Just discovered a new higher ed marketing blog, The Old College Try, that’s worth a visit. (Thanks to CollegeWebEditor‘s Karine Joly for the intro, via a recent “three questions for…” conversation with TOCT’s creator, Deanna Woolf.)
The blog’s been around since July, and I spent some time surfing its contents this morning. Woolf writes with a witty, engaging style, addressing issues like the lack of paid celebrity spokespeople for colleges and universities (“We can dream of the day when radio spots are read by Pierce Bronson instead of the local station’s go-to regular”), marketing safety on our campuses (“To me, it’s hard to ‘market’ a safe campus by citing great crime stats, the night watch/escort service, or the emergency phones every 100 feet. … People are going assess how safe they feel when they visit your campus and see it with their own two eyes”), or a different angle on college football photos (“[Y]ou could capture a cool photo of a pre-game tailgate party that would be perfect for the student activities brochure you do later in the year. … Or what about the president horking down a hotdog? What a great shot for an off-the-wall university magazine piece on her or him.”) Horking down? Not sure if that’s a typo or not, but it does conjure up an interesting image.
Andrew Careaga 