Higher Ed News & Whatnot 7/2/2024

Probably the Best Ad Ever

On my colleague Bob's ride to work each morning, he passes what is probably the best ad ever written. It’s on a small, 24” by 18” corrugated plastic sign stuck in the dirt at the side of the road.

It says, simply, Stump Grinding.

There is much about this sign to like. The font is large and the dark letters against the white background make it easy to read. He said he could make out the words at night, in the rain, and even when we had that freak “but isn’t winter supposed to be over” snowstorm.

No weird fonts. No odd colors. No whirligigs that distract from the message.

The sign declares, simply, what these people do: They grind stumps. It then proffers the necessary contact information.

That’s it.

The sign doesn’t say “Stump Grinding…and More.” It doesn’t tell anyone who is doing the stump grinding. We could learn nothing about the trucks they drive or the equipment they use or when the company was founded. We don’t even know the company’s name.

The singular focus of the sign was compelling.

Last fall my colleague cut down a tree and needed to have a stump removed.

Bob called the number on the phone. A woman answered. “Stump grinding,” she said. The directness of her greeting was intoxicating, he noted.

He hired them to remove his stump. A week later, a guy showed up along with a Ford 350 with a Vermeer? stump grinder on an aluminum trailer.

It took him exactly 27 minutes and cost Bob $190.

The stump grinder's name was Floyd. After the stump was out, he even asked if Bob needed help putting in a new tree.

“But I thought you only did stumps,” Bob said.

“Well,” he replied. “We actually do a few other things, but we like to keep the signs simple. People lose track of the big picture when you tell them too much.”

My keen colleague wanted to take Floyd to lunch. Unsurprisingly, he wanted to ask him if he read Ogilvy or Hopkins or Lindstrom. He also wanted to know what blogs he read, what podcasts he listened to, and what conferences he attended.

But somehow, looking at Floyd, Bob figured he didn’t bother with all that stuff. He was a natural. He knew his business, he knew people, and he knew how to connect the two.

Bob didn’t take Floyd to lunch that day. Instead, after he was done with me, he watched him pull into his neighbor’s driveway. Bob told his neighbor AJ that he was having a stump removed and he didn’t want to miss out on the action. Turns out AJ had a stump he needed removed, too.

Insight: Though Bob originally shared his story in a blog several years ago, the twin truths have not changed. First, keep your marketing simple. And second, focus on the benefits. Students and donors and others don’t care when you were founded. Most don’t care who the president is. They want a clear answer to a simple question: What’s in it for me?

Oh, I guess there’s one other lesson as well. Don’t tell the whole story upfront. Once your audience is engaged, you can tell them you plant trees.

What Frustrates Students Most About Higher Ed Websites

The?2023 E-expectations Trends Report: Attracting, Engaging, and Enrolling High School Students?explores how students view the college websites they use as part of the search process. The five biggest concerns mentioned by students are presented below:

A report that details the research and another report on the elements of a purpose-built admission website are downloadable. Links to those items can be found in the article above.

Opinion: When we read the entire report and looked at some sample college websites we noticed that the issue is not so much that the sites don’t feature the content students expect, but that the content is difficult to find or access. In other words, what appears to frustrate students the most is a lack of intuitive navigation. A larger concern is that this problem is exacerbated for students who are not as web-savvy or who live on the far side of the digital divide. Colleges that serve disadvantaged students must be especially diligent in making their sites approachable.

10 Amazing College Success Stories of Students Who Overcame Obstacles

If you occasionally doubt whether what you do matters, we encourage you to take a look at an article by Chaunie Brusie in Universities.com in which she highlights 10 people who earned a degree against seemingly unsurmountable odds.

There is the story of Ieshia Champs, a single mother of five who grew up in foster care and graduated with honors from law school.

And then there Dawn Loggins. She once cleaned bathrooms as a janitor at her high school and is now an Ivy League school graduate.

And we have Alfonso Gonzales, a 96-year-old WWII vet and USC’s oldest graduate.

And Aduei Riak: A “Lost Girl of Sudan” war orphan who graduated from Brandeis and the London School of Economics.

One of the best things about higher ed is that our colleges are full of stories like these; stories of young and sometimes not-so-young people who remind us of the importance of what we do.

In an upcoming post, I plan to share details about a gentleman I've personally had the pleasure of working with who overcame some impressive odds to graduate from college. He is now planning on graduate school, which is so inspiring to me. I think it will be for you, too.

Other Links Worth Noting

• While Moody’s is undergoing a bit of rebranding, they still produce their Outlook series that touch on a number of sectors including higher ed. In recent reports, for example, we read that while college closings are rare, closings will accelerate in the near-term. We also know that higher ed, as an industry, has been upgraded from risky to stable. Most of their content is free after you go through a fairly simply subscription process.
• If you want more information on what goes into an effective website and are interested in more than admissions, you might want to take a look at an interesting article on the Double the Donation website. It outlines the basics of a strong site and then goes on to offer several examples.