It’s pasted all over buses shuttling students between campuses, it’s slowly creeping its way online, and it’s coming to a movie theater near you.
It’s the new USM marketing campaign, and it might start to seem like it’s popping up everywhere – but that’s the idea. “Frequency is the name of the game in marketing,” says Julie Cameron of USM’s Office of Marketing and Brand Management.
Unveiled last February, the campaign that aims to “recruit and retain” has slowly been put into effect, starting with this summer’s launch of the new USM website front page. And that’s just the start.
In addition to USM’s newly decorated Portland-Gorham shuttles, the campaign seeks to recruit outside of the Casco Bay watershed with ads on internet search engines, as well as social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace.
Television ads will also begin running after November’s election, in a concerted effort to expose USM to a new market of potential students.
“Our core market is Maine and New England,” says Cameron.
But with Maine and New Hampshire projected to produce fewer high school graduates in the next 10 years, Cameron recognizes that the net may have to be cast a little further.
Now a glittering example of Flash animation, the University’s front page on the web is more alluring, but could also be misleading for anyone expecting a fully redesigned experience. Navigate from that initial page, and chances are you’ll back on the same-old website the school has operated since 2003.
This too, is part of the plan. “With limited resources, this is where we decided to focus our efforts at first,” says Cameron. On a recommendation from the Educational Marketing Group, the firm hired to assist in the campaign, the school decided to implement the website redesign slowly, starting off with a new front page aimed at luring prospective students.
On the new site the city of Portland takes center stage as one of the school’s main attraction. Taking the old real estate maxim “location, location, location” to heart, the marketing campaign recognizes the allure of the big city lifestyle, and tries to capitalize on this cosmopolitan appeal.
“One of the biggest draws for USM is Portland,” says Cameron.
USM will soon begin running ads in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. These potential out-of-state students would not only combat the “suitcase school” habits of USM, but also bring in out-of-state money and attention.
After a year in development with EMG, a firm which specializes in college-level marketing campaigns, USM’s new campaign was launched with the tagline “World View, Close Up”, essentially a motto, which has since been dropped by President Botman.
“It does not make sense to have a tagline that does not [accurately] reflect the goals of the university,” says Scott Steinberg, USM’s Director of Undergraduate Admissions. The school will hold off on any new taglines until they have begun a “strategic planning process” to map out Botman’s specific goals for the university, a process they hope to begin in earnest during October.
In an effort to keep marketing efforts fresh, organized, and focused, the university has created an Integrated Marketing Task Force. This group of faculty, staff, and students are consulted to help advise on and implement the new plan.
Biology professor David Champlin was eager to join the IMTF, and wanted to put individual students at the center of the campaign. “There are lots of students with amazing personal stories,” he says. ” I like telling those stories because it’s very motivating.”