Category: life

Hey, 19

I was shoveling snow from the driveway this morning when I realized that yesterday marked the 18th anniversary of my adventure in higher education. Which means I’m now in my 19th year plying my craft, which has changed immensely over the years.

I came into this field of higher ed marketing — or communications, or marketing communications, or whatever it is we’re doing nowadays — with limited experience in what was then known as true marketing. I had a degree in journalism, had worked for a small daily newspaper, had worked as a “communications and marketing coordinator” for a small non-profit, had written scores of short stories, had published a couple (one for pay), and had started writing four or five novels. On Jan. 27, 1991, I stared working for the news services office of this very university, which has since changed its name.

In 1991, my job was to write news releases about research, events and student activities using a nifty software program called DisplayWrite 3 on an old IBM machine. I used two floppy disks — one that held the DW3 program and the other on which I saved the news releases. Once a news release was edited and approved, I made the corrections, then handed the floppy to a secretary who would log and number it, print it out, and hand it off to a student to make copies for mailing and filing. The student then ran the copies through a folding machine, stuffed the folded copies into labeled envelopes, and took them to the mail room downstairs.

I can’t remember the last time we sent out a news release via U.S. Postal Service.

So much has changed in 18 years.

But some things, while not constant, are cyclical. For instance, scarcely a month after I was hired, the president of the four-campus university system announced a hiring and salary/wage freeze due to budget shortfalls. (Smart career move, Andy.)

Sound familiar?

Today, we’re in the third month of a hiring freeze, and dealing with all sorts of other belt-tightening measures — travel restrictions, cost reductions for non-essentials, etc. Our university weathered the budget storm of 1991, and we’re as solid now as we were then, if not more so.

This economic downturn looks to be more severe, but with the right leadership, a focused mission, a solid, realistic business plan, and talented, dedicated faculty and staff who are committed to the mission, an organization can survive the tumult and come out stronger on the other side.

Today, the challenges ahead are so much more exciting than they were in 1991. I made the career move into higher ed because I love learning, I love writing and I love to do work that is meaningful and fun. I can’t imagine being in any other field.

Brand Obama takes the helm

Is there any bigger brand in the world today than the soon-to-be-inaugurated president of the United States, Barack Obama?

“Barack Obama is three things you want in a brand: New, different, and attractive. That’s as good as it gets.”

So says a guy who knows a bit about branding, Keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide, in an April 2008 Fast Company article about the Obama brand.

But that’s the old-school take on branding. The Obama phenomenon is more than new, different and attractive. As the author of that article, Ellen McGirt, explains:

The fact that Obama has taken what we thought we knew about politics and turned it into a different game for a different generation is no longer news. What has hardly been examined is the degree to which his success indicates a seismic shift on the business horizon as well. Politics, after all, is about marketing — about projecting and selling an image, stoking aspirations, moving people to identify, evangelize, and consume. The promotion of the brand called Obama is a case study of where the American marketplace — and, potentially, the global one — is moving. His openness to the way consumers today communicate with one another, his recognition of their desire for authentic “products,” and his understanding of the need for a new global image — all are valuable signals for marketers everywhere. …

Obama has risen above what he calls a “funny” name, an unusual life story, and — contrary to the now popular (and mistaken) notion that nobody sees race anymore — a persistent racial divide to become a reflection of what America will be: a postboomer society. He has moved beyond traditional identity politics. And whether it’s now or a decade from now, the new reality he reflects will eventually win out. Any forward-thinking business would be wise to examine the implications of his ascent, from marketing strategies and leadership styles to the future of the American workplace.

How will Brand Obama fare in the global marketplace over the next four years? Today is the official rollout. Tomorrow, the product testing begins in earnest.