Like Attracts Like

I’m in South Africa visiting one of my dearest friends. He is just one of the “good guys”. I’ve seen him leap from his airplane seat to take the arm of elderly passenger and help her navigate herself to the lavatory and I’ve seen him bound across the street to open a door for someone whose arms were full of packages, bags, and dry cleaning. He’s that person who maintains a meticulous list of everyone’s birthday and phones them with best wishes. His gmail and Skype contact lists are bigger than my inquiry pool! He befriends everyone he meets.

So it should come as no surprise that when I met some of his friends at a dinner tonight, they seemed likewise. Like attracts like, right? And this got me to thinking about the power of branding and how its power should be equally strong at attracting the right students and dissuading the “wrong” ones. If our messages are authentic and clear, then the right students will be engaged while the wrong ones will further their search elsewhere. And that’s okay. In the end, we want appropriate applicants, not all applicants, right?

(Or do we? On a related, interesting note, check out this New York Times article on the explosion of college applications sent to me by Kristin Dabney, whose daughters attend James River Day School in Virginia.)

I was recently looking at the new website for Shimer College, the Great Books college in Chicago and noted I could enjoy their viewbook online (someday a whole other blog post on whether or not sharing your viewbook online is a good idea—I’m not convinced). Upon first inspection, one thinks this book is the antithesis of what the marketing people have been telling us what to do with our print materials. There’s way too much text, not enough or big enough pictures, and too much reading to trudge through. Who is going to bother??

Students who are excited about going to a Great Books institution. That’s who. If you’re not interested in reading the viewbook for Shimer, than you’re surely not interested in the curriculum for Shimer, or any other Great Books college. I’m not sure if this was done on purpose or not, but posting their viewbook online may be the first step in Shimer’s inquiry qualification process.

If so, bravo Shimer!