Coinciding with the rise of social media is the reorientation of marketing towards tribes. Unlike push marketing, tribe-based marketing strives to gather people around a particular idea or concept, fostering a sense of community. As Seth Godin points out, this approach is not so much about imposing an idea upon a group as forming connections among people who already have an interest in something. Using the tribe metaphor, Godin focuses on the ability of a single person (or business) to organize that tribe, creating a movement and changing the status quo. In essence, a good tribal leader identifies a point of connection among a group of people and then controls the distribution of that connection.
However, a lot of social media has created the opportunity for groups to coelesce without a figurehead in the form of a single leader. There may be an instigator (such as the person who initially creates a Facebook page), but as a group grows it’s tough for the initial creator to control the direction the tribe takes because when it comes down to it, tribes aren’t former around people, they’re formed around ideas. We can see this when spontaneous networks show up without a figurehead. Recent examples have included “citizen journalist” reporting of disasters such as September 11, the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Mumabi terror attacks, and the spread of swine flu. No single entity organized individuals to start sharing their experiences, but the availability of the technology and the immediate, apparent need for expression caused the emergence of the networks.
What’s even more interesting about these networks is that they arose in spite of a figurehead-driven outlet delivering information on the same topic. News organizations were forced to put away their authoritative, “push” means of working and adopt the grassroots, tribal way of working. On the one hand, this would bolster the idea of the symbiotic relationship of tribe and leader. By encouraging the growth of the tribe reporting on the tsunami, for example, MSNBC was being a good tribal leader by not forcing a product (in this case its own reporting of the news) on its constituency and instead facilitating connections between people in the midst of the chaos and people wanting to gather information on the tragedy. On the other hand, however,this situation shows how little the importance of the leader is as a result of social media.
In this particular case – news media coverage – Twitter, Facebook, and other social media applications provide the actual distribution method for the product (news coverage). The actual news outlets only provide a venue that is, traditionally, the go-to point for news coverage. By repurposing the citizen journalist-created content, the news outlets may appear to be tribal leaders that can direct a movement, changing the status quo of how news is reported, but in actuality they are becoming another conduit in the stream that has no director. In fact, the worst thing that these outlets could do to the stream would be to try to be such a figurehead, damming up the stream of information and the resulting tribal connections.
While in the news world, it would seem that social distribution networks like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. are quickly overtaking the traditional types of news story distribution and making tribal organization difficult, there are other possibilities for being a successful, sustainable tribal organizer. Most of these opportunities involve finding a tribe that cannot create an effective network with the general tools at their disposal. Obama’s presidential campaign is one of the most often-cited examples of this, and with good reason. In past elections, information has been push-based. A candidate would tell his position and feed information outward rather than try to bring people into an idea and engage them. Any sort of tribal organization would be done outside of the official campaign with no central leadership. The Obama campaign, however, provided that figurehead and moved the marginal tribal organization to the main stage. It created a social network that could not have emerged without a figurehead coordinating all of the different parts. The Obama-specific social network could not have been replicated through a Ning network and keeping official updates on the campaign circulating would have been difficult if not impossible without a central Twitter and Facebook account. Now that he’s been elected, change.gov is also an effective venue for organizing feedback and official updates that could not be duplicated through non-directed, general use of other mediums (general discussion boards and mass emails, for example).
What Obama did right and the news organizations did wrong is identifying an area that actually needed a tribal leader. Not every industry and not every product will lend itself to existing as a directed tribe. While it may be inspiring to believe that true change and movements occur by one person coming forward an organizing, social media has begun to change that dynamic. Some industries may be temporarily able to support a figurehead at the top of the tribe, but unless that figurehead is providing a medium of organization that is unavailable elsewhere, the tribal figurehead structure is not sustainable.
And because we love to think, we’re thinking about “old” media versus “new” media. Which makes us curious: Which has been more effective for your organization?
We’ll be asking that question to higher-ed marketing professionals later this week — and next — while we’re attending the AMA’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education in Chicago. (By the way, if you’re also headed that way, please come by the exhibit area and say hello. We’ll be in Booth #14.)
To review the “official” poll results, come back here, to our blog, next week. (But you don’t have to wait for others to answer. Leave your thoughts and comments here. Which is working better for you?)
In the last two posts on the campus visit, I’ve been hinting at my final suggestion: get rid of the “online visit” entirely. Or, at least don’t have a section with that title. This isn’t, of course, to say that you should slash and burn all references to your campus on your site. Instead, you should (as I suggested initially) think of your entire site as a “campus visit,” try to push students to make an actual visit, and use your digital media resources to highlight aspects of your institution that prospects can’t get otherwise.
Many prospective students go into the process of choosing a college with a checklist: look at the academics, find out about financial aid, see what the student life is like, etc. Nine times out of ten, visiting the campus finds a way onto that list. Labeling a particular section “online visit” or “virtual tour” provides an explicit alternative to the off-line or real-world tour for prospective students. With this alternate, prospects can check off their “campus tour” item without ever actually stepping foot on your campus.
Giving prospects the impression that they can (not to mention encouraging them to) actually visit your campus from hundreds or thousands of miles away is dangerous. There’s no substitute for a real-world visit and once they’ve checked off that “visit” box on their list, students are less likely to spend the time and money to visit, which leaves them with only their virtual impressions. Your site should, in addition to exemplifying your brand, push students to pay an offline life visit and not try to provide substitutes for the real thing.
Aside from confusing a Collegiate Gothic architecture exhibition with an actual campus tour, one of the main issues with virtual campus visits are their propensity towards technological overdose. As a part of the site that necessitates a lot of images, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and go overboard by adding slideshows, videos, 360 degree tours, talking avatars, Second Life recreations of the inside of the American Studies department, etc. Too often a lot of digital media becomes the focus rather than a supplement, providing a distraction from a lack of useful information.
The problem is that no matter how many pictures, videos, and digital recreations you include on a virtual tour, you’ll never come close to duplicating the experience of actually being on campus. As I mentioned in my last post, the campus tour actually serves as a vehicle to expose prospective students to your brand, not your architecture. With the objective of brand exposure, it would be better to take all that effort (not to mention money) and put it towards adding new and different media to the rest of your site, especially in higher traffic areas, so that your whole site reflects the brand of your campus.
One of the benefits of using digital media like video, audio, etc. online rests in the ability to show something rather than just tell about it. That “new media” implementation should involve showing off your brand and giving prospective students an idea about the experience of being at your institution at every possible opportunity, not just the designated campus visit area. Take the opportunity to use media to show what students are doing and how they interact with the campus and with each other. Putting short videos about student life, the character of a particular dorm, or various academic programs and departments can actually go where the offline visit can’t: inside the culture of a school.
Undoubtedly prospects get a “feel” about a college just by being on campus, but they also only see what’s right in front of them. Without shadowing a student or spending a night on campus, they can’t go inside the culture of the school and see what it’s really about. Using digital media allows you to give prospects a glimpse inside your campus beyond the tour, not provide a substitute for the real thing.
The American Bankers Association recently announced the 2008 Financial Marketing Award Winners at a ceremony in Denver. The annual competition recognizes “creative excellence” in financial services marketing and advertising. (The segment includes banks, S&Ls, insurance companies, brokerage and investment firms, and credit card companies.) As with most award ceremonies, entries are judged by by a panel of experts on such things as strategy, message and positioing and overall results.
This years’ BIG winner was a brand awareness campaign for Colarado’s KeyBank that began virally on MySpace. The campaign featured George Vlosich, famous Etch-A-Sketch artist, rendering a portrait of the Denver Nuggets’ very own Carmelo Anthony. If you aren’t yet one of more-than-a-million viewers, here’s your chance:
Here’s my dilemma: while I applaud KeyBank for using new media to generate name recognition and perhaps connect with the next generation of bank customers, the Millennials, what does an NBA star have to do with their brand? Is “the key, key, key to it all just being mellow?” Or, is this simply an attempt to use new media just because you can?
The campus visit is generally regarded as one of the deciding factors for prospective students. Once a student steps foot on a campus, they are said to have that magical moment where they know without a doubt whether or not they belong at a particular college. But, it’s becoming increasingly expensive to visit college campuses. In place of an actual visit, prospective students are being encouraged to take a virtual visit and consequently, a lot of colleges are creating virtual or online visits.
For the next couple posts, I’d like to take a closer look at the campus tour and see what makes it tick both online and offline. I think creating an “online tour” or “online visit” for colleges involves a lot more than putting pictures of your campus online. When prospective students are making their decisions, they’re not looking at the architecture so much as assessing how they like the feel of the campus.
If the “feel” of the college visit isn’t really found by scoping out the latest in Collegiate Gothic architecture, then where does it live? In a lot of different places: how the students are interacting with each other, the personality of the tour guide, and the general buzz on campus to name a few. The important parts are that the feel is found in living, moving people, not in the static buildings.
It’s a wonder, then, that most virtual tours don’t have any people in them. Instead, they stick to a format that more closely resembles the street view in Google Maps. Even dining halls are evacuated before they are recorded for virtual tours. These kinds of tours actually give an impression of college campuses that are far from what students are looking for. Prospects want a campus teeming with life, not a ghost town.
The solution for this doesn’t just lie in adding people to the architectural portraits. A better answer would be thinking about your whole website as a campus visit. When the prospective students are reacting to the “feel” of the campus, they’re reacting to your brand. If your whole website doesn’t reflect the campus environment, you’re missing out on an important opportunity to draw student in. Create a design that’s easy to navigate, but also make sure that it feels like your campus in every aspect: design, copy, and any “new media” additions you decide to add.
The college website is supposed to reflect the brand or feel campus, but not be a complete copy or replacement for the campus itself. One of the worst travesties would be for a prospect to think that after visiting a site that they had seen all the college has to offer. Give them a feeling for what your institution has to offer, but leave them wanting to make the investment in an actual, real life visit.
