boost the number of Millennials.
  3. On the news beat, the world of newspapers is still trying to figure out how to get Millennials to pay attention to local news. Neiman Lab reports on how one newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, is trying something new with an online site called Charlotte Five. One strategy of this new push is to publish what the Observer‘s director of digital strategy, Ted Williams, calls “Seinfeld Journalism,” aka “stuff people talk about but isn’t really news,” just as the TV series Seinfeld was described as “a show about nothing.” Hmmm. A news model based on a 1990s sitcom? That could be a winner. (Related: Will Millennials cough up money for media? This report projects that millennials will spend, on average, more than $300 in 2015 for pay TV, $125 on music and $100 on gaming, but only $19 on newspapers.)
  4. Millennials are redefining what adulthood means, says Kim Parker, director of social media research trends for Pew Research Center, in this snack-sized New York Times op-ed. They face economic challenges but are “stubbornly optimistic” about the future.
  5. Social media, from a Millennial’s perspective. An “actual teen” (a 19-year-old college student, on the young end of the Millennial generation) wrote this piece about what teenagers think about social media. It’s insightful if not somewhat predictable: Facebook is “dead to us” but something everyone still needs, like a P.O. Box; Instagram is popular and free (so far) from spammy BuzzFeed quizzes; Twitter seems pointless; and LinkedIn was something “we have to get,” so “we got it.”
  6. Bonus read: Move over, Millennials. We’re so over you.