Of all a college’s courtship materials, the viewbook has long been the centerpiece. It seeks to convey the whole ethos of a place, what makes it unique. But viewbooks tend to blend together. Their pages teem with descriptions of majors and extracurriculars, and photos of bell towers, front gates, and groups of happy, diverse students on sunny fall days.
Viewbooks are like wristwatches, signaling wealth and a concern for tradition and appearance. And they can be costly. “These are vanity pieces,” says Richard A. Hesel, a principal with the higher-education consulting firm Art & Science Group. Their message, he says, is: “Aren’t we important?”
Of course there’s a core purpose—to communicate facts—but increasingly, teenagers are finding that information elsewhere. Should colleges keep spending so much on what amounts to a coffee-table book?
That’s what officials at Knox College, in Galesburg, Ill., are trying to figure out. For decades, the small liberal-arts college has used a viewbook, but now administrators aren’t sure that’s the best way to promote Knox. All options are on the table, says Teresa L. Amott, the new president. The college might go with a scaled-back viewbook, a nontraditional one, or none at all, she says. “We’re trying to find the most compelling way to introduce students to Knox.”
Audio
Listen: Beckie Supiano explains why some viewbooks might be due for a makeover. (9:43) | Link
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View: The College of William & Mary’s lures students with an “ampersandbox.” | Link
Already the college has de-emphasized the viewbook, says Paul R. Steenis, vice president for enrollment. The current one is only 30-some pages, down from as many as 80 in decades past. Knox sends it out to fewer prospective students, those who data show are most likely to be a good fit. In addition to the viewbook, Knox uses smaller, more-focused mailings to drive students and parents to interact with the college in a deeper way online.
The argument for viewbooks is that they’re tactile, that families will hang onto them and look at them again and again. But they don’t come cheap. Colleges can spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars designing a new viewbook, and it’s not unusual for them to hire a consultant to help. Printing and postage cost a few dollars per piece, and shipments number in the tens of thousands each year.
Re-evaluating the viewbook is not just a financial question. The tool isn’t all that relevant in students’ college choices, data from some campuses and consultants show. Colleges everywhere know that high-school students are checking them out online, and some believe the same goes for parents. And if institutions are trying to reach out ever earlier to increasing numbers of students, one expensive centerpiece isn’t necessarily the best strategy. As colleges work to hold students’ attention in a crowded market, the viewbook may become obsolete.
Breaking With History
At one time, viewbooks marked a big step for college marketing. Into the late 1960s, colleges were mailing course catalogs to prospective students—pretty dull, says Jay R. Williams, the retired president of Stein Communications, a college marketing firm. So Stein began adding pictures and enhancing layouts. That, Mr. Williams says, is where viewbooks came from.
In the decades since, colleges have toyed with many possible replacements for this recruitment staple. First they tried vinyl albums, then videotapes, CD’s, DVD’s, Web sites, and e-mails. Today, of course, colleges are deploying social media—or trying to. Many still send out dead-tree mailings. “In all of this,” Mr. Williams says, “the viewbook has gained in popularity, waned in popularity, gone in and out of favor. But it’s never gone away.” He doesn’t think it will anytime soon.
Mr. Hesel argues that it should. Art & Science Group has tracked the viewbook’s influence on college choice for years, finding that campus visits and the Web are both much more important. Money would be better spent, Mr. Hesel says, enhancing campus visits or college Web sites. The firm counsels its clients to use smaller print pieces that direct people online.
Still, giving up a viewbook takes courage, he says. Admissions directors live or die on assembling a class, and they’re often unwilling to stop doing anything they think could help.
But Loyola University Chicago did. The university is now going through its first admissions cycle without a viewbook. For at least two years, officials there had asked themselves, “Is there value behind the viewbook?,” says Nicole O’Connell, director of enrollment marketing.
They did some research and found that the relationship between students’ receiving a viewbook and applying was not nearly as strong as administrators had assumed. They came to a conclusion, recalls Lori A. Greene, director of undergraduate admission: “We’re continuing to do this because it’s been done.”
Loyola is still using print materials, though it has taken pains to integrate them with online content. That is accomplished largely through the use of QR codes, which readers scan with smartphones. Instead of one comprehensive book, the university sends out four smaller brochures, each focused on a topic like affordability or academics that the institution’s research suggests students and parents want to learn about. The focused mailings, which go out about four weeks apart, force Loyola to decide what information to highlight, Ms. Greene says. That is a departure, she says, from the viewbook model of “let’s throw everything into the pot and hope that something grabs a student.”
Arizona State University is in its second admissions cycle without a viewbook but with four magazine-style pieces instead. That strategy lets the university share particular information with certain groups, says David A. Burge, executive director of undergraduate admissions. Not every prospective student gets all four magazines, and each one can be customized for different geographic regions.
Alexis La Benz, a high-school senior in Gilbert, Ariz., liked the set of magazines she got because, she says, they showed that the university’s large student body had a sense of community. And she thought her peers would appreciate their brevity. “It was like a SparkNote,” she says, referring to the popular study guide.
While Ms. La Benz enjoys getting snail mail from colleges, her response to anything new from Arizona State is to check out what’s changed on its Web site. She initially wanted to go to college out of state but has already been accepted by Arizona State and is now set on attending.
The university’s magazines strategy matches a larger pattern, says Mr. Burge: “to move away from that dated approach of a one-size-fits-all publication.” Some families may like keeping a big, pretty book, Mr. Burge says, but they were probably already interested. The new approach, he thinks, is more active. A university must capture families’ attention, and then sustain their interest.
A Teenage Audience
More than anything, the College of William & Mary wanted to surprise prospective students this year. Bright teenagers are inundated with information from colleges, says Henry R. Broaddus, associate provost for enrollment. “We wanted people to open the mailbox,” he says, " and go, ‘Viewbook, viewbook, viewbook ... spaceship.’”
So William & Mary is sending out what it calls an “ampersandbox.” It’s a small envelope containing a stack of notecards, each emblazoned with a catchy phrase (like NAKED & FRIENDLY) over a colorful picture. In that case, the photo is of the college’s fairly new mascot, a griffin, which the alumnus Jon Stewart derided on The Daily Show as a “rare pantsless tailed eagle.” Given the quirkiness and the exposure, William & Mary ran with that assessment, Mr. Broaddus says, although he is not aware of any griffins that wear pants. On the back of each card is a breezy elaboration on the phrase, along with a unique URL to access more content online.
Even though it will come in the mail and convey lots of information about William & Mary, the ampersandbox is a big departure from tradition. Viewbooks try to be all things to all people, beyond prospective students. The notecards do not. Few development officers, for example, would be likely to use the word “naked” in their outreach to donors. “We decided early on in the project that our primary audience was teenagers,” Mr. Broaddus says. “We won’t compromise style to be more flexible for other audiences.”
Parents would understand, administrators decided, that the mailing was meant to speak to their sons and daughters, not to them. To make sure the ampersandbox captured the spirit of the student body, administrators sought current students’ feedback. In fact, they nixed one phrase Mr. Broaddus was fond of, “legends of learning,” which would have linked to an ironic, hyperbolic description of student accomplishments, like that William & Mary students are so great, they cure cancer on the side. At its heart, the playful message was trying to suggest how talented students there truly are, Mr. Broaddus says, but they found it too flip.
Change is risky, especially when it means emerging from the herd, says Mr. Williams, the retired communications-company president. “If every one of your competitors sends out their viewbook early in the fall, and you don’t,” he says, “the kid’s going to think ‘You don’t like me,’ or ‘What’s wrong with them?’”
Enduring but Evolving
At plenty of colleges, the viewbook lives on. John F. Stapleton, a longtime admissions consultant with Paskill, Stapleton & Lord, compares talk of their demise to Mark Twain’s famous remark that news of his death was greatly exaggerated. Mr. Stapleton’s colleague’s daughter, he says, made fun of the marketing materials colleges sent her way, but she ended up finding her dream college through its viewbook. Viewbooks aren’t going away quite yet, he predicts. “That being said, they’ve changed dramatically.”
Lafayette College, for instance, recently redesigned its viewbook, which had been a standard piece in the institution’s voice, to tell a story through student experiences. The University of Dayton introduced a sleek, edgy viewbook in 2007. Since then, however, the university has sharply reduced the number it ships, to 40,000 from 80,000. Even that was too many, says Sundar Kumarasamy, vice president for enrollment management and marketing; he has had copies left over each of the last two years. Now Dayton is working on a new iPad product to replace the viewbook, intended to be generic enough to connect with other audiences, like donors. And come the fall of 2013, Mr. Kumarasamy doesn’t plan to mail viewbooks at all.
At first glance, Marquette University seems like the poster child for the viewbook’s endurance. It doesn’t print a mere viewbook; it has the “big book,” some 100 pages long. The big book not only lists Marquette’s majors, it outlines a plan for students to pursue each one of them, with suggested courses over all four years and a list of places alumni with that major work.
But even as it continues to produce the big book, Marquette is responding to the same forces Loyola and William & Mary are. It used to mass-mail the book to all prospective students; today it distributes it to those who visit the campus. That saves money on printing (fewer books) and postage, although Marquette will still send copies on request. Probably to those students and families, an attractive, detailed presentation really matters. If a viewbook is worth investing in, a university can still spend that time and money more strategically.
