Good Thinking

Choosing a Marketing Firm: Choose Partners, Not Vendors

By Tim Good

Hiring a marketing firm is like hiring a contractor to renovate a home. Some contractors operate as vendors, approaching the job as a set of discrete tasks. Vendors are available to discuss unexpected items—but the meter is always running, with each new issue treated a la carte. Other builders operate like partners, offering the hands to get the job done and thinking collaboratively and proactively with clients about how the completed home will serve their goals. When challenges or new ideas arise, true partners consider the whole and apply their expertise to suggest solutions that fit within the client’s budget.

Clients get the most value for their money when they hire partners, rather than vendors. Clients hire firms like ours because they seek the...

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By: Tim Good
Tags: Admissions, Advertising, Annual Fund, Annual Report, Augmented Reality, Apps, Brand Curation, Brand Management, Brochure, Business, Marketing, Branding, Capital Campaign, Catalogs, Communications, Graphic standards, Magazines, Non Profit, Responsive web design, Search Engine Optimization, Viewbooks, Web design

Reach Your Audience: Start With the Story

By Gabrielle Good Hoffman

The element of “story” is more powerful than most people realize. Strong stories stimulate emotion, bond communities together and set individuals apart. They stick in our memories. They fundamentally affect our beliefs and the choices we make based on those beliefs. Personal experience with the power of narrative is backed by scientific evidence: the process of storytelling feeds our innate psychological desire to create meaning by connecting experiences and information.

Storytelling as an Art and Science
While storytelling has long been a part of marketing and communications, it has a new urgency in recent years. As expanding media have increased the quantity of voices in the marketplace, companies and organizations...

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By: Gabrielle Good-Hoffman
Tags: Advertising, Admissions, Annual Fund, Brand Curation, Brand Management, Branding, Business, Apps, Annual Report, Catalogs, Communications, Marketing, Messaging, Video, Viewbooks, Fund Raising

When and Why a Brand Review Benefits Independent Schools

Tradition and continuity are so pivotal to the success of independent schools that it is not always clear when an organization needs to review its reputation—or in marketing lingo, its brand. Over the years, I’ve met with numerous schools that have been taken by surprise with declining admissions and fundraising, despite still offering the same high quality education as in the past. Clarifying and maintaining a school’s identity in the marketplace has resulted in dramatic turnarounds for many institutions.

This situation occurs because independent schools balance a delicate tension. Many core principles involved with a first-rate education are timeless. Yet the economic, social and technological landscape in which schools operate is constantly changing. A relatable brand identity...

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By: Tim Good
Tags: Admissions, Advertising, Annual Fund, Branding, Business, Campaign, Capital Campaign, Catalogs, Centennial, Communications, Development, Fund Raising, Identity, Independent Education, School, Viewbooks, Graphic standards, Brand Management, Brand Curation

Telling Your Story—Digital or Print?

We all love a good story. What’s the best way to tell it? Clients often ask us whether to invest precious marketing budgets in digital OR in print advertising. With the constant buzz about new technologies, people wonder if print media have become obsolete. Yet they also are not confident that electronic media truly motivates their specific audiences. This is a classic modern dichotomy: Can print really be passé if digital media are not serving all needs?

Soothsayers began predicting the demise of print media when radio was invented. Certainly, radio, TV and the internet have each led to dramatic changes for print: A study by the Pew Research Center, for example, found that 30-50 percent of every demographic except seniors uses mobile devices to follow news. Another study by...

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By: Gabrielle Good-Hoffman
Tags: Admissions, Advertising, AR, Augmented Reality, Branding, Communications, College, Corporate, Business, Brand Management, Brand Curation

Apropos

Mobile device apps are quickly becoming a preferred path for accessing content. Users appreciate the instantaneous and immersive qualities of these interfaces, which deliver an unparalleled interactive experience.

Flurry Analytics, one of the leading sources of data on app usage, reports that the number of consumer app downloads has grown on average to 20 apps per person. At 2 hours and 39 minutes per day, mobile is second only to TV in terms of time spent. Consumers spend 86% of their mobile time in apps.

In addition to increases in downloads, statistics show that apps facilitate longer interactions. Tablet users, for example, spend an average of 24 minutes in an app session, while smart-phone users spend an average of 13 minutes. These sessions are up to 4 times...

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By: Tim Good
Tags: Admissions, Apps, Brochure, College, Communications, Corporation, Design, Development, Fund Raising, Independent Education, Mobile, Publications, School, University, Viewbooks, Business, Branding, Brand Curation
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