Last weekend I attended Ungeeked Elite in Milwaukee. Some have called it the South by Southwest of the Midwest, but I think it was more like TED. Each day, 9 or 10 speakers gave a 15 minute presentation followed by about 30 minutes of Q&A and discussion. This led to lots of great ideas for many of the attendees, including me. One of the speakers suggested we give away ideas for free to promote good karma, so here’s your free idea: campus brand ambassadors.
Many university communication departments hire an outside marketing firm to brand their campus experience (At UWM we’re “Awesome and Affordable“). Unfortunately, this brand doesn’t always mesh with the way students experience the university, especially if you consider how different an experience could be from the perspective of a new first-year student, transfer student, adult student, or remedial student. What if you gave a bunch of students a chance to experience their own 15 minutes of fame by being a brand ambassador?
Here’s how it would work:
- Put out a call for participants. Just tell them they’ll be famous on the internet, and I’m sure you’ll get plenty of responses (maybe from some bloggers that already have current and prospective students as readers)
- From all your volunteers, choose 10-15 that represent different parts of your student population (academic progress, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, hometown/state/country, GPA, etc)
- Give these students a cheap video recorder and access to a collaborative blog. Provide quick training on how to upload/publish their content
- Don’t give them too much direction, but let them know what topics aren’t appropriate (underage drinking, nudity, etc)
- Advertise the site that hosts all their content soon after students start to publish
It would take guts to do this, but what are some possible outcomes?
- Increase the involvement of your brand ambassadors on campus
- Attract prospective students that already have an idea of what the campus experience is like, perhaps increasing retention because they already know it’s a good fit
- Discover what your university’s brand looks like from a students’ perspective
Some universities do a version of this, like MIT’s admissions bloggers, and the Alverno College Your Power campaign. Have you heard of a comprehensive program like this? Do you think it could work? Would anyone have enough guts to implement a program where students control their branding?
I’d like to give credit to Jun Loayza, who gave the talk that inspired this idea.
