Inside This World is doing a small software job for Princeton in Second Life. They’re our second US University client. Very pleased to be working with such progressive people. They continue their history of architectural adventurousness with a knock-out build by Scope Cleaver. Congratulations to client and builder.
Attending the Second Life Community Conference was like standing with a group of people on the edge of a cliff looking down on a city, knowing that in the morning it would be ours.
The context for this is a user base which has grown from 15,000 two years ago to 536,000 and continues to grow at 22% a month. It is a context that includes the arrival of major companies and universities at an increasing rate.
Mitch Kapor gave the keynote address. He compared skepticism about Second Life (he is chairman of the board of owners Linden Lab) to skepticism about the internet and personal computing. But he also sees the bigger picture and that is the potential of virtual worlds to impact human consciousness. I don’t believe he is overstating the long-term impact.
The diversity of applications within Second Life was clear during the conference. From the whole-hearted participation of the charity American Cancer Society to the US Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the arrival of the first Auto manufacturer, a cross-section of American society now sees the potential of this platform.
I am bound to report that Qdot Bunnyhug stole the show however with a very funny talk about teledildonics. How do I phrase this? Given the active virtual sex environment present in Second Life, his product is a very good fit.
As for our own participation, (this is a new paragraph now) we had a very enthusiastic response to both of our new businesses (watch this space) and the many universities we spoke to were excited about our development project which involves a pioneering use of streaming into Second Life.
The education sector is abuzz with the possibilities. 20% of conference registrations were from educational institutions.
There were many outside-the-box presentations, for example, Sarah Brooke Robbins’ presentation on Image Slippage in which she described a subversive undermining of the traditional teacher/student relationship. She and the students decorate their houses in Second Life and then visit each other. The result is an unusual familiarity and a high trust level. In doing this, she is taking advantage of one of Second Life’s great strengths; the tendency of people to bond very quickly in the environment.
Larry Johnson of the NMC Campus summed up the feeling among educators, describing Second Life as an “important part of the future of education”.
A campaign is a series of ads with some recognisable consistency between one ad and the next. Seldom done in education advertising here. Each department seems to have its own ideas. This is the only print campaign I’m aware of in recent times in the WA market.
A good campaign occurs when an ad receives a higher cut-through than it would as a stand alone ad; ie the individual ad benefits from the history of previous advertising. Example: the Apple iPod bus-stop ads.
Each one adds something to the overall imagery of the campaign and because the visual legacy is strong and positive, each new ad is immediately recognisable.
There’s a pretty strong contrast here between the visual appeal of the iPod ad and the visual yuckiness of the ECU campaign. The ECU campaign is going nowhere.
The ad pitches to experienced but uneducated business executives who want a formal qualification. But why would you portray your target market as personality-devoid plaster castes? “Hey, drone, your life is boring. Come and do some lectures, sit some tests.”
The ad is unfriendly, gray and intimidating. Yeah, I’d really want to go to a university like that.
What sort of people launch into tertiary education AFTER they’ve started a business? Ambitious people. People who think they’ll derive a benefit. So show them a benefit in your advertising.
It’s an awful campaign. The ECU marketing people should be put in plaster castes and the ad agency should be made to study tax law.
Continuing a series looking at print ads for tertiary institutions; today, Edith Cowan University. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… another tertiary education ad featuring people and lifts. Very aspirational, I’m sure.
It’s not just your eyesight; the text in this ad is practically illegible even as a near full-page print advertisement. You may just be able to make out the headline; “Get noticed”. The irony…
It may not be immediately clear to you what a floating briefcase has to do with your imminent postgraduate degree at Edith Cowan University; you must have only done a Bachelor’s degree.
The text in the ad is so bland as to be meaningless: “raise your profile with a postgraduate qualification”, “hundreds of courses to choose from”. You would hope that the image in an ad supported its text message; ‘fraid not.
What was the brief for this ad? Show graduates that if they do another degree their life at work will suddenly become much more casual and relaxed? That’s an insult to their intelligence.
Any minute now the boss is going to get out of the lift and say “the FUCK are you guys DOING standing around here? And why are you all hiding your hands? Oh. THERE’S my briefcase!”
Continuing a review of print advertising by West Australian Universities …
Well, unlike the Curtin ad, this seems sound strategically. Reinforces the institution as high achieving. Clearly branded. Murdoch name is prominent so they’re not wasting money. Criticisms: Doesn’t really link Murdoch’s research work to any enrolment benefit. Boring as bird flu. Needs professional photography and a graphic designer. Looks like it was put together for free by The West Australian.
The first in a series of analyses, trying to understand advertising by educational institutions. I’m struggling to even imagine the nature of the brief given to the advertising agency for this ad. Was it: “We want you to tap into the warrior nature of potential postgraduates.” Or possibly: “We believe it’s important to convey how unwelcome minority groups are at Curtin.”
It is hard to critically evaluate someone’s advertising without knowing their objectives so I may be way off beam, however …
At face value, this is an awful piece of advertising with strategic and executional problems.
It looks like they are targeting graduates wanting MBA’s as a business qualification. Their positioning seems to be “more aggressive than other universities”. But is aggression the axis on which students will make their decisions? Is aggression a meaningful distinction in post-graduate study? Surely students would value more highly “employability”, “premium salaries” and “support”. And I would guess that Curtin, with its technical college history would compare well to other institutions on employability and perhaps even salaries. It works to leverage your natural advantages. Social psychologists will tell you that it’s easier to convince people of something they already half believe.
Also on the strategic front, is the positioning (aggression) ownable and sustainable? Can it be powerfully associated with the brand Curtin in a way that other institutions cannot?
Executionally, the ad has no branding. The association between the message (a competitive advantage in your career) and the advertiser (Curtin University) is non-existent.
Query whether the ninja metaphor would really strike a chord with your average graduate.
The ad tries to get prospective graduates to attend an information night. Couldn’t they have made that a little more obvious? A full-page headline that said “Shift your Graduate ass into Postgrad bad-ass on Tuesday at Kings Park Function Centre” would have put more bums on seats.
Well that’s one approach. But here’s what I don’t get. Curtin is advertising to a target market that is by definition educated and literate, and yet they advance no rational argument, no science, no market research and no statistics. With academics from every discipline to draw on, what dum-dum is responsible for this lame effort?