Can better branding shift the perception of community college?
I’ll be honest: I kind of cringed a year ago when I first heard about the Lumina Foundation’s Million Dollar Community College Challenge, which promised a total of $1.9 million to 10 institutions to help them with their “brand building.” With all the obstacles those colleges (and their students) were up against, the idea that better marketing would be a solution seemed just a bit too facile. Some of the gushy videos promoting the project didn’t change my opinion.
But now that the 10 institutions have been chosen and their efforts are getting underway, I realize I may have been too quick to be so judgy. I’m still not sold on this effort, but with a bit more understanding about what the organizers, consultants, and colleges are trying to achieve, I see its potential — with a big caveat.
Two conversations shifted my perspective. First, Lumina’s strategy director for community college participation, Shauna Davis, told me that the foundation’s market research had found that the public often associates community colleges with crisis. They are seen as the place to go “if you lose your job,” she said, which doesn’t necessarily align with the aspirations many adults have in mind when they decide to go or return to college.
Then one of the project consultants reminded me that at its best, a brand isn’t a logo or a slogan. It’s not tangible but often it’s “instinctively” recognizable, said Nancie McDonnell Ruder, founder and chief executive at Noetic Consultants. “It’s what you authentically stand for.”
Just as I appreciate the brands I value in my life — Apple’s, Nike’s, The Chronicle’s, heck, my own — plenty of community colleges saw the appeal too. Hundreds of colleges applied. Madera Community College in California won the top prize of $1 million; nine others received $100,000.
Noetic is now advising all 10 colleges on branding strategies, while other companies are assisting them with website improvements. Noetic is also offering monthly marketing webinars for any interested community college, based on a “brand positioning statement” it developed for colleges nationwide. The statement highlights that community college should be seen as the “pre-eminent higher education hub,” providing degrees, job training, and student experiences that accommodate adult learners and others “with varying life circumstances and goals.” Those aren’t exactly groundbreaking ideas, but I’m glad to see the focus on adult students.
The final two free webinars in the challenge’s Marketing Academy will be held in March and April. I sat in on the February one. Frankly, the marketing-speak was a bit much for my maybe-a-little-jaded-journalist tastes, but I recognize I was not the target audience. Even so, I could see how the information would be useful, particularly suggestions on how college marketers could expand their understanding of student needs by looking beyond traditional data sources and tapping resources like their colleagues in advising, who are in day-to-day touch with students. In other words, marketing shouldn’t be developed in a vacuum; it should respond to actual, institution-specific circumstances.
That’s actually one place where colleges might have a marketing advantage over companies or other organizations: They have lots of touch points with students, which could translate into lots of opportunities to gain insights about them, if they’re attuned to doing so.
Madera Community College, the million-dollar winner, claimed the prize in part with a two-minute video featuring a graduate, Marisela Maciel, an immigrant and mother of three. In a video completely in Spanish with English subtitles, she describes how the college had transformed her life by teaching her English, equipping her for a job as an office assistant, and preparing her as she now pursues a bachelor’s degree in business, all the while supported and surrounded by “people who walked in my shoes.” (You can catch Madera’s video, and the nine others, under the “A Look at the Finalists” section of this web page.)
The video reflects Madera’s student population of 8,600, which is predominantly Hispanic and female. It also represents the welcoming vibe the college has been trying to project. It is using the Lumina money to accelerate needed improvements to its website; plan a new multicultural-resource center for its campus, in the San Joaquin Valley; and install two sets of murals on the walls of two prominent buildings, one featuring images of Chicano culture and the other reflecting themes of farm workers and students becoming graduates. The idea is to “create a visceral sense of belonging” on the campus, Angel Reyna, the college’s president, told me this week. Madera, which is now seeing its enrollment rise after a 15-percent decline in Spring 2021, is also organizing an event in April for members of the community to visit the campus, meet instructors, and see what the college offers.
At first, Reyna told me, he too was a bit wary about the branding effort, but he came around — with a little prodding from the college’s former marketing director. As he’s come to understand it: “It’s what the college means to people.”
From the get-go, I had wondered how the community colleges’ marketing needs differed from those of commercial clients, like those with which Noetic typically consults. Ruder said that, for the most part, the differences were a matter of resources. Most of the colleges had the right mindset, she said, but “most of them don’t have the full skillset” or staffing to collect and analyze data or modernize their websites.
Many of those colleges also don’t have the resources to respond to the changing market. For example, most of the colleges realize many of their students are now older or bearing adult responsibilities, but they haven’t evolved to adequately meet those students’ distinct needs. Even at colleges that offered appropriate services, such as child care or options for online courses, the marketing messages weren’t talking about those effectively — or at all.
“It’s important to tout what you do have,” said Ruder. And for institutions that don’t have the necessary services, she added, the marketing effort has become the impetus for putting them into place. Ruder called it “grass-roots change making.”
I can’t independently verify that, but to me that’s the deeper value in their effort — and what brings me back to the caveat I raised above. As colleges develop their brands, let’s hope they’re also living up to the promises that undergird them. The institutions can’t just claim to be flexible or supportive or reliable providers of an education that will be worth their students’ investment of time and money. For this branding effort to truly succeed, they will also have to deliver on those promises.
Please join me and my colleagues in Austin at SXSW EDU.
The Chronicle will be holding two sessions next Tuesday, March 7 at SXSW EDU. And we’re co-hosting a party that evening.
First up, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m., is a session on How Diverse Students Access & Thrive in College, moderated by Alexander C. Kafka, a Chronicle senior editor. During this discussion you’ll learn how innovative foundations and colleges are helping underrepresented students enroll in and complete STEM and other four-year degree programs. Alex will be speaking with a student and leaders from One Million Degrees, the City Colleges of Chicago, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
And then from 4 to 5 p.m., it’s our eighth annual Shark Tank: Edu Edition, where I and my fellow sharks, Catharine “Cappy” Hill, of Ithaka S+R, and Paul Freedman, an entrepreneur and executive advisor at Guild Education, will weigh in on pitches from entrepreneurs and educators with new ideas to improve higher ed.
Both sessions will take place in room 18AB at the Austin Convention Center (note the new location this year).
Later that evening, please join us and our friends from Roadtrip Nation at The White Horse starting at 8:30 p.m. for some live honky-tonk music, refreshing beverages, and a chance to two-step — or just catch up with colleagues. Space is limited, so please RSVP here.
We hope to see you at any and all of these events — and, of course, elsewhere — throughout the four days.
Got a tip you’d like to share or a question you’d like me to answer? Let me know, at goldie@chronicle.com. If you have been forwarded this newsletter and would like to see past issues, find them here. To receive your own copy, free, register here. If you want to follow me on Twitter (yeah, for now at least, I’m still there), @GoldieStandard is my handle.
