Dartmouth’s Wacky Business Model
Every once in a while, you get the chance to be a part of a really cool project. Over the past month or so, I’ve had that opportunity by being a member of the Communications/Web team in the Development Office at Dartmouth during the creation and production of this video, which takes a transparent and real approach to describing the business model of the College:
Those who read me know that I don’t blog about the work I do there very often, but this video was just too cool to pass up. I love the way it turned out. Though the script and art direction happened in house by people far more talented than I, the animation animation part was outsourced to Brady Baltezore. Check out his website to see more of his amazing work.
What do you think? Would something like this motivate you to give to your alma mater? Leave a comment!
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June 15th, 2009
Wow. Pretty bold and clever approach to getting around the “bang for your buck” question that plagues a lot of colleges. Thanks for sharing.
June 15th, 2009
[...] Dartmouth’s development office produced a fantastic 2 minute, 21 second video explaining their “business model” to donors. It’s done with some sweet animation and a sense of sarcasm that rarely succeeds. But in this case, it makes you sit back and appreciate just how difficult it can be to run a top-notch institution of higher education. Read more about their approach… [...]
June 16th, 2009
Karlyn, thanks for sharing this video. It cuts to the chase and takes chances by talking about discounting and business models. But it makes its point well. The animation is interesting. I’d be interested in hearing how it works with donors. BTW, I’ve spoken to board members who have questioned the same thing…
June 16th, 2009
[...] talk in 2 minutes and 21 seconds with a video about its “wacky” business model (via Karlyn who works there). And, let me tell you this is brilliant and very well done, so drop everything [...]
June 16th, 2009
A fantastic piece of work. Thanks, Karlyn, for the inspiration.
June 17th, 2009
I love the honesty of this video. Colleges/universities are often too afraid to explain how things REALLY work at their campus, and this fresh approach is such a nice change from typical alumni donation/solicitation videos. Amazing!
June 17th, 2009
This video is great. As an alum, I felt a real sense of pride for the risk Dartmouth took and the creativity you all used to distinguish the College. As a practical answer to your rhetorical question: Yep, Karlyn, it will certainly motivate me to give.
As a regular reader of your blog, I also wanted to ask the question: has this video already been launched or tested with focus groups among the target audience? While I really like it, I am curious about how others who are less involved in education marketing have responded. As always, thanks for sharing.
June 30th, 2009
I finally gave a little this year, just to keep the “% alum participation” figure from taking a deeper beating, aand also to keep myself on the “Dartmouth Regular” list. I admire your attempt, but just don’t get too smug about Dartmouth’s performance as a great school. I was fairly successful at Dartmouth, and I felt the change of venue from Ohio made life even more interesting. However, having broken my leg the first day in frosh football and then coming down with mononucleosis right afterwards, I survived and graduated in three and a half years, thanks to a summer quarter at Ohio State U. to have my degree from Dartmouth before the Draft got me. The day before I left Dartmouth to go to the University of Michigan Law School, I received a call from a professor who stated he was my advisor and had never contacted me but felt that all must have gone well for me witrhout him, considering the result.
Since then I have attended three universities, so I can make some valid comparisons. Moreover, I have three sons and three daughters-in-law who degreed at either U C Irvine or Stanford, and eight grandkids, three from Cal schools and one at Syracuse. Their educations were certainly the equal of mine at Dartmouth.
Frankly, I believe the Ivy League overrates itself to the point of believing it does a better job than other universities. Consequently it smugly underperforms by doing almost anything it wants, while expecting the public and alums to support mediocre positions. Keep up your quest, but don’t look back, for a great many schools have already passed you up in their stellar performance. I hope your new president acknowledges this feeling of real educational competition. Thanks, and best wishes. Bud ‘52.
June 30th, 2009
@Todd - I’ll be honest with you: This video was about two weeks late in terms of production so we didn’t really have time to test it out on the audience. We have received a lot of great feedback so far on it.
June 30th, 2009
@Bud - I should say that I didn’t attend Dartmouth so I can’t speak about it based on experience like you can. Based on the fact that I didn’t attend, I would tend to agree with you that you can get just as good an education elsewhere. For me, you get out of education what you put into it. For example, you were fairly successful here not because of your advisor (or lack thereof), but because you put the hard work in. Your experience there is not that much different from the experience I had going to school.
I’m sure the annual fund will thank you for your gift this year. Thanks for stopping by my blog and for your comment!
Karlyn
July 6th, 2009
[...] These last two videos take different approaches for fundraising campaigns. This first one is from Dartmouth, and was produced for their annual fund campaign. I found it on Karlyn Morissette’s website. [...]
July 25th, 2009
Haha - you don’t see posts like this too often