Creative Use of Technology and New Media

General Observations

Blogs, YouTube videos, holiday cards, virtual tours, and even a course catalog on a USB drive were among the 52 submissions in the "Creative Use of Technology and New Media" category of the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards. Judges met April 8 on the Ball State University campus to review the wide variety of entries in this category.

Social networking and user-driven content was clearly the focus of many of this year's entries. This is encouraging as institutions are beginning to understand that entering into the conversations on Facebook, Twitter, or other channels allow for authentic exchanges, deeper connections with audiences, not to mention opportunities for creative staffs to have some fun and make an impact. Many of the entrants also understand the importance of social media callouts by sprinkling in identifiable logos of well-known (and some lesser-known) sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, or YouTube that link to their own content on those sites. In today's multi-channel world, you need these kinds of multiple entry points to your content and messages.

And, if you are thinking about personalization, you won't find any examples here. Personalization may have been the rage (or ambition) 2-3 short years ago, but there were almost no examples of personalization attempts among our entrants. We can imagine that user-driven content is often more beneficial - and doable - on the limited marketing budgets many of us have.

Not that everyone had a small budget. Institutions spent anywhere from $0 (staff salaries not included) to $200,000. Some projects were outsourced to vendors, while others were done completely in house. There were plenty of good and poor examples among all of these types.

Judges noted the disturbing lack of planning and/or branding. We hope that our marketing and communications colleagues remember why we are attempting some of these ambitious efforts, but sadly this doesn't always seem to be the case. We saw some cute, clever, and even compelling content, but it wasn't always tied to other key university messages. Our gold award winner understood the importance of branding and how an institution can steer user-generated content to meet specific needs.

We also noticed that just because you build it, does not mean people will come. We saw quite a few social networking sites without much traffic. Driving traffic to the site (often using traditional communication channels) should be an important part of the planning of these sites. Afterall, they can only be social sites if people are present.

As for that catalog on a flash drive, judges weren't impressed. It was an example of another trend - even in 2009 marketers are still trying to fit those old print models into the new media world.

Comments on Winning Entries

Gold Medal

Miami University (Ohio) - This is Our Miami

• Current Miami students were encouraged to make a video with the theme "This is Our Miami," upload it to YouTube, and enter it in the contest. This idea alone would not have made it an award-winner, but Miami was able to take this idea to the next level by leveraging the videos to encourage online giving. The result? The university received more online gifts during the last week of 2008 than they had for the total of any previous year. It didn't hurt either that their winning videos were compelling and just the kind of thing to go viral among their friends and alumni. They logged more than 50,000 visits during the campaign and 12,000 votes. And, they did all of this for just $2,000.

Silver Medals

Baylor University (Texas) - Baylor Virtual Tour

• What made this virtual tour stand out among others was the vast amount of detail and Baylor's unique approach of framing the tour in the context of a virtual student desk rather than a map. This allows for a focus on what students can DO on campus, rather than just moving people from building to building, which seems to make for a much more engaging experience. Some key negatives were that the initial load time is quite slow, even on a high-speed connection, and the site could use more video.

Simmons College (Mass.) - Reconnectwithsimmons

• At first glance, you might not understand why this site is a winner. It's design looks like a throwback to the mid-90s, complete with a grunge-era font (maybe that is retro now?). However, one judge described this site as "effective, not as in "we are so cool and in your face," but in an integrated way." The site is an in-house developed social networking site where the majority of the site is user-generated content. Alumni are free to discuss whatever topics they wish - and they do; and the site is compelling and quite active.

Bronze Medals

University of Alaska Fairbanks - Young Alumni Giving Site

• Among the entries, judges were most split on this decision. On one hand, this site from the university's development arm reaches out to an often overlooked group - young alumni. The Flash movie encourages their involvement and demonstrates how even a small gift can make a big impact. The positive is that initial response has been quite good. The downside? It's a Flash movie that tries to be cool by replicating an iPhone screen. There also seems to be some missed opportunities, such as not drawing the audience to a Facebook (or other) site for additional interaction.

University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business - McCombs Today

• It's practical, timely, and opinionated - all reasons why judges voted for this unique entry. The McCombs TODAY blog and its Twitter component is a central news portal for the School of Business and is a replacement to the school's internal e-newsletter - but it is accessible to external visitors. The site is also an example of one that is building an active community and staff members report that it has been a "more inclusive and engaging communications vehicle." It might also be having some impact on recruitment. One prospective graduate student reported, "I first searched for McCombs on Twitter when I started my app for MBA school - the info you post is so helpful."

Honorable Mention

Arizona State University - Development Web site and Proposal On-demand System

• This site was hard to compare with others in this category, but judges thought it deserved a special mention. It is an internal Web site/application that provides Arizona State development officers a suite of tools that helps them do their jobs better - such as being able to dynamically create proposals for "asks" of less than $1 million. One of the judges, who happens to work for a foundation at a Big 10 school was particularly impressed and noted she "will take some of these ideas back to my boss." All of the judges felt this site deserved recognition, but it was a case of comparing apples to oranges. Perhaps a future CASE category might be for home-grown internal Web applications designed to assist advancement staff.