This admissions video from Yale is getting around. The New York Times Blog’s take on this adventure pretty much sums it up. Please take note of the comments on the article.
Harry Potter, Glee, I just don’t know. High School senior Lauren Edelson wrote an op-ed piece about her college search and she really makes a good point about co-opting pop culture in Admissions Marketing.
If the intent of “Yale: The Musical” is to gain attention, I am sure this will be considered a success, but I suspect just like other cultural trends, it will fade away.
Christmas came a couple of days early this year in the form of an e-mail:
–“Dear Mr. O’Mara,
I graduated from Berry College in 2007. … I found your website and recognized your name and work immediately because I’ve seen it so often in the Berry quarterly magazine. I’m so glad I saw your site because I’ve always been a big fan of your work since I first saw the magazine. You capture Berry College so beautifully and now that I’ve graduated I enjoy your photos even more. I hope Berry will continue to use your work for years to come. I know this is really random, but I just wanted to let you know. Everybody enjoys fan mail, right? Keep up the great work and thank you for sharing it. Merry Christmas too!
Sincerely,
Rachel M”—
It’s humbling to get such a note. Affirmation by your audience is rare. There is not a category of CASE award that could equal what this simple note means to me.
When the temptation arises for higher education marketers to employ popular culture as a means of promoting an institution they may wish to read this first. This young college searching young lady is not unlike her peers.
The image above it at Sewanee: The University of the South . It may look like Hogwarts but it is not. Sewanee is a serious and well-respected liberal arts institution. The real magic is getting that message out.
Viewbooks, search pieces, post cards, websites, billboards and whatever else I’ve neglected to list are the stock and trade of my work. But it’s the Capital Campaign and the Casebook that carry the heavy lifting.
It’s humbling for me to think about the amount of money that has been raised by my clients. The casebooks which I have been directly involved with have raised more than $540,000,000 ! It takes my breath away to know that my work has made that sort of impact.
The shot above was used by Darlington School , a private day and boarding institution.
I just finished shooting at three colleges over the past 10 days. Each one had specific goals but as I looked over the work I saw a common thread. In all three projects, I was asked to look beyond the obvious. I’ve come to realize that this is my strength.
My first shoot was an environmental portrait of a Dean of Students. He relies heavily on statistics for his decisions. Below is how it worked out. That should be a nice piece in the Presidents Report.
Last week I attended a program laying out strategies for modern marketing. I now have a Facebook account (FB) and the friends are flooding in. I need to back up a bit and explain: My motivation for the FB page was more out of obligation. I am the president of the Atlanta/SE chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers and the chapter now has a FB page.
The New York Times reported on Twitter today and there are some interesting findings. One of the great quotes: “It seems more, like, professional, and not something that a teenager would do,” said 16-year-old Miranda Grazier. “I think I might join when I’m older.” Wow, talk about putting the shoe on the other foot. So it isn’t the young and “tech-savvy” who are responsible for Twitter’s success.
This new information should make admissions marketers take a step back and re-examine their recruiting strategies. In the rush to fan out in all modern directions, are some of these platforms a waste of time? Most likely not, but to have confidence that the time and energy put into getting the message out is productive, it makes sense to review the trends from time to time.
My college daughter made me her FB friend! I hope she didn’t do it out of obligation.
One aspect of a campus photo shooting that gets little mention is aerial photos. A well timed and executed aerial shoot can get some very strong imagery that tells a lot about the beauty of a campus.
Aerial shoots are not a cost prohibitive venture. They can be integrated into even a one day shooting schedule. Most private airfields and a good number of public airports have some form of flight service and the cost is quite reasonable for a small high-wing plane. A helicopter can also be used but it comes at a cost that is much higher, but the resulting images can be worth the additional expense.
At least once a year I’m called to do an aerial assignment. Interactive campus maps depend upon current aerial photos. If you plan correctly you can make both happen and get some real value for the effort.
The image above was taken from a small plane and is a keystone image for the institution. The clearing fog was the true bonus of this picture.
The Hope Scholarship has also played into higher demand for junior colleges. With the bar set so high at places like the University of Georgia, many pass through community colleges on their way to the more competitive flagship schools.
Marketing still plays a role. Rome, Ga. has a high concentration of health care workers and Georgia Highlands College is an important “supplier” . Their two year nursing program and dental hygiene provide a well trained workforce to area facilities.
Last week an external hard drive went bad. It just stopped. That darn thing only makes clicking sounds. Reflexively my mind started to do the mental inventory dance. There are a lot of important images on that drive.
As I stepped back to take stock of the loss, it began to sink in that my losses were minimal. Only the most recent shoot had not been backed up to DVD and I found those on compact flash cards in my camera and camera bag!
I wish I could tell you that I can just pick up and move forward. Something had slipped by me. My external drives have more than one purpose. They are the place where I transfer photos from my camera and organize a shoot. But it now is clear that I overlooked something. While archived, there are images that I manage for my website and blogs. These are sort of works in progress. I now realize that some consideration needs to be given to an “active archive”.
I spoke with a local institutional IT director about this and his thoughts were on a much grander scale. Archiving images seems small in comparison. Grade reports, schedules, student comments, faculty evaluations… This is just something that had not crossed my mind. Back-ups of everything are replicated on off-site servers and back-up tapes are stored in a safe-deposit box!
Hopefully you will take from this is that the images you store on your hard drives and servers can vanish. Photographers who treat archiving lightly tread on thin ice. Since my work is always at risk of failure, I have to assume that the same could be true for my clients.
