This post was written by Marianne Amoss, Fastspot’s content strategist and resident writer.

What is the next generation of admissions marketing? And how can we integrate Web marketing and print marketing? These are questions that plague universities and colleges across the country, as they struggle with the cost and manpower required to keep materials updated and accurate—and see classes of increasingly Web-savvy students coming through their doors. When Tufts University considered these questions, they naturally turned to Neustadt Creative Marketing, which had worked with the school on undergraduate admissions for the schools of arts and sciences and engineering and on a university-wide brand strategy.

Tufts is a highly selective private university in the suburbs of Boston. NCM, a seasoned expert in providing marketing services to educational institutions, knew that Tufts would be ripe for a smart, creative approach. They launched an extensive, five-month-long market research project among prospective students and their parents to start to answer that question. Out of that research, NCM defined a series of marketing goals that altered the messaging strategy that Tufts was using, says Mark Neustadt, principal of NCM. What did they settle on? A relatively unconventional plan, says Neustadt: an “integrated program that abandoned the traditional package of print materials entirely and replaced it with a three-times-a-year magazine which coordinated with an admissions ‘microsite.’”

Once Tufts adopted the report’s recommendations, NCM brought Fastspot in on the project; the two companies collaborate frequently under the name Door No. 2. Together, the two teams worked together to design and develop the magazine, concept the stories, write the first issue, develop the Web design, architect the Website, build it, load in the content, and finally launch the joint project on 11/11/11. Fastspot also created a new virtual campus tour for Tufts, which launched at the same time.

The magazine, named Jumbo after the school mascot, is now published online and in print three times a year and mailed to students in the admissions funnel. The site and magazine are run on Fastspot’s BigTree CMS, a user-friendly content management system that allows the Tufts admissions staff to easily update admissions information and keep up with trends without assistance from their internal IT team. “Viewbooks can take over a year to develop and are very costly and difficult to update,” Neustadt says. “A three-times-a-year magazine is relatively economical to update and can be much more responsive to changes going on in admissions.”

It’s important to note that this program does not completely do away with print—or migrate everything to the Web, Neustadt says. “A lot of people think that’s what this is all about. This is not about eliminating print. But what is has done, which is incredibly exciting, is create a print program that is consistent with the pace and the energy of the Web.” Tufts now has an admissions microsite that is essentially separate from the main site; Door No. 2, which loads in the content for each issue of Jumbo (with minimal tech support), serves as “managing editor,” helping ensure that the content is consistent, professional, and on-strategy.

Since launch, the site has been enormously successful. Analytics show that the site is getting lots of traffic; the dean of admissions, Lee Coffin, often gets several dozen comments on his blog posts. “One of the successes of the design has been the integration of social media and the content,” says Neustadt. And Tufts has gotten students involved, creating a student group whose charge it is to create new content; you can see student-generated photos and content throughout the site. “Tufts has a superbly run admissions operation, and they are at a point in their evolution as an office where their staff feels energized and capable to take this on.”

There are lots of moving parts, and they all mesh together, seemingly effortlessly, from the print magazine to the Web to the social media. As Neustadt puts it, “It’s a smart approach to print.”

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I was going to write a post about the recent campaign Stamats created for Drake University, but most relevant points have already been made in the media. It’s an interesting discussion with no clear cut lines, and it brings up the question of how in touch we are with our teenage target audiences? Stamats makes the case that this demographic “gets” the sarcasm in this campaign, whereas the adult public’s reaction is based on an inability to see it as anything other than degrading (no pun intended).

What do you think? Can a D+ campaign be seen as anything other than crappy grades, thus causing brand damage? Or does the campaign present an edgy and “with-it” perspective that will get appropriate attention and consideration from the target audience (prospective college students)?

If you want to do more reading, Mark Neustadt recently posted to his blog about the campaign, and he includes links to other relevant press coverage, as well as Stamat’s defense of the campaign.

Oh and my take? I guess I’m too old, I can’t get past seeing D+ as derogatory, but I’m willing to be proven wrong.

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OK, so you’ve got all your amazing projects completed, your client list reads like a who’s who of desirable business and now it’s time to show off all your talent and hard work. Or, more realistically, you’ve got a few gems, a few that need to be in there because they show you can do certain things, and a few stinkers but for big name clients. And you also probably have some amazing looking work you did for friends, family or school, but it’s the kind of work that really shows what you got.

You may be getting a portfolio together to seek employment (I get lots of those sent to me) or you may be going out after new clients or already running an agency and redoing the website. Regardless we are usually all in the same boat. We are typically working with a mixed bag when it comes to creating a killer portfolio. So how do you do the best marketing with what you got? Here are a few suggestions.

• Push your best work to the front, and remember less is more. We strive to do that on Fastspot’s home page with our project features.
• Don’t count on thumbnails alone, many potential clients are looking for similar client “names” in your work – so include the client name along with the pretty looking thumbnail.
• Make sure you can see it larger, and live (if it’s still living).
• If you did the work at an agency, say so. Honesty shows you have integrity.
• Try to look at the portfolio page like you’ve never seen it before and pay attention to where your eye moves. Then ask yourself, did your eye move to the projects you want to emphasize?
• Don’t just show, but tell. More than pretty pictures, a portfolio should explain exactly what you did, or how you solved a client’s problem. No need to write a book, just provide some written context.
• Consider adding a client list grouped by industry w/ links to the portfolio – as another way for users to get to your work. Not everyone is a fan of this approach (and it only accounts for about 5% of our traffic vs. the portfolio link which accounts for almost 20%) but I say, give users multiple ways to explore your work.
• Edit, Edit, Edit! You will only look as good as your weakest portfolio piece.
• Keep it timely. Don’t include work from 5 years ago, it sends the message that you aren’t doing much new work, or that you still think your older work is the best.
• Make your portfolio as standards compliant, search engine optimized and user friendly as you claim to be able to deliver for clients. Your portfolio may be the first time a potential client is making judgments on your capabilities and talents. Practice what you preach in other words.
• Have a personality. I see so many sterile looking portfolios, with mechanical and boring copy. Tell a story when you talk about past projects, share the good and the bad, the successes and even a failure here and there. No need to be an egomaniac or a martyr, just keep it real.
• Make it as easy to navigate and look at as flipping through a book. After all, it’s a portfolio – its core purpose is to provide a vehicle for potential clients to look at your work and decide if they like what you do.

Here are a few links to portfolios I love browsing through. Got some of your own that you love? Is yours amazing? If so, post some links for us to check out and discuss.

Second Story – they have been impressing and inspiring me for ages. Nothing fancy, just clean, functional organization.
Hello Design – just lovely.
Big Spaceship – great features.
Things That Are Brown
Attik
Organic
Method
R/GA
HUGE

From Curt Kotula -
http://drxlr.com/projects/

From Calea Kevlin -
http://mikemcquade.com
http://www.foundationsix.com/
http://www.sofasurfer.eu/
http://thevisualclick.com/
http://duplos.org/
http://sarawhite.com/

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I was pretty darn excited when I got a scholarship offer to attend the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA), and even more excited when I made the life changing decision to actually go there versus the safer route of a liberal arts college with a strong studio arts program (my anticipated course of action). Once I decided, I was all in. I made the most of my education and of every opportunity I had, and when I graduated, I felt very strongly about the place that had fostered all that learning and growth.

It’s not hard to find me, or other grads from CIA. We are out and about on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube. We don’t have organized events like reunions or get-togethers (you know, artists hate that kind of crap), so we depend on the occasional alumni magazine or email blast from the school to know what is going on. And, during fits of nostalgia, I will visit the website and look for areas where I can connect with past alumni, check that my info is up to date, or even see if there are ways I can stay involved with CIA. Sadly, my knocks at the door are left unanswered.

If I feel more like an afterthought then a critical brick in the foundation – I will go away.
If I feel more like an output instead of a family member – I will go away.
If you come at me out of nowhere, with your open hand asking for my money – I will go away.
If you express no interest in my successes, and in ways I might be able to support you – I will go away.
If you seem confused and indecisive as to who you are – I will go away.
If you don’t cherish your community of graduates – we will all go away.

I see amazing stories of success and perseverance, of growth and insight, posted daily by my classmates on Facebook and elsewhere online. It’s a damn shame that my undergrad isn’t more involved in connecting with us, sharing our stories, seeing what the end result has been from our years at art school. But it’s OK, I stopped caring a long time ago, and I went away.

Are you an organization or school trying to reconnect with your alumni? Here’s how to start.

1. Know your stuff. If you are responsible for engaging with alumni, you better start studying and researching. Find out who were the top grads, who went to live in foreign countries, who was stirring up stuff during school. What was going in in 1990? If you don’t know, you better start figuring it out.

2. Listen! Set up your Google alerts, your Tweet Deck columns, your hashtag monitors and see what people are saying. Then, respond and join the conversation. Of course, avoid inflammatory situations, but if there are things you can add to, find interesting, or want more info about, engage!

3. Ask for help. Use your networks to expand your audience. Don’t try to do it all alone, get your networks to help by spreading the word, directing others to you, and providing information.

4. Start a dialogue. Sure most of you probably already have your Facebook and Twitter pages and accounts (what you don’t? Go do that now!), but how often do you engage with your “fans and followers” in conversation? Start out by typing “Hello Alumni! What is everyone up to these days? Send us your stories so we can brag about you!” If you hear crickets, try again – and get more and more specific until you start getting responses. Still crickets? Seed your Facebook page with responses. Ask questions some of your most recent alum or even current students can answer or respond to, and get the ball rolling. After all, no one likes to go first.

5. Lastly, keep it up. If you don’t have someone dedicated to fostering these relationships at your institution, you are already behind the eight ball. This should be a daily occurrence, on multiple networks and in a variety of engaging and authentic manners. Not only on social networks like Facebook, but on blogs, features brought into your own Website, the development of alumni portals where classmates can reconnect in meaningful ways, sharing of success stories, announcements on Twitter. Celebrate your alumni and the community it represents.

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We created Denote, a tool to allow for the communication on live sites between client and vendor. It’s up to you to use it for good, not evil.

Denote For Good, Not Evil from TraceyHalvorsen on Vimeo.

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People often ask me how we market our services at Fastspot. Do we take out ads? Do we purchase booths at trade shows? Do we sponsor events and give away trinkets? Nope – none of that.

We market our services by doing great work for clients who appreciate it. That combo often goes on to win awards. That’s how we pick up new (good) clients. They are the ones who are looking for firms to deliver amazing work—which we do—and they are willing to trust us to deliver. It still amazes me that Bucknell University agreed to go with such an innovative Virtual Tour, versus the more conservative option we presented them. Well, that trust just paid off again for them, and for us, bringing home the Webby.

So, if you have a great client who appreciates what you do and you are looking to increase your marketing and awareness, skip the chotchkies and spend the money investing in the project you are working on. Yes—over deliver, if you think the work has a shot at winning an award. Because winning awards like the Webby is not something you can buy like an ad in a magazine or a USB drive with your logo on it. Invest in the quality of the work you are doing and you will be rewarded with a much better return on your investment.

What do you think? How do you market your services or skills? Where have you seen the best return on your investment of time, effort or money?

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Our panel “We F*cked Up. Now What. Exploring Failure, Together,” with friends from Happy Cog and Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive went great last weekend at the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. I won’t say I wasn’t nervous, we were in a HUGE ballroom at the Austin Convention Center, easily seating over 1000 conference attendees. Once we got rolling, things went fabulously, with a myriad of tips and horror stories shared by all panelists, yours truly included. Revealing all and discussing avoidance tactics will hopefully result in some spared failures by colleagues and up and comers. For me, it was a nice reminder to enjoy the ride, no matter how bumpy or unpredictable. Here’s a short video recap and the slide show, with a full audio podcast on its way. Enjoy, and feel free to share your own definition of failure in the comments!

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Titanic

As my final post in preparation for my upcoming panel at SXSW, “We F*cked Up. Now What. Exploring Failure, Together,” with our pals at Happy Cog and Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive, I bring you “Failure Sucks”. Listen folks, there are just going to be some times when there is no rainbow after the storm, no shiny pearl in the shell, no valuable nugget of wisdom at the end of the battle. Sometimes you fail, and it just sucks. I was reminded about this in a recent post by Penelope Trunk titled “The biggest triumph is getting out of bed”. She is correct. Often we spend so much time trying to find the bright side, or tell others about our fabulous tales of overcoming adversity, that we forget to talk about when something just plain sucks.

At the end of the day, failing at something, or having something fail, feels bad. There is often a sense of relief when something fails. It was usually heading in a bad direction if it ends up failing, and often it is a freeing feeling to have it finally just fail. If bad things linger, you can’t move on.

Recently I was asked how I justified firing clients when Fastspot was younger and every dollar felt much more critical to our survival. My response? I wish I had learned to fire clients sooner than I did (let bad things finally fail) in order to use that time on more fruitful pursuits, like our own marketing or internal projects, or even fostering less financially profitable projects with healthier long-term prospects in our communities. What I realize now is that working on a project that is failing and not dealing with it can do much more harm to spirit and morale than what is offset by the paycheck. Even if the project ends up finishing and you get paid, everyone is so demoralized and frustrated that it’s hard to pick up and dive into the next project with enthusiasm and energy.

Not everything can be great all the time. We try, but it’s simply not achievable. I do think things can steadily improve with wisdom, experience and patience, but along the way things will fail, and things will suck. When they do happen to you, remember this – it will pass, as all things will pass, and something else will come down the road that will be so wonderful and successful, you will enjoy it that much more because you had to suffer through those sucky times. Enjoy the successes, they don’t last either, and you never know when the next one will come.

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Clorox vs. Water

Here is part three of an ongoing series exploring failures in preparation for my upcoming panel at SXSW, “We F*cked Up. Now What. Exploring Failure, Together,” with our pals at Happy Cog and Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive.

In this post, I am considering this question:  Can you smell failure coming?

You should watch for red flags and trust your gut. Intuition is completely underrated—probably because you can’t explain why something “feels” wrong or bad or whatever. However, most failures can be seen coming a mile away—a strong scent of something bad bad bad wafting into your nostrils. Problem is, you haven’t smelled this failure yet, so you don’t recognize it. You may, however, think to yourself, “Now there’s an odd smell.” I am definitely not proposing you avoid pursuing new things just because you don’t know exactly what you are getting into. However, failure is tainted with “smells” we can look for and avoid, even if we haven’t ended up hip-deep in the particular failure before. Here are the top 5 “bad smells” I watch out for when trying to circumvent failure:

1. Smells like apple, looks like orange. The client calls you asking to buy apples, but seems to think oranges will be delivered. Translation? Make sure your client knows what you are selling. And on the flip side, make sure the client knows why what you are selling is different than what the cheaper, less experienced company is selling.

2. Smells like Chop Suey. The customer sits down in a restaurant and asks for the chef to cook something not listed on the menu. Translation? If the client thinks they know better than you do regarding your business, it smells like sure disaster. Abort.

The reference to Chop Suey is based on this popular description of its origin. During his exile in the United States, Liang Qichao, a Guangdong native, wrote in 1903 that there existed in the United States a food item called chop suey which was popularly served by Chinese restaurateurs, but which local Chinese people did not eat. (Wikipedia Entry)

3. Smells like burnt toast. The client asks you to make so many revisions to your initial contracts or designs you can’t even remember what you set out to deliver. Translation? If it begins poorly, it will end poorly. Or, nit-pickers will drive you crazy. Or, don’t leave anything in the toaster too long.

4. Smells like Iceberg. The client keeps asking you to email them things and they keep getting bounced back; their voicemail system is full and you can’t ever reach them at the office. Translation? This client is a sinking ship—don’t go down with them trying to lend a hand.

5. Smells like cheap cologne. The client keeps avoiding discussion of budget or payment, only to hits you up with an “investment opportunity for stock equity” after you have invested significant time with meetings and discussions. Translation? If a prospect avoids discussing money, it’s probably because they don’t have any. Don’t waste your valuable time.

The key is to gain the experience in your life and business to perfect your olfactory and professional skills to identify these red flag scents like a well-trained truffle pig. Until then, watch out for brown piles masquerading as mushrooms.

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Van Halen and the brown M&M® clause

I was reading about Van Halen’s brown M&M® line item in their contract and being reminded of how brilliant it was. For your reference – wikipedia provides the following explanation:

Van Halen had a notable effect on the modern rock music tour with their use of the concert technical contract rider. They were one of the first bands to use contract riders to specify a “wish list”, a practice now used throughout the music industry. As one of the first major bands with a traveling stage show, Van Halen had extensive requirements including power availability and stage construction details. The band’s demands were not limited to technical issues; their now-infamous rider specified that a bowl of M&M candies, with all of the brown M&M’s removed, was to be placed in their dressing room.

According to David Lee Roth, this was listed in the technical portion of the contract not because the band wanted to make capricious demands of the venue, but rather as a test of whether the promoter had actually read the contract, as it contained other requirements involving legitimate safety concerns.[50] On early tours, inadequate compliance by local organizers to the safety requirements of the rider had placed members of Van Halen’s road crew in danger, sometimes life-threatening. Because of these incidents, the band developed the M&M’s demand as a means of checking whether the venue was properly honoring all of the contract. Subsequently, if the bowl was missing, or if there were brown M&M’s present, they had reason to suspect that the venue might not have honored legitimate technical and safety concerns within the contract. As a result, the band would be within their rights to inspect the technical side of the performance prior to going on stage.[51]

Many thought this ridiculous addition to their notoriously technical contract was an act of vanity. It was actually a canary in a coal mine for Van Halen, letting them know upon immediate arrival at the venue whether or not their contract had been carefully and diligently supervised. The thinking was, if they missed the brown M&M® item, chances were good they missed something else. It also gave the band a contractual reason to demand a full recheck of all technical issues prior to the concert starting. They didn’t have to say, “Hmm, your electrical guy looks stoned; can you recheck the wattage?” They could simply say, “You messed up. Now we get to demand you go back and check everything or the show doesn’t go on.”

So, Van Halen figured out a way to determine if failures were likely to happen before they happened by implementing the brown M&M® clause. How can other companies set up their own canary in the coal mine situations? How can you ferret out failure before it hits you smack in the face?

Ironically, one of the teams with whom I am participating in the upcoming SXSW panel “We F*cked Up, Now What. Exploring Failure Together“, Happy Cog, has a great canary set up. The Pre-Project Questionnaire.

This is a great solution because it allows you to spell out the rules of engagement prior to wasting time on a call or a meeting, where you may end up getting sucked into a project or relationship that is really a bad fit. It seems that once you start talking or having a meeting with someone, it becomes much more difficult to say “no” or walk away. Maybe that is just my experience.

The document that Happy Cog uses is on their site. If you want to start a dialogue with them, you must first fill out this questionnaire (or work the answers into your RFP). While they do provide a form for submitting your information to get a call back, it is impossible to miss that this company is in the business of building serious Websites with serious budgets and time frames. You can check it out here.

So, what does all of this have to do with the subtitle “Failure is the New Success”? Well, these things didn’t come into being before failures had occurred. Van Halen obviously had suffered through a few concerts with underpowered amps and Happy Cog obviously suffered through a few long meetings or calls only to find out the client had no budget and no business taking up their time. Through these failures, they gained insight, put it into practice and became more successful.

Here’s another example. I used to waste enormous amounts of time on the phone or writing proposals for projects or clients who were not good fits for Fastspot. Typically, it would boil down to budget—they had champagne taste on a beer budget and were hoping we were some sort of magical agency who could deliver champagne on the cheap. Perhaps, as a young start-up, you sometimes do have to deliver champagne on the cheap—or at least set out to deliver what you hope will be champagne with no real guarantees since you are a fledgling company. Today, after almost 10 years in business, we can guarantee the degree of quality we can deliver, but it comes with a price. You know where I am going with this—you get what you pay for.

When we were just starting, I was fearful of jumping right to budget. I didn’t want to seem callous or money-oriented. What?!!! Why shouldn’t I be money-oriented? After all, how am I supposed to run a company if I don’t focus on money? These days, I discuss budget within the first five minutes of a conversation or inquire about it directly in an email. And guess what? 50% of the time, I find out they have no money, or very little, and we part ways with a “thanks for your interest and good luck”. They appreciate that I was direct and specified the kind of budgets our process require. I appreciate saving time by getting to the real factors that will determine whether we will be able to work together or not. That is not something to be apologetic about. After 10 years I can say that. I wish I could have said it when I was one year in, but I believe I had to experience my own failures to really come out on the success side. My lesson is that you can’t run a champagne business on beer pricing, so either charge for the quality or deliver a cheaper product. It’s one of the main reasons we don’t shy away from the type of presence we put forward on Fastspot’s site – we think it needs to be clear you are buying very high quality services from our company, and design has a lot to do with telling that story.

While we can all leverage what we learn from other companies and put into practice things we think will help us, there is no substitute for the real thing. So, for every failure you experience, ask yourself this: How will this become my next success? Have some good examples of failures turned into successes? Do share!

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