How to Win a CASE Gold
People often ask me, “Mark, how do I win a CASE Gold medal?” And I say, “Hoss, (I address everyone as ‘Hoss,’ including my mother) here’s whatcha gotta do . . ” And then I wake up.
Back in my waking life, two mStoner-designed sites were honored last week. A site we did for the George School won a CASE Gold Medal, and a site we did for the College of William & Mary was one of three nominees for best overall web site on EduStyle.net. We are very pleased for both clients and defer much of the credit to them as these were very collaborative-and very rewarding-projects.
They were also very different projects. George School is a small Quaker boarding school. William & Mary is a public university with the nation’s second oldest college at its core. And the nature of those places required very different sites, and, to a certain extent, different processes. But both projects shared certain attributes that helped make them successful. Those attributes add up to something of a formula for giving any marketing or communications project a school undertake with consultant the best chance of being extra special.
Do lots of intake, most of it with students and faculty. Obviously we need to know the president or headmaster’s vision for the the school. And we’ll need to talk to the Admissions, Development and Alumni Relations staffs to get sense of the school’s competitive situation and how it is currently perceived by its various audiences. But if we’re going to make a website or a suite of enrollment pubs that represents the school in an accurate and compelling way, we have to talk to the students who choose to go there and the faculty who choose to teach them. We need to know what they like about the place and how it fits their own sense of themselves. We have to absorb as much of their enthusiasm for the place as possible. Put another way, our job is to drink the Kool-Ade. The client’s job is to serve it to us. (And just to belabor the point, Kool-Ade is made from students and faculty who love the school and are enthusiastic about its mission.)
Test thoroughly. Use the results thoughtfully. One of the things mStoner does with its intake is develop a message platform—basically a short list of things a website or viewbook should be saying to anyone who reads it. Then we give that message platform and a creative brief full of insights about a school’s students and competitive situation to teams of writers and designers and ask them to develop two or three (sometimes four) very different-yet-audience-appropriate ways of expressing that message platform. Then we test those ideas with current and prospective students to see which ideas convey our key messages most compellingly. We always do an online survey. George School, like many of our clients, chose to supplement the surveys with on-campus focus groups, which are great because in addition to letting us probe for more detailed feedback, it gives us a chance to see body language and other kinds of response that surveys don’t capture. Getting a chance to see kids ooh and ah over the winning concept made George School much more comfortable moving forward with a challenging concept. After much consultation, Ball State, which won the EduStyle “Best Overall Site” award a year ago, deliberately chose a design the came in a close second in testing because they felt it better reflected the school they wanted to become. William & Mary was faced with a similar choice and decided to go with the winner.
Trust your institution. This is probably the toughest one, particularly now when prospective students and their families are particularly price sensitive and feel obliged to go where they’re getting the best deal. But to get a student to apply in the first place, they have to want to go to your school. And that means you need to be as appealing as possible to the students who are the best fit. Both George School and WIlliam & Mary knew they weren’t for everybody. George School wanted to highlight their International Baccalaureate program. William & Mary wanted to remind people that their sometimes-overly-studious student body knew how to have a good time (guerilla a capella, anyone?) But both schools were otherwise comfortable in their own skins and willing to let go of those prospects who were not likely to be a good fit anyway. And it’s much easier to come up with an engaging, meaningful creative idea when you’re trying to say one clear thing to a particular audience than trying to be everything to everyone.
Trust your consultant. Okay, this one is as much on us as on you. We-or whoever your communications consultant might behave to earn your trust. With George School and William & Mary we did our bestas we always try to-to make the process as collaborative as possible and to listen to the client’s needs and the reasons behind changes when they requested changes. In return, they listened to us when we occasionally pushed back on changes. In addition to making us all feel good about the process, that respectful back and forth made the designs better.
So there you have it, Hoss—a four-stop process to getting a website or a viewbook that says something authentic and compelling about your school. We can’t guarantee that it will win you an award, but we feel reasonably confident that it will win you enthusiastic students who fit your institution.
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