Alan Goh – director of SMU’s office of undergraduate admissions – says:
“We think we have been the catalyst in redefining how branding ought to be done in the tertiary sphere; we do not see ourselves merely competing against the local universities but universities within Asia, where attracting top quality talents to study in Singapore remains our focus.”
“In our quest to jettison ourselves from being a Singapore-based university into a world-class university, our strategy is to embrace new media – websites, blogs, chats, social networks – which are emerging to be powerful channels of communications that are part of youths’ lifestyle.”
“We thought out of the box and rationalised spending in the print medium while espousing a medium where we can become the media owner – the web. This is culled from our findings that the top three sources of information gathering by university-bound students are word of mouth, newspapers and SMU websites.”
I need add nothing more except to say SMU is a much better place than this campaign will do for them.
At its heart, it’s a university for entrepreneurs … people who want to create something with their life rather than simply follow the masses up the corporate ladder of a pre-exisiting, foreign, faceless organisation.
It’s more of the same bland bollocks every other Singapore University spouts and so as much as Alan say’s this is going to help them compete across Asia, the reality is its going to make them blend even more into the background.
If you want to attract youth – speak and think like them – what hope has the young generation got when their educators are focused on churning out even more brand consultants and investment bankers.