UNM marketing looks to Web to attract students
September 10, 2008
UNM’s marketing department unveiled new plans to advertise the University on Tuesday.
The department created a television ad, as well as online social networking pages on Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, and a photo-sharing page for UNM students at Flickr.unm.edu.
Cinnamon Blair, UNM’s marketing director, said money for the project comes from the $250,000 the University allocated for branding this fiscal year.
President David Schmidly said the project will help UNM reach out to students in new ways.
“These kids are a lot different than when I came to college,” Schmidly said. “We used to get catalogs in the mail, and that’s not how you approach students today.”
UNM’s pages on social networking sites feature links to the University’s Web site, as well as the fight song, discussion boards and other information linking visitors to UNM.
“We don’t create the content. We don’t create the message. We have given up control of that, and that’s what younger people respond to these days,” Blair said. “They don’t care to be marketed to - research has shown that. They want an authentic voice, and that’s what we are providing right here.”
Blair said the response to UNM’s social networking pages has been positive.
UNM’s Facebook page, which was created in March, has 841 students, faculty and staff connected as friends.
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Blair said this response has been quicker than that of New Mexico State University, which has had a Facebook page for two years and has 1,400 students.
The marketing department also produced a 30-second video advertisement, which will be aired during football games.
“We decided this year to be more innovative,” Blair said. “We are the first University to create an animated ad. Part of it is based on student input and feedback, so we actually engaged our students in the creation of this ad.”
In the 60-second version of the advertisement shown to the Board of Regents, an animated sheep describes how he has felt out of place all his life, until he learned about UNM. The sheep talks about finding the right spot for him when he comes to UNM. When the sheep walks around campus, he wears a Lobo costume - a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Blair said the ad will be effective because it is different from typical University ads, which show scenic shots of campus and talk about research education and health care.
“We wanted to send one single message: that you can be yourself and you can be a Lobo here at UNM,” she said. “What we tried to do with the social media is engage people and start building relationships and then sustain those relationships.”
Blair said the ad will also be aired three times an hour during the school year and summer semester in 12 Albuquerque high schools.
Doug Fields, Faculty Senate president-elect, said the ad was unimpressive.
“These all seem like they are geared towards the undergraduate crowd, but for President Schmidly’s request for higher enrollment in the graduate programs, I think we need something that is focused more toward our achievements and the University academics and the programs and the medicine and law and these other areas,” he said.
Ashley Fate, ASUNM president, said the ad will be effective.
“As a student, I love this commercial, because it is something different and it’s not the traditional panoramic landscape, because every university has that and to me that doesn’t differentiate one university from another,” she said.
Christopher Ramirez, GPSA president, said that in the past four or five months, students have sought information from him through the online social networking sites.
“Several new graduate students, who are going to be attending the University, have actually met with me via Facebook,” he said. “Then several people have asked me questions about the programs here and more information.”
Brand rollout to foster a new image at UNM
January 22, 2016
The UNM Communication and Marketing Department held an event in the SUB Ballroom on Thursday to unveil efforts by marketing agency 160over90 to rebrand UNM.
The brand concept has been introduced to the University in order to increase enrollment and create awareness about the offerings of UNM, UNM officials said.
“We have challenged ourselves to consider and reflect upon who we are, what we do and why it matters – in other words, to develop the UNM brand for the 21st century. While our logo and other brand elements are important to identify the University, the UNM brand is what differentiates us. It is consistent with our history, but is also a projection of a contemporary and engaged university,” UNM officials announced on brand.unm.edu.
Cinnamon Blair, Chief Marketing and Communication Officer for UNM, said that the event was arranged to share the brand concept with the UNM community.
“We were talking about how UNM differentiates itself,” she said
Blair said the logos, the mascots and other identifiers were not brought up in the event.
“Those are the things that are just identifiers,” she said.
She said the brand concept was initiated as a part of the University’s strategy to increase enrollment and create awareness about different programs offered by UNM as well as other aspects of life on campus.
“We found through research over the years that while people have a favorable perception of UNM in the state, they don’t necessarily know why; They can immediately recall the Lobos and UNM Hospital, but when asked 'Do you know about programs or do you know about the offerings at UNM?' it’s a bit unfocused,” she said. “So we want to sharpen that focus.”
Blair said the purpose of establishing a brand is not just to generate applications, but to create interest in the research community, generate interest in the faculty coming to UNM and generate some pride within the UNM community itself.
“We have a lot of brands here. So what we have had is a kind of fragmented message and all those messages are true but we are trying to find an umbrella identity or brand that talks about UNM, that differentiates UNM,” she said.
Blair said that many universities around the country have the same mission that UNM has, to educate as well as serve the community. UNM fulfills the latter primarily through UNM Hospitals, one of Albuquerque's major medical providers.
Blair said that UNM is already doing enrollment management, runs a website within UCAM and does digital advertisements but these are not big enough to make a huge impact outside of the state. Blair said the event was also an opportunity to get feedback from the UNM community and make Lobos a part of the whole process.
“That’s why we are investing in it, because we need to have a clear and concise message before we spend more money on putting the message out there. If we can also bring other people into the conversation around the campus, we will maximize those efforts and that is actually a better investment, if we are all saying the same things in a unified voice and pooling our resources to do so,” she said.
She said the University is providing an opportunity to all the stakeholders to have some brand ownership. In fact, she said it is important for people to ask questions and provide feedback about what differentiates UNM, based on their own experiences or otherwise. Anyone who would like to do so is invited to visit brand.unm.edu to be updated on current efforts.
Ryan Berryman, who serves as student regent on the Board of Regents, said that the event was exciting because it showed how much of an opportunity UNM has to really communicate what’s great about this university.
“I think a campaign like this can make current students and alumni proud of the University. It was really exciting to see the big turnout today,” he said.
