The Student Survey — Results are in!

A few weeks back I talked about a group of students from the College of Management approaching us about doing an opinion survey and asking high school students what they thought about  North Carolina State University’s marketing materials.  We thought it was a good idea and the students set out to interview students about our “Red Means Go” television campaign.

The results are in…and are mixed.  The good news, most high school students who participated in two focus group sessions or responded to the online survey, like the television spot.  They thought it was memorable and they liked the spokesperson.  Some did say they thought the commercial was somewhat disjointed and rushed, but again, the overall response was positive.

On the downside, very few of the students had seen the spot:-(  Of 100 responses, 75% said they had not seen it.  Taken totally out of context, you might think that’s bad.  But I doubt more than 25% of the respondents had seen the spot from Duke University, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill or any other university for that matter.  Face it, given the budgets our universities have to work with, the spots  only air during “free” public service time on athletic events and if you’re not a football fan, chances are you have never seen the television commercials.  That reality is a bigger challenge and something we’ve got to deal with in the future…when our budget situation improves and we can actually buy television time to tell the story of NC State.

On the positive side, the average student “did not feel that the speaker had a negative impact” on the commercial, rating the speaker at 3.62 on a 5-point scale.  Not overwhelming support, but support nevertheless.  Respondents did feel more strongly that the commercial was unique, with an average scaled response of 4.019 on a 5-point scale.

A significant challenge the survey revealed is the university’s standing among students who list NC State as their ‘intended college.”  Only 20% identified NC State as their intended college.  About 40% identified “Other” and another 40%  said UNC-Chapel Hill.  We’ve got to change that my friends!  And we will.

The PowerPoint presentation of the results is attached so check it out.  I’d like to give a call out to the students who worked on the project. They did a great job and have delivered information that will help us all as we move forward with our branding and communications efforts.  Thank you Daniel Tanaka, Emily Street, Amanda Keim, Ryan Didsbury, Daria Petrovic and Scott Simpson.  This group is definitely passionate about NC State.  They are disciples for our brand.

Passion Rules!

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