Insights
The future of “higher education”
I have a friend who was a god amongst college presidents. We had lunch a while back. As all good educators do, he makes me think. And what I think is; his profession is in for a wake up call.
He told me that the job market in this country is shrinking for traditional college grads and growing for technically trained grads. Having a 4 year psychology degree isn’t as valuable as having a 2 year nursing degree. Knowing how to fix a computer is more valuable than knowing how one works. As we shift to a service/information economy, there is less need for thinkers and a bigger need for doers.
This is a bit of a simplification, but, an important thing to think about as I take you to the next idea. Going to college won’t be necessary real soon.
In an on-demand world, why bother having to be at school for Calculus at 9am? Why not just pull up the lecture- the assignment- post your questions, and network in a forum online? The next generation of college students understands meeting online- they’ve been IM’ing since they were old enough to type, and playing X-Box live with people from all over the world without having to be in a bricks and mortar environment.
The idea of a structured “education” setting for adults is going to have to make a much more appealing argument for attending college to get a degree, it’s got to be about the experience, the community and the brand more than it is about the education by itself.
So what will the college campus of the future look like? More like Disneyland than educators want to think. The only things that colleges will have to differentiate their programming is the experience of college, since the “education” component will be readily and reasonably priced via the Internet.
Textbook publishers should also be prepared for the death of print, replaced by totally interactive texts that will restrict progress by comprehension of material. In fact, the whole role of educators will be much more as tour guides through the maze of knowledge than as fillers of empty vessels.
So what will be big in the campus of the future: Sports will play an even more important role in the branding and building of the college community. Bringing people together will be the key to keeping the schools running. Expect the “super brands” of top Division 1 schools to erode the ability of lesser schools to survive in a more sophisticated market.
Another key to success at running a bricks and mortar institution will be the ability to integrate study with work. Without government subsidies, huge endowments, or profitable sports programs, the average student won’t be able to rationalize the costs of a four year program when a two year program can guarantee a job.
Environments will also be critical. Educators have been talking about the classroom of the future for my entire life. Well the future is here and the mistake might have been the emphasis on the classroom. Socrates should have proved that you can teach on a set of steps, classrooms have lost their usefulness. Networked laptops, big pipes and video cams change the dynamics of group interaction. The key to colleges is to provide places where students feel special, smarter, hipper or more sophisticated, much the same way as you can go to a bar, or a nightclub, and get totally different environments. Look for buildings from the minds of architects like FrankGehry to be the standard of the future (see the Peter B. Lewis School of Business at Case Western Reserve University or his new building at MIT).
College marketing will have to change too. It’s not about coming to our school and getting a degree and getting a job, it’s about becoming a member of a club for life. The Ivy league has got this idea down for years, but will they be able to compete if they don’t change, we will see.
What do you think?
What can you learn from the greatest radio station ever?
I grew up in Cleveland in the seventies. I was spoiled. I got to experience the greatest radio station ever at its zenith. The station was WMMS 100.7 (when I started listening it was WMMS 101- but someone complained that only 100.9 and 101.1 could call themselves 101 and they changed the tagline). I was clueless at how much they got right then, but now it is so evident. To this day I can tell you the names of the jocks, their shifts and what made them special.
Mornings: Jeff and Flash. Always upbeat, always wry. Never too serious, except the day John Lennon was shot.
Lunch: Matt the Cat. The hipster, with the edge on.
Afternoon drive: Kid Leo – the voice of knowledge- this guy knew everyone in rock.
Evenings: Denny Sanders- Yeah, hang out with your bud, and enjoy the evening.
Night: Betty Korvan
Overnight: The B.L.F bash. John Gorman- the programmer back then told me that “B.L.F.” stood for William (Bill) Lionel Freeman, his real name- and that “Bash” was the name of the show- but most people thought his name was BLF Bash- so he never bothered to correct it.
Weekends- Len “boom-boom Goldberg- Mr. Laid back. His voice was so low that it worked like a massager on your scalp to help with the coming hang over.
I could tell time by hearing the DJ’s voice, at least a 4-hour window. My day progressed by the passing of time with an ever-present friend. By being a WMMS listener, I was part of something bigger than me.
The station had a following that was seemingly everywhere- the “buzzard” logo appeared on cars everywhere. People would cut the bumper stickers up and customize them. I’m pretty sure someone had it tattooed on their body; it was a super brand- before there were superbrands.
‘MMS listeners were like one huge family. The DJ’s were their friends; they talked about music, life, concerts and how music made them feel. When rock stars came into the studio, there was mutual respect. And it all worked. It was rock and roll. If there ever was such a thing as a play list, or some kind of programming, you never felt it- it seemed like the jocks spun what felt right that day.
It was so different than what passes for radio today, no wonder they talk about the iPod economy.
So what can any business learn from WMMS?
You are as strong as the community you build with your customers.
Do people want to associate themselves with your customers? Do they want to be friends with other customers? Do they know they have something in common by being your customers?
Now, with markets becoming more and more fragmented/segmented, you can’t count on existing groups to automatically be your customers, you need to build your own community. Find out what you can share with them that makes their life more meaningful, and then feed them ties to bind themselves to the others.
The web is an amazing tool for this, but so are events for your customers. Hold owners group meetings for anything from motorcycles to sewing machines. Make sure your customers can wear your brand- give or sell t-shirts that proclaim their allegiance. Let them know that you have their best interests at heart, by tipping them off first to the best deals, or the coolest things they can’t live without- even if you don’t sell them.
I used radio as an example, but it extends out to other media as well; The MTV generation, readers of Wired, or the New York Times.
I don’t have much hope of radio finding it’s way back to the old days, but I do have hope for new marketers, from independent restaurants to shoe stores. They are figuring it out, and we will find new communities to belong to.
What do you think?
The Next Wave wins 3 ADDY awards
I’d be remiss to inform you if I left this out- last night at the Dayton Ad Club Hermes awards, we won 2 bronzes and a silver. Very disappointing. Overall, there were fewer entries, and less people at the show. Noticeably absent this year were Graphica and Wilson Advertising and Design. Considering Wilson got caught last year submitting work that wasn’t placed by the client- and had to return their Golds, I can understand why they didn’t show up this year; but Graphica almost always enters some amazing work for Crown Equipment and I was sad not to see it.
Our winners were Silver for the BioFoundation letterhead and cards, and bronzes for Early Express variable data direct mail, and the Second Street Market posters.
Some of our work that didn’t get in was better than what won. One piece I should have entered in a different category, and I plumb forgot about another that I should have entered. Judges can be so fickle.
Not to worry, we’ve already started on next years award winning work.
Agents of change
Quick, who’s your agent? Don’t have one? Not an actor or a pro sports jock? Don’t worry, we don’t call them that yet, and it may not be the term du jour, but it’s one that will be critical in the next ten years.
An agent is going to filter content for you, and hopefully just you. Current examples are when you shop at Amazon and you get all those suggestions- “people who bought “Potato chip collecting for dummies” also bought… or when my TiVo selects shows I may like based on what I watch. Mass marketers feared the 500 channel universe because audiences would fragment making it increasingly to introduce new products like the square potato chip, while niche marketers were celebrating the advent of the potato chip network, which featured chips, chips and more chips, 24 hours a day.
If there is one problem that hasn’t been solved yet for the coming TV over IP, it’s how to let audiences know what shows are worth buying and what isn’t. The great thing is, we will no longer have to have an assigned date and time to watch the first episode of “The Potato Chip masters,” it will be available on demand, any time we want, for as long as we want.
Agents will make all the difference. Radio used to be the primary agent for the music industry, you’d hear a song, like it, and go buy it. The second level agents were your friends, the guy at the record store and music magazines. Now, with idiots like Clear Channel homogenizing radio nationwide, local record stores a dying industry, you are left with friends. These days communities of like minded connoisseurs are getting together on the web and invariably, a few people become the influencer of the group- these are the new “agents” of influence, and over the next 10 years they will become more and more important to anyone selling anything.
You will need a network of agents and communities for them to infiltrate. You will also need agents to steer you to the communities, but these already exist, to an extent in search engines. If you search, and the community is solid, it should show up in the first 10 screens of your search. Communities are still learning their way to build themselves. We have yahoo groups to join, and there are peer networks like myspace, tribe and friendster, and specialty sites that focus on topics like Slashdot that bring people interested in the same thing together, over time, these will become your filters for your personal information system, through RSS feeds and AI agents that sort and aggregate content based on your interests- think of it as askjeeves meets a real butler/friend/teacher type.
If there is one-reason newspapers are having such a hard time keeping subscribers it’s because they never really understood their role as agents for a local community. They were supposed to be the one stop agent for their community first, regional second and national and global third. It was up to them to make the regional up to global relevant to their local community, and to be the leader in pollinating the local leaders.
This brings up something; all agents have ranks. Sort of like the military, only different. It’s not the number of people that you influence and direct that is most important, it’s the number of other agents. The agent system is viral in nature, and the number of nodes of influence you reach are critical to the rank you will achieve.
Explaining viral marketing is a subject for another entry. But for now, take a look around and think- who ARE your agents, and what are they doing for you?
I’d love to hear what you think.