In This Issue
- Beyond Dialogue: Dealing With Some of Higher Education's Most Intractable Challenges
- What Really Motivates Workers
- The Convergence: How Social Media and Integrated Marketing Come Together: I, by Fritz McDonald
Beyond Dialogue: Dealing With Some of Higher Education's Most Intractable Challenges
By Bob Sevier, Senior Vice President, Strategy
There is no shortage of articles and seminars on the challenges facing higher education.
At the same time, there is a clear shortage of significant conversations on how to deal with these challenges.
Based on hundreds of conversations with campus leaders, I know why these conversations are so scarce: people are afraid. They fear they will be ostracized by the higher education community of which they are a part.
Consider, for example, the issue of high cost. While most agree that high cost is an issue, almost no one wants to look at ways to really reduce cost. One president called any such discussion "a real career killer." A second described the cost issue as a "third rail"; referring to the third rail on a subway track that carries the electric current that powers the train. Anyone who touches the third rail is electrocuted. Another president said the cost issue was simply "untouchable" and his hope was to retire before having to deal with it.
Unfortunately, while higher education dithers, the challenges mount. At the very least, we need significant dialogue to identify these third-rail issues. But more importantly, we need to begin developing solutions.
What I am proposing is a three-step process to help us move beyond dialogue.
First, I would like you to post what you believe to be the top three untouchable issues facing higher education.
Second, I will organize your responses into broad categories. My goal is to identify the top three to five issues.
Finally, Stamats will organize a dialogue around each of these issues. We will try to find the best thinkers and doers from across higher education and create a venue where their work can be shared.
Let's begin with a question: what do you believe to be the top three challenges facing higher education?
Please reply to this e-mail (or e-mail info@stamats.com) with your three choices.
Thank you in advance for your interest.
What Really Motivates Workers
By Bob Sevier, Senior Vice President, Strategy
The January–February 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review contains an astounding article: "What Really Motivates Workers."
Written by Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer, the article summarizes a series of studies involving more than 600 managers from dozens of companies in which they asked the managers to rank the impact on employee motivation and emotions of five workplace factors commonly considered significant:
- Recognition for good work
- Incentives
- Interpersonal support
- Making progress toward goals
- Clear goals
The managers ranked "Recognition for good work" as number one.
Sounds reasonable, right?
The problem is, however, that the managers were wrong.
According to a parallel study, knowledge workers put recognition last on their list. The factor ranked first was making progress toward goals.
According to the authors, "on days when workers have the sense they're making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest."
As managers, this study is bad news and good. The bad news is that most managers completely misunderstood what motivates their workers. The good news, and it is very good news indeed, is that the key to motivation turns out to be largely within managers' control. What is particularly helpful for today's colleges, where dollars are tight: it doesn't depend on elaborate incentive systems. In fact, people in the study rarely mentioned incentives as a motivator. By definition, all managers have powerful influence over events that facilitate or undermine progress. They can provide meaningful goals, resources, and encouragement, and they can protect their people from irrelevant demands. Or they can fail to do so.
The authors have some important words for managers: scrupulously avoid impeding progress by changing goals automatically, being indecisive, or holding up resources. Negative events generally have a greater effect on people's emotions, perceptions, and motivation than positive ones, and nothing is more demotivating than a setback—the most prominent type of event on knowledge workers' worst days.
At the same time, take great care to clarify overall goals, ensure that people's efforts are properly supported, and cultivate a culture of helpfulness.
The research did reveal that recognition does motivate workers. Amabile and Kramer say that so managers should celebrate progress, even the incremental sort. They go on, "But there will be nothing to recognize if people aren’t genuinely moving forward—and as a practical matter, recognition can’t happen every day. You can, however, see that progress happens every day."
The Convergence: How Social Media and Integrated Marketing Come Together: I
By Fritz McDonald, Vice President, Creative Strategy
It's been a long hard battle for many campus marketing teams to earn buy-in for integrated marketing campaigns. The scuffles range from smaller tactical disagreements over logo display to larger and more counterproductive dustups over the meaning of the institutional brand itself, a conflict that almost always leads to message dilution or too many competing and contradictory messages in the marketplace.
Into this fray comes social media, the latest in a long line of technological trends to wreak havoc on our marketing programs. Although it has at times been troublesome—especially regarding issues of privacy and unwanted behavior on social networks—social media is proving to be a valid and effective new marketing tool in the higher education sphere (take a look at the number of fans of the Stanford, Oklahoma, and LSU Facebook pages or the number of views the Ohio State YouTube flash mob video has garnered). Yet, we keep hearing from various self-appointed social media gurus that integrated marketing is dead thanks to the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube—a sentiment I strongly disagree with. Traditional integrated marketing strategies and tactics are still highly effective—TV's reach is still powerful and while the publishing world is struggling, print is still the most effective tool for targeting segmented audiences (please note that Google is now using print advertising). In spite of this, the perception persists that marketing and social media simply cannot mix—like oil and water, their differences are elemental. This is partly due to the mythology that early adopters of social media have spread that all social media content must be authentic. Marketing at times can certainly be inauthentic—like those ridiculous product claims you hear on cable channels… you know, steak knives that can wash your car and mow your lawn. However, we all know that in today's over-saturated media-driven marketplace, marketing that strikes an authentic chord in audiences stands a much better chance of standing out—all these years later, we're still talking about Nike’s "Just Do It" campaign. What is true, however, is that many of us simply don’t quite know how to bring these two proven approaches together. While many institutions have made big strides with social media, they've yet to fully integrate it with the rest of their marketing tactics, at least beyond simply interweaving links and icons into various components. How social media fits into the larger mix of strategies and tactics that make up a typical integrated campaign is still a mystery. And that's a shame. Because the truth is that far from being the polar opposites the gurus want us to think they are, social media and integrated marketing have a lot in common and can not only complement one another, together they can significantly increase the power and effectiveness of any campaign.
The Similarities between Social Media and Integrated Marketing
Integrated marketing starts with finding the core idea, word, or concept that your institution can own in the marketplace. Typically, this is expressed through a brand promise and attributes that provide foundational language for messaging and creative expression. The most important criterion for the promise is believability—is this something you can genuinely own? That simple criterion holds true for every subsequent expression of the promise, from taglines to elevator speeches. Thus, on one important level, the foundation of your integrated marketing campaign rests on a kind of authenticity—your brand promise has to speak truth to fire for it to resonate with your key constituencies.
On social media platforms like Facebook, authenticity is highly favored. Social media communities are built around a core interest (idea, passion). That core interest is expressed through content generated about it by community members. The UC Berkeley "Great Minds Online" alumni social network is a good example. That content increases in value by its authenticity. Authenticity in social media can be defined as having credibility, the same kind of credibility by which a brand promise is measured. Is what you’re saying about your institution on your Facebook page believable? Exaggerated, unverifiable claims and slick marketing language are met with silence on social platforms—the same kind of silence these approaches encounter out in the physical world of billboards, banners, and ads (substitute "silence" for "no-response"). Testing your brand promise on a discussion on your Facebook or LinkedIn page could be a way to assess its authenticity. If a social network is built on conversation and sharing content, what kinds of conversations would the essence of your brand promise inspire? How do people go beyond the brand promise and experience it on your social networks?
Once you find your brand promise, integrated marketing means communicating it in a programmatic and coordinated way across numerous channels. The goal of any well-planned integrated campaign is to send that message across multiple channels to reach audiences at many touch points—this coordinated approach builds reach and frequency. Social media is about sharing content. This content reaches audiences at a variety of social touch points due to the variety of platforms people have gathered on—sharing extends brand reach in a way similar to integrated marketing while offering unlimited distribution (and quite possibly greater reach).
Integrated marketing is about presenting a unified image. Typically this means bringing the message and graphic look together in a singular and memorable way. Over the years, however, this image has become more multi-dimensional: where once a series of print magazines and billboards could easily convey a uniform look, today’s multi-channel marketing uses tools that have different impacts on audiences:
- Print advertising increases awareness
- Direct marketing drives action and response
- Digital channels funnel engagement
In this environment, a brand image becomes more complex. While maintaining a certain kind of visual integrity on the one hand, it must also adapt to the channel, which changes it.
The Dialogue
Given this environment, is integrated marketing really the one-way conversation social media gurus claim it is? The fact is that integrated marketing has been morphing into a dialogue with or without social media. Multi-channel marketing campaigns offer several kinds of conversations, from the one-way monologues of print ads to dialogues happening in your call centers—thanks to that push from your billboards or brochures.
Finally, integrated marketing has increasingly become about conveying an experience that is consistent with the brand—if you tell students you care about them, everyone on campus better demonstrate that care on campus visits. To do this requires internal buy-in and participation or getting your community actively engaged. Buy-in requires relationship building and nurturing. Social media is about participation and building engaged communities and could, in fact, help you earn that buy-in through an internal social network focused on just such a goal. And what better place to demonstrate how much you care about students than by simply answering their questions posted on your institutional Facebook page?
It's not true that marketing language and imagery is verboten on social platforms—seen the famous Stanford Facebook page lately? Some institutions are experimenting with theme-based social platforms announced through taglines and seeing success—check out the Uncommon Thinkers Facebook page for FIU's Chapman Graduate School of Business.
The truth is we need both approaches, especially in an increasingly fragmented and increasingly faster marketplace.
Next issue: I'll focus on how to bring social media and integrated marketing together from a tactical standpoint.
Don't miss Fritz and other Social Media gurus at Stamats Integrated Marketing: Technology Conference this October in Las Vegas.
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