Campus Reform: Gustavus Adolphus College

Gustavus Plans to Squander your Tuition Dollars on Paid Media Advertising

What do you do when the only earned media your college can achieve is for stinky corpse flowers, censorship of student papers, Tinfoiled offices, and abuses by leftist professors?

You spend money for paid media of course!

In a press advisory circulated to the campus, we learn that Gustavus is launching a comprehensive statewide advertising campaign for recruitment that will include newspaper, magazine, radio, outdoor/billboard, and social media outlets. 

For example, billboards proclaiming “Gustavus Adolphus College. Make Your Life Count. Gustavus.edu," will be located in the state’s top five most populous regions and ads will air on "teen-targeted radio stations."

Student reactions on Facebook to this announcement range anywhere from

"This really angers me. We don't need to start an ad campaign. Just makes our school look like a Joke. How about instead we pour this money into better academics and teachers, as Academic merit of a school speaks for itself."

to

Is it possible to laugh and vomit at once?"

 One even put it plainly that,

"[This] bad ad campaign that makes us look pretentious."

 

The release is as follows, bolded for emphasis.

Aug. 9, 2010 To: Gustavus students, faculty, and staff From: Gwen Freed, Vice President for Marketing and Communication

As will be announced publicly on Wednesday, Gustavus is launching a statewide advertising campaign for recruitment.

Targeted to reach Minnesota high school students and their parents, the fall 2010 ad campaign will include newspaper, magazine, radio, outdoor/billboard, and social media outlets in and around Minneapolis/St. Paul, Mankato/North Mankato, Rochester, St. Cloud, and Duluth/Superior.

On behalf of the Office of Marketing and Communication staff, I want to thank the many Gustavus students, faculty, and staff who chose to participate along with more than 2,000 constituents in the market research phase of this effort.

We also sincerely appreciated the collaboration and support of those who worked with us over the past year to refresh the College's web site, admission materials, graphic identity standards, and other expressions of our institutional excellence and distinction. Our goal in preparing the ads this summer was simply to extend the external reach and impact of that research, insight, and creativity.

Some places the Gustavus advertisements will be seen include the U.S. News & World Report annual college ranking guide (in the Minnesota edition of this September issue), Star Tribune of Minneapolis, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Free Press of Mankato, Duluth News-Tribune, Rochester Post Bulletin, St. Cloud Times, Metro Lutheran, and some high school newspapers in the Twin Cities.

Ads will air on teen-targeted radio stations in each of the communities previously mentioned. Some are KDWB 101.3 FM Twin Cities, Radio Mankato’s KDOG 96.7 FM, and KEEZ 99.1 FM.

Billboards proclaiming “Gustavus Adolphus College. Make Your Life Count. Gustavus.edu," will also be located in the state’s top five most populous regions.

Additionally, ads will appear in various online sites frequented by high school students who are searching for colleges. Click on the link below to see a selection of ads from the fall 2010 recruitment campaign: http://gustavus.edu/marketing/advertising/

We hope you will like the ads. As ever, we appreciate your feedback, be it good, bad, or indifferent. In the coming year, as we continue to execute and evaluate the College's identity and outreach work, we will depend on the campus community for input, collaboration, and support. Best wishes, Gwen

To express your distaste and share your feedback with the school you can contact the Office of Marketing and Communication at Marketing@gustavus.edu (VP is gfreed@gustavus.edu) or call 507-933-6355.