Tap into the activist energy of Generation We

A lot has been said about Millennials’ sense of entitlement and overconfidence. Yet many of them are ready to take responsibility for the problems they’ll inherit but didn’t cause.

A new video on Gen-We.org takes this to a new level. Steely-eyed Millennials, half of whom are either soldiers or in the middle of a kung-fu workout, talk seriously about their “damaged future.”

“We must vote in unprecedented numbers,” they admonish the viewer, and even if you think they’re naive you have to give them credit for their earnestness and concern.

Trophy kids they are not, and these are probably the driven, globally aware, farsighted Millennials you’d like to recruit for your institution. How can you do it?

On a practical level, Gen We has a FaceBook group that boasts over 1,300 members even though it’s been in existence for less than a month.  As a broader strategy, emphasize your institution’s future orientation. Show them how your institution will prepare them for the role of world problem-solvers.

Millennials respond: What makes us bad, is good

In my last post I talked about a new book — Ron Alsop’s “The Trophy Kids Grow Up” — that paints Millennials in less than flattering light. Well, the millennials have responded.

The full text in this article is worth a read, but here are a few gems I enjoyed:

“I take offense at Ron Alsop’s patronizing profile of the millennial generation in “The ‘Trophy Kids’ Go to Work” (Personal Journal, Oct. 21). The so-called “negative” traits he describes are the very traits that will help millennials succeed.”

…

“We embody these traits not because we believe we are better than others but because of lessons learned from our times and because of the failures of the baby boomers and Generation X.”

…

“We also understand the impact work has on family life. When we want flexible work schedules and vacation, it’s because we are unwilling to make the same mistakes as our boomer parents. Our mothers sought professional fulfillment, and we became latch-key kids. Many of our parents got divorced.”

One reader might say these millennial quotes show confidence, while others might see youthful naivete.

Either way, there is a take-away lesson for recruiting these folks: They feel entitled and righteous, so play to it.

Admissions and Financial Aid: The perfect match?

While the exact numbers vary by type of institution, forty to ninety percent of students enrolled in an institution of higher learning received some type of financial aid according to a report by the National Center for Education Statistics.

The report covers the 2003-2004 academic year, but given the current economic storm we can safely assume that most of your applicants are very interested in financial aid.  In fact, a recent post on the College Admission Blog said that the price of education is becoming an important factor in deciding which college or university to attend.

There may be an opportunity here.  You want to seek and attract the students who are the best fit for your institution. The Financial Aid office seeks to help them pay for their education. Is there a way to join forces to make your institution more attractive to the right students–and their parents?

Just by arranging for more frequent communication between the financial aid office and the strongest candidates for admission, you could show these students that your institution is committed to their academic success. This extra support might be the final factor that encourages an accepted applicant to enroll.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Millennials who are looking at the next step in their academic careers have far more contact with Admissions and Financial Aid than with any other office or department. For the Admissions office, this is obvious.

Imagine the impact you could have if your Financial Aid office worked proactively with you to represent your institution in the best possible light.

“Trophy Kids” with entitlement issues invade the workplace

In a new book by Wall Street Journal contributor Ron Alsop, the author tackles the challenges of employing “Trophy Kids” in the workplace. “Trophy Kids” are of course millennialls, those youngin’s born from 1980 to 2000.

The Journal has a great write-up of the book. My favorite quote:

Although members of other generations were considered somewhat spoiled in their youth, millennials feel an unusually strong sense of entitlement. Older adults criticize the high-maintenance rookies for demanding too much too soon. “They want to be CEO tomorrow,” is a common refrain from corporate recruiters.

More than 85% of hiring managers and human-resource executives said they feel that millennials have a stronger sense of entitlement than older workers, according to a survey by CareerBuilder.com. The generation’s greatest expectations: higher pay (74% of respondents); flexible work schedules (61%); a promotion within a year (56%); and more vacation or personal time (50%).

Clearly millennials are a group that expect a lot from their career on day one. And who can blame them? Millennails were surronded by motivation posters in school hallways every day with messages like “Believe and you will achieve” and “Everyone has special talent”.

Understanding this is vital to your marketing efforts. Make it clear in your message that an education at your university will give them an advantage in their career and will speed up achievements like raises, promotions and vacation time.

There is an even more important lesson here: ensure that your marketing message makes the millennial feel special, talented and gifted. Work with the sense of entitlement, not against it. Encourage it. Play into the way the millennial already considers themselves unique, and your message will resonate more.

Flattery, it seems, will get you everywhere. After all, you just need to get them to enroll, you don’t have to deal with them once they matriculate. That’s when student services takes over.

Game On! Advertising in unusual places

Obama ad on Xbox. Image courtesy Daniel Heaf (via Flickr). http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielheaf/2947226410/

In a recent study on Generation Y, “Why Ask Y?”, Nielsen Research find that many Millennials — especially men — are active gamers:

Game on! Xbox 360 commanded play during 28 days per month among 10-26 year olds, possibly due in part to the higher attach rate of the platform.

So I was intrigued to find (via The New York Times), that Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate to buy advertising space in a video game. Obama campaign purchased ad space on billboards that appear in 18 different games on the Xbox 360. (Flickr has a variety of images.)

What’s the lesson here? This from another New York Times blog post on how effective this type of advertising is likely to be:

Its veracity aside, the virtual billboard raises an interesting question: Are political ads in video games a good idea? In terms of eyeballs, I’d have to say yes. Roughly one-third of American households own an Xbox 360, Sony PS3 or Nintendo Wii. In terms of effectiveness, Brandweek recently detailed a survey undertaken by its fellow Nielsen Games division in which 11 percent of gamers said they bought a brand after seeing it advertised in a game.

Have you considered advertising your univeristy or program in a game like XBox 360 or Sony PS3, or in another online community, such as Second Life?

A backwards look at recruiting Millennials

Here’s a nifty trick that might shortcut your research efforts. A Google search for the term “get into college” produced 25,900,000 results. There are a lot of businesses out there designed to “coach” students and their parents on getting accepted.

The cool part is that their clients are the very same people you’re trying to reach as an admissions professional: Highly motivated, college-bound students and their parents.

If you follow their marketing techniques, you can see many of the tactics we’ve discussed in this blog and our soon-to-be-released white paper. Blogs and videos seem to play an especially dominant role in these businesses.

My personal favorite is “The Video College Dad.” But he’s not the only one out there.

Just looking at the advice some of these businesses provide is a good way to know how you’re being perceived by the people who profess to liaise between you and the students applying to your institution.

Executives speak: Top 3 techniques for marketing to millennials

eMarketer.com posted a great graphical summary of the findings of an Economist Intelligence Unit and Genesys survey asking executives about effective marketing strategies for millennials.

I know I talked about something similar last week, but the findings are too fascinating not to share. What were some of the top techniques executives felt were effective ways to market to millennials?

• Viral marketing;
• Peer review sites; and,
• Focusing on “key influences”, like parents and peers.

This is a survey of for-profit executives, but the techniques are just as helpful for marketing your program. Compelling communication to a millennial is all about your advertising vector. Approach the millennial in traditional methods, and your message will be lost among a deluge of traditional advertising.

Instead, use an advertising vector to deliver you message to the millennial on their terms (Facebook, LinkedIn, community sites for college bound students, community sites for parents of college bound kids) and your message is more likely to resonate.

The next time you assume a marketing technique won’t work, try it anyway. You’ll be surprised at the results.

Should you be using Facebook to recruit millennials?

Image from Kennesaw State University Admissions photos on Facebook

Using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace can be a double-edged sword, with some millennials telling Admissions officers to “Get Out of MySpace!“.

Now BusinessWeek presents the other side of the story in an outstanding article, “The Admissions Office Finds Facebook“, on how some savvy admissions professionals are reaching out to top students using Facebook. From the article:

[Scott] Minto [director of the admissions office at San Diego State University's Sports Management Program] is part of a small but growing number of graduate school and college admissions officers who are aggressively using Facebook to recruit students for their programs… By drawing students to Facebook, schools hope to keep in constant touch with potential students, as well as provide them with important updates on the school, without bombarding them with dozens of e-mails and mass mailings.

According to Business Week’s research, there are about 60 schools that have developed official admissions recruiting groups or fan pages on Facebook. Here are links to several from the BusinessWeek article, as well as a few I discovered in our research for our forthcoming whitepaper on using technology to market to millennials.

University of Arkansas Admissions (525 fans)

UC Davis Undergraduate Admissions (1,137 members)

Rotman MBA Admissions (393 members)

Southern Nazarene University Admissions (309 fans)

Kennesaw University Admissions (509 fans)

Do you know of others? Post them here.

University attendance is going up–are we keeping up?

The Economist recently reported that university attendance is increasing all over the globe. The article mentions that America spends the most per student, although it’s not clear whether it’s the government or the students and families who do the spending.

What’s really telling, however, is the comments section after the report. Many of the readers who weighed in challenge both the quality of education and the high cost.

What’s clear is that the Millennials are on track to become the most educated generation ever, and they and their families are making greater sacrifices for that education.

What’s in doubt is whether or not most people still have faith in the value of that education. Many institutions are already associated with specific professions and fields. All they have to do is continue to deliver programs of the same high caliber.

The challenge for the rest of us is to keep alive the promise of a profound, life-transforming experience with deep relationships that will last far beyond graduation.

The three Cs of attracting Millennials

A new survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit finds that companies need to use more web 2.0 tools to attract millennial customers. Web 2.0 tools are next generation web experiences like blogs, pod casts and social networking sites. Think social web experiences.

SDA Asia has a nice write-up:

A new global survey shows that whilst most companies have a sophisticated understanding of what it would take to adapt to Enterprise 2.0 tools, they are not ready to change their customer engagement model by leveraging social networking, peer marketing, better onlinesupport, text messaging and blogging, costing them a great deal as they are not able to serve a new wave of consumers from the Millennial Generation.

What does this have to do with recruit millennails to your campus? Everything!

A millennial selects a college using the same tools they might purchase a cell phone: they research itonline, talk to their social network (online and off) and make a buying decision based on the facts on the ground.

It doesn’t matter if you consider your college an instituion of education that will naturaly attract those seeking knowledge. That isn’t the case for 90%+ of your students. Rather, you are selling a brand to a potential customer (the student, the millennial).

So how do you change your marketing strategy?

Easy. The SDA article does a great job of getting to the core of the solution, the three 3 Cs to attractingmillennials: “convenience, customization, and community.” Make a list of every individual activity you and your team does, from open houses to emails, for recruitment. For each item, ask yourself, does this offer convenience, customization, or community?

If the answer is no, can you change the activity to align it with one of these categories? If you can’t,should you still do it?