ON STRATEGY: THE ELEVATOR SPEECH

In the 7th grade, an art teacher told me that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Well, she was wrong, and she was especially wrong when it comes to your brand. By now all my readers know that I am a great proponent of a brand portfolio that includes five elements:

• A valued brand promise
• A brand rationale
• Brand attributes
• A tag (not always essential but helpful when well-founded on strategy)
• A graphic identity system

Implied, but not necessarily overtly stated, in the elevator speech. The elevator speech is a series of paragraphs that consistently tell your story. The purpose of the speech is to turn those chance encounters (like bumping into someone in an elevator) into a powerful chance to help spread the word about your brand. It is not hard to imagine the power that an elevator speech, repeated eight or 10 times a day by administrators and staff (and perhaps, too, even faculty) can have on advancing your institution.

Recently, while visiting Centre College in Danville, KY (one of my favorite clients in one of my favorite states), I ran across a small display on a table in Old Centre arranged by Mike Norris and his colleagues. One element of the display outlined the importance of an elevator speech. The second element was Centre's elevator speech.

Their "what's an elevator" speech is presented below.

What's an Elevator Speech?

Members of the Centre community are sometimes asked, "What's the College like?" Here are 10 paragraphs that describe Centre succinctly. (It's called an elevator speech because you're supposed to be able to deliver it in the time it takes an elevator to go from the top floor to the ground floor—okay, in this case it's a tall building with a slow elevator, but it does fit on one page.) The speech provides ready responses when someone says, "Tell me about Centre."

To read their elevator speech, go to www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech.

LOOKING FOR A GREAT WAY TO RECOGNIZE DONORS

Bricks are nice. But if you want to do something really spectacular to recognize donors, take a look at Karen Singer Tileworks. While at an Association of Fundraising Professionals meeting in Seattle, I had a chance to take a look at their work and it is simply stunning (see sample, below from the College Misericordia - Dallas, PA)

Tileworks specializes in creating custom ceramic artwork that resonates with meaning for an organization and their donors.

Says one of their reps, "From concept through installation, we collaborate closely with a client to define their needs, research and develop themes, and design and fabricate the system components within a budget. They believe that their work will:

• Spotlight an institution's identity and mission
• Complement and coordinate with the interior design and architecture
• Recognize and thank donors in a prominent and tasteful way

They can be reached at www.karensinger.com of (215) 849-7010 in Philadelphia.

HOW STRONG IS YOUR WEB SITE?
Scott Hall, Interactive Media Director

I am working my way through a list of about 3,500 higher education Web sites, looking at them and ranking the best. The work is for my own knowledge, as I look for new and interesting ideas and distill my ideas about what makes a strong site.

So far I've made it through almost 2,000 sites. My evaluations have led me to conclude that there are three key elements for a higher education Web site: architecture, graphics, and writing.

These three elements are like the legs of a stool: all must be strong. Just as you want a stool to support your weight, you want the Web site to support the responsibility it bears. A well organized site with good graphics will fail if the writing does not carry the message. Likewise, great writing won't help if a visitor can't find the content they desire.

Let me summarize the most important elements of these three areas. These are the things I see the best sites doing well.

Architecture
I'll define architecture here as both the organization of site content and the site's user interface. The best sites are:

• Organized for visitors, not based on the college organization chart
• Full of interesting content, but still well organized and not cluttered
• Focused on limited audiences, putting public content on one site and internal messages on another
• Logically organized, making it easy to locate the content and to recognize where you are in the site
• Built with a consistent, easy-to-use navigation system (including global navigation, tools and navigation styles that stay constant through the whole site)

Graphics
Good sites grab attention in the first few seconds. Many visitors will reach your site from a search engine or a site like Princeton Review. You only have a few seconds to keep them on the site, using:

• Good layout
• Appropriate use of dynamic/active content
• Integration with main brand & print materials
• Consistent layout and look through the whole site
• Strong images, including interior pages (Remember that a visitor from a search engine can arrive at any page on your site. You need to make the interior pages compelling, too.)

Writing/Content
Engaging writing is essential. I see many schools that use their Web sites like an elaborate bulletin, full of boring details and lacking really engaging information about the campus culture and benefits. Good Web content offers:

• Easy-to-read writing using short sentences, short paragraphs, and short articles
• Engaging topics, like student journals that show campus life from a first-person point of view
• Prospective-student content, focused on features, benefits, and outcomes
• Alumni and the community information, offering reasons to engage and activities to join
• Freshness, with recent copy about engaging activities
• Search engine optimization, using keyword phrases that target your most important topic areas

Many sites do a good job with one of these elements, and some do well with two of the three; there are few sites doing a good job on all three elements.

Take a look at your site and evaluate it from a visitor's point of view. How do you rank when you look at all three areas? What is the weakest "leg" of your Web site? Then, visit the sites of 10 competitors. How are they doing? Where do you need to catch up?

This evaluation should help you see where you need to target your next Web development work, making your site a well-balanced reflection of your school's strengths.

If you have any questions, please contact me at scott.hall@stamats.com.

THE COLLEGE BOARD TRENDS IN COLLEGE PRICING

For one of the most comprehensive overviews and analysis of college costs, take a look at the recently-released study by The College Board. Downloadable as a PDF, it offers a thorough and thoughtful review of everything you need to be brought up-to-speed on all things tuition including trends and comparisons between publics and privates. It is available at www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/cost03/cb_trends_pricing_2003.pdf.

BY THE NUMBERS

While looking at some recent trend data on the majors of most interest to students and employment, I ran across a small graphic (see below) that indicates the number of jobs offered to recent graduates has, not surprisingly, fallen from a high of 2.8 in '91 to just over 1.3 in '03. Of course, this does take into account the quality of those jobs or the mean starting salary.