Raise your hand if you would be interested in a marketing campaign that would generate more response than any of your enrollment campaigns over the last 10 years combined. Who wouldn’t be … right?
The catch is that you would have no control over it. Still interested?
Let me tell you about Appalachian State University's HOT story and YouTube, the online video sharing service. First, enjoy the video.
This video has been viewed over 900,000 times, generated over 1,200 comments, featured on VH1, the entertainment channel, and covered by NPR. Here's a sampling of what people had to say on YouTube:
How in the world have so many people seen this!? All I can say is HOT HOT HOT!
Surely, in representing Appalachian State University, "Hot Hot Hot" is a near-definitive postmodern masterpiece - an ironic, paradoxical, reflexive, self-parody - that brilliantly exposes the fallacies of regarding the university as a business and selling education like toothpaste or laundry detergent.
whoever came up with this video as a recruitment tool and whoever approved it's release should be shot, shot, shot
Pretty harsh, yes. But the problem is that Appalachian State University didn't create this video as a recruitment tool nor did it intend for it to be released on the Internet.
In April 2007, I was conducting research on the use of interactive marketing channels in higher education. One of the people I interviewed asked me had I seen the Appalachian State recruitment video on YouTube. I hadn’t so I looked it up.
I must confess I laughed hysterically when I found it.
When I discovered this video over a year ago, it had already been online since 2005. I contacted Appalachian State to get the real story and I spoke with Lynn Drury, the associate vice chancellor for public affairs.
Lynn explained that the video was actually created for a 2004 alumni caravan tour by the institution’s chancellor, Kenneth Peacock. Remember the “proud as a peacock line” … now you know.
Someone posted the video online and the rest is history.
In an interview with NPR, Dr. Lorin Baumhover Chief of Staff for the Office of the Chancellor at Appalachian State said “We would never create something like that to attract students. It's horrible." Baumhover maintains the video was created as a kind of joke, to be shared with alumni and friends of the university.
Despite the wishes of the university, the video has a life of its own. Someone apparently affiliated from Utah Valley State College had a little remix fun.
Social technologies like YouTube take power from institutions. In many ways, we’ve lost the ability to carefully craft messages and distribute them across the channels of our choosing.
Where might this lead? Beyond the posting of your old recruitment videos, it’s only a matter of time before some enterprising student digitally records an unfortunate exchange with your bursar’s office and posts it.
Ultimately, your brand and message is earned by what you do rather than the slogans, advertising, and marketing campaigns you launch.
Oh, and Lynn Drury had a message she asked me to share, “Be kind. It could happen to you.”
You no longer control the message.
Comments