Posts from — June 2010

By Randy Proto, American Institutes school group:

The great economic upheaval of the past few years has spawned many new, provocative public policy discussions in which long-held assumptions are being challenged. That’s a good thing. Perhaps if some of the Wall Street “assumptions” had been challenged sooner, we’d have all been better off.

Recently, articles in Time, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Wall Street Journal, and discussions by policy leaders in Washington, raise questions regarding the cost, associated value and affordability – the utility, really – of a degree.

Simply put, is a college degree really still worth the cost given a job market that seems less able to provide jobs today?

Put in perspective, the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” [Read more →]

From my alma mater.

Dog lovers know the feeling. Their pets seem human. The way they lick a tear-stained face or gaze adoringly, sometimes even more so than friends or, um, spouses.

But that’s a misperception, says animal behaviorist, author and contrarian Clive Wynne. People may behave like animals, but dogs, he says, are just good at being dogs.

With new discoveries about animal intelligence announced practically every day, there is growing sentiment that dogs, parrots and ark-loads of other creatures share the essential qualities of Homo sapiens. This yanks Wynne’s chain. A professor of psychology and author of “Do Animals Think?” he contends that while animals may appear uncannily human, it is strictly an appearance. Their perceptions and cognitive abilities are radically different from ours.  http://www.cvm.ncsu.edu/six_pro/ca.html

Wynne, who earned degrees from University College London and the University of Edinburgh, researches pet dogs at his Canine Cognition Laboratory at the University of Florida in Gainesville and captive wolves at Wolf Park, a research park in Indiana. There, he explores what might be termed the meaning of ‘dogness,’ delving into such questions as whether dogs have become genetically programmed to respond to human cues. The answer seems to be no. The wolves in Wynne’s experiments follow human points and other doggy directions. [Read more →]

As noted yesterday, when you’re reviewing the Key Messages, remember that we still need to develop themes for the supporting facts — themes that show impact [preferably involving multiple colleges] on issues that matter.  The supporting material that follows is grouped around areas that seem to make sense, but we need your input.

KEY MESSAGE II

Driving the economy every day

NC State provides results that drive the economy – bringing critical thinking skills and discipline-based knowledge to all sectors of society through education, dynamic discoveries, and solutions to real-world problems.

Fueling economic development

Producing leaders for the state, nation and world

$1 in state funding for NC State generates nearly $8 in total income for the state

Patents and products

680 U.S. Patents  (as of May 2010)

676 International Patents  (as of May 2010)

>110 better world products from lab to market

Start-ups and business incubator

The Technology Incubator has been worth $85 million to the local economy, by creating new companies, according to a RTI study completed in 2008

72 start-up companies, developed at NC State, representing more than $750 million in venture capital investment and more than 3,000 jobs in North Carolina.

Research conducted by students and faculty in the College of Engineering helped launch the highly successful North Carolina-based companies such as Cree, Red Hat, Nitronex, HexaTech, Silicon Semiconductor Corp., MiCEL, Kyma Technologies and many others. [Read more →]

Today’s home page feature at NCSU.EDU is an interview with student body president Kelly Hook, who will be blogging for us during the term of her presidency. In this era of social-media supremacy, we were looking to find a way to help connect Student Government leaders with not only their fellow students, but future students as well. In Kelly’s column, “Off the Hook,” she’ll keep everyone aware of what she and Student Government are up to, all while serving as a sounding board for readers. (Feel free to ask her questions here – some of the questions & answers will be featured in future posts.)

On a related note, we’ve added a couple of student writers – Amaris Hames and Candace Jones – to our Web editorial team, which we hope will add an air of authenticity to our student-focused stories like our recent feature on Mr. Wuf tryouts or the iPad Test Drive. Our full-time writers are great at what they do, but students have a way of capturing the passion of student-centered topics, events and news like we older folks can’t. Not that I’m saying we’re older, but you know what I mean.

Passion Rules!

When you’re reviewing the Key Messages, remember that we still need to develop themes for the supporting facts — themes that show impact [preferably involving multiple colleges] on issues that matter.  The supporting material that follows is grouped around areas that seem to make sense, but we need your input.

KEY MESSAGE I

Everything you can imagine

NC State, the largest university in North Carolina, provides big-school opportunities in a global innovation hot spot while fostering a tight-knit community in one of the nation’s most desirable places.

Producing leaders for the state, nation and world

Creating educational innovation

Our faculty members are thought leaders in their field—for example, Ann Ross, Walt Wolfram and Mike Walden are very NC focused. Find other faculty members who work internationally—maybe anthropology profs or engineering profs who collaborate with colleagues overseas.

Location and opportunities

To apply education through internships, research, co-ops and study with some of he world’s leading scientists and industry partners—locally, nationally, internationally.

Students’ senior projects involve real problems and collaboration with companies: Ex. College of Textiles, Engineering, Design

NC State’s Centennial Campus is home to industry, private-sector, non-profit, and governmental organizations, working alongside university faculty, staff and students.

NC State has 57 Centers & Institutes with 158 industry members including global partners such as DuPont, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Qianjiang Group Co., Ltd., RWTH Aachen University, Germany, Samsung, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Texas Instruments [Read more →]

Progress on the university-wide Key Messages is moving ahead.  During the next three or four days I’ll post the most recent work from the Public Relations & Marketing committee…great work, by the way.  Take some time to review the information and start to think about how you can incorporate the ideas into your daily, weekly, monthly, annual communications planning.

The posts will include a great deal of supporting information for each message and I encourage everyone to take that supporting information and build on it.  Create supporting messages that apply directly to your college and/or unit and you’ll have helped accomplish what we set out to do six months ago.

Its important to remember that the Key Messages merely provide the framework for our internal and external communications activities.  They represent a handful of concepts that seek to incorporate everything we do at NC State into a simple phrase.  I know a lot of you thought I was crazy when I asked for three or four sentences that would address everything that happens at NC State.  Well, we did it.

And Key Messages are not intended to be advertising tag lines, brochure copy or press release topics, though they could be.

When you’re reviewing the Key Messages, remember that we still need to develop themes for the supporting facts — themes that show impact [preferably involving multiple colleges] on issues that matter.  The supporting material that follows is grouped around areas that seem to make sense, but we need your input.

You’ve seen these before, but here are the three key messages (No. 4 was primarily for advertising purposes so I’m not going to include it here) with the basic points around each.

KEY MESSAGE I:
Everything you can imagine

NC State, the largest university in North Carolina, provides big-school opportunities in a global innovation hot spot while fostering a tight-knit community in one of the nation’s most desirable places.

Aligns with:

• Producing leaders for the state, nation and world
• Creating educational innovation

KEY MESSAGE II:
Driving the economy every day

NC State provides results that drive the economy – bringing critical thinking skills and discipline-based knowledge to all sectors of society through education, dynamic discoveries, and solutions to real-world problems.

Aligns with:

• Fueling economic development

KEY MESSAGE III:
Solutions for your world

NC State touches lives. With North Carolina roots and a global reach, we deliver solutions that anticipate and meet the needs of society.

Aligns with:

• Improving health and well being
• Driving innovation in energy and the environment

Passion Rules!

David Green sent this over today from the CASE  list serve.  Lots of Universities are asking questions about branding.  Brandy B. Aycock from Piedmont College is one of ’em who is asking.  Rob Moore with Lipman Hearne provides his thoughts.  Good reading and good insights.  Rob’s comments are in italic.

Happy Friday!
I am working on a project regarding college branding or rebranding.  I
was wondering if any of you have had experience with this in your
positions. Our alumni, development and communications departments are
all together with 6 staffers. I’ve done a lot of research and found many
articles, but I’d like to hear from those of you in the trenches.
Some questions:
1)      What do you think are the keys to success in a branding
initiative?
Presidential leadership. Solid base of market research. Shared
understanding among key leadership about the specific goals of the
initiative.
2)      What do you see as “the kiss of death” in branding?
Presuming you already “know” your brand.  You might know what you think
it is, or might know what you want it to be, but without market research
you don’t know where it resides in the minds of stakeholders—which is
where the brand actually lives.
3)      How long have you had your current brand in place?
This question is not answerable, if by brand you mean the place your
institution holds in the minds of its stakeholders. If you mean “brand
campaign” or a related public initiative to influence that brand
perception, the typical life of a brand campaign is 3-5 years—after
which it should be reexamined to see how it has changed the competitive
landscape and repositioned the institution. [Read more →]

Summer’s here and I’m getting lazy, at least where the blog is concerned. But that doesn’t mean that all’s quiet across campus.

As our communicators know, the calendar is a dominant feature of our home page, and we want our visitors, both online and offline, to know there’s more to do here this summer than attend departmental budget meetings, or see The Crazies  and The Princess and the Frog. (although they’re probably great movies)

So, now’s the time to re-stock the University Calendar with your summer events, exhibitions, camps, classes and, well, anything else that’s going on!

We’ve got a one-page submission form online, ready to be filled out.  The more info the better – so don’t be stingy!

http://calendar.activedatax.com/ncstate/oePublicForm.aspx

If you have any questions, feel free to email Dave Pond in University Communications.

Additionally, if you have ideas for homepage stories – either those that are upcoming to those you’ve already featured in your respective magazines, Web sites or newsletters that would interest a general audience – he’s the guy to talk to as well.

Passion Rules!

There have been some great posts on university marketing and branding recently.  I plan to share a few over the next few days.  The first from Inside Higher Education.

By Michael Armini

Inside Higher Education

In 1981, Grey Poupon took the nation by storm. Although the little-known Dijon mustard had been manufactured for more than a century, in the early ’80s it went from a minor six-figure business to a retail powerhouse.

Most people remember the famous TV ad in which one Rolls-Royce pulls up next to another. An aristocratic-looking passenger rolls down the back window to ask, “Pardon me. Would you have any Grey Poupon?”

In the cities where the ad ran, sales of Grey Poupon shot up 40 to 50 percent — a remarkable leap in the largely static condiment sector. Today, the Grey Poupon success story is frequently invoked as a highly successful “rebranding,” and an example of a singular advertising triumph.

Within the retail world, plenty of products have had their sales driven up, and their images buffed, through focused ad campaigns and catchy slogans: Don’t Leave Home Without It (American Express), Just Do It (Nike), and Got Milk? (California Milk Processor Board).

These successes — reinforced today by the hit cable TV show “Mad Men” — have led to an onslaught of branding consultants currently setting their sights on American universities. Many of these firms, battered by the recession and seeing higher education as a wealthy untapped sector, are coming to a campus near you. [Read more →]