Integrated marketing is academic
Last week I presented to over 80 faculty and department heads at one of the Council of Independent Colleges' (CIC) Summer Workshops. The overall workshop was titled "Advancing the Department," and my portion of the workshop was focused entirely on marketing.
Twenty years ago when I started The Lawlor Group, marketing and any of its agents were marginalized. At the CIC presentation, as one faculty member responded (honestly, I might add) to my question about what word you associatewith marketing by answering, "Evil!", I thought to myself we have all come a long way. After all, although there may still be some lingering negative perceptions and genuine misunderstandings about what marketing is, we were all gathered together to talk about marketing and how we can get more students to learn more about individual academic departments and the accompanying opportunities.
The fact is, we are all really engaged in acting on the ancient Greeks' charge to "know thyself" and to then shine a light on the distinctive qualities of each individual experience.
This is particularly important when it comes to academic offerings and the student-faculty experience. As I noted in my presentation, most students come to college undecided. They aren't certain about what they want to major in or perhaps simply have multiple interests. Many students change their major, too. If the academy is in the business of helping people "know themselves" and pursue a "life of learning," then it is important that the information about the different academic areas is easy to find, accurate, relevant and inspiring. That information needs to be accessible and effectively communicated via a variety of institutional touchpoints, especially the college or university web site.
Integrating relevant content about academic departments isn't evil, it is absolutely imperative. Some people may even say it's academic.