Now cybersquatters are invading higher ed’s social media presence by starting Facebook groups.  Fortunately, Brad Ward at squaredpeg has their number.  If you haven’t already seen it, go and read this article and protect your brand’s presence on Facebook before someone else takes control.

Colleges and universities, because they have access to .edu domains and leave other top-level domains unregistered, are heavily victimized by cybersquatters. You only have to look at an example of a squatted domain to see the danger they pose.

In particular, Robert Wolfson of Las Vegas, Nevada has registered a very large number of infringing domain names (here is an example of a Wolfson domain). He owns no less than 39 domains that misuse the marks of 28 of North Carolina’s 36 independent colleges and universities (not to mention untold numbers of domains misrepresenting institutions nationwide). Wolfson contracts with Australia-based company DBS Administration Pty. Ltd., operators of fabulous.com, to provide pay-per-click advertising and to broker each of these domains. Not only is Wolfson earning money at the expense of these schools’ brands, but he would also sell these domains to any unsavory individuals that sought to buy them. In the past, such domains have been used frequently in fraud schemes and “phishing” campaigns that can lead to identity theft. Wolfson also provided incorrect contact information when registering the domains–giving the Las Vegas information number 702-555-1212 as his own. However, his address seems to be correct and is corroborated by other public records.

Fortunately, the law is in favor of the rightful owners of these marks. Usually a cease and desist letter with a demand to transfer the domain is enough to convince a squatter to give up the offending domains, but a victimized institution can also take action under either The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) or ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). There are lawyers who specialize in internet and domain name action who are most familiar with pursuing legal action under the ACPA and UDRP. While a UDRP action is quickest and has the least initial expense, a lawsuit under the ACPA is the only way to collect damages or seek other injunctions. In addition to securing these domains, Wolfson’s continuing registration of domains with a false phone number may expose him to action under the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act if the bill is passed, but the bill has been in committee for more than two years.

Relevant contact information:

[At time of writing, Robert Wolfson's address was publicly available.]

Fabulous.com
DBS Administration Pty. Ltd.
GPO Box 278
Brisbane, QLD 4001 AU

Information about the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:S.1255.IS:/

Information about ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy:
http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm

Information about the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:h.r.3754:/

Today’s keynote speaker was Nick Fink, founder of Digital Web Magazine, and Director of User Experience for new media company Blue Flavor. Nick seemed like a really nice guy. He got on my good side right off the bat by looking uncomfortable about using the term “Web 2.0″ and then giving us a little bit of real history on the word, conceding that it didn’t really mean anything.

His talk on next generation web was not exactly a futurists drama of what the next fifty years will bring. It was mostly a practical exploration of how today’s leading-edge media will evolve and become more mainstream. He discussed the continuing decentralization of media power (a kind of “the meek shall inherit the earth” sort of idea), and he encouraged us to find a “guru” on a subject and start staking out a niche right now through blogging or participation in online communities. To name a few subjects he touched on: access-anywhere gps-enabled mobile devices, self-publishing moving to media outside of just web, marketing and business turning more and more to people-centric public faces that encourage consumer involvement in the brand, various standards allowing information to be mined and shared through feeds and networks, and non-traditional marketing becoming more prominent.

He gave this very vivid example: the subject of Yahoo acquiring Flickr came up and he mentioned how Yahoo had linked their mapping API with Flickr to allow geo-tagging of images. He got this thoughtful, excited expression and said “imagine going to a restaurant and, using a mobile device, being able to get a detailed map with pictures of any location along the way as well as message the restaurants owner.” To add to that, you could pull up a menu, make a reservation, or just old-fashioned call them. I’m ready to be there—I want that world that’s always on, “tagged and tracked and ambient and pervasive and ubiquitous and geolocative… Jesus, I love those words…” Makes me giddy.

Word of Mouth Marketing

Peter Waldheim is a very engaging speaker. I feel like I could’ve listened to his stories of action in the civil rights movement and rubbing elbows with foreign dignitaries at posh Washington dinner parties for most of the day. An older man with an acerbic, slightly self-ingratiating wit, he gave us a vibrant introduction to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and the concept of Word of Mouth Marketing.

“Word of mouth,” he said, “is powerful not because it’s new but because it’s old.” Word of mouth marketing, often introduced as this exciting new thing, he argues is easily older than the bible “where the only command given more than ‘go forth and multiply’ is ‘go forth and spread the news.’” He said that the difference, the thing that’s changed, is that now word of mouth is “actionable.” Basically, American society has reached a kind of saturation point at the end of traditional marketing. Americans on average receive over 3000 marketing impressions per day, he said. The result is that we tune them out, we question and disbelieve them. As a result, Americans have turned once again to that most trusted of sources: word of mouth. Suddenly a little time and effort expended generating good buzz easily outperforms the best Superbowl commercials when it comes to generating successful conversions. In addition to word of mouth coming round again, Peter says, it can now be spread and multiplied nearly effortlessly via digital media.

In answer to this, WOMMA was founded primarily as an advocacy association that worked across marketing disciplines, taking a little from CS and a little from blogging and several other sources, to form the concept of word of mouth marketing for new media. “The key is motivating people to get involved,” he said. “It’s about instigating and facilitating discussion about your products.” Consumer-generated media is quickly outstripping corporate-generated media in dominating the mindspace of the consumer. It’s the cry we’ve heard for quite some time: brand awareness is dead, now it’s all about engagement. In response to those that have balked at the idea of fostering conversation about their brands and products, he responds: “the conversations are going on, you’re just not taking part in them. You can’t be a bully, you can’t control them, but you can participate.” There it is again: authenticity.

His advice is to get involved and get started now. He says to grab students, grab faculty members, and start facilitating that conversation internally first and then let it move out naturally. He pointed us to a book, The Influentials by Ted Keller and John Barry. He said that about one of ten people are “influentials,” or experts of some type that have some platform of knowledge and respect in the community—whether small or large—that can be harnessed and used to generate buzz and discussion. Whether it’s a world-renowned celebrity or a kid looked up to by a small group of folks, provide the influentials at your school with a platform like a blog and connect them to the world.

If you’d like to get the lowdown on Word of Mouth, then check out this document from WOMMA.

If I don’t go to bed now, then I’m going to end up sleeping through tomorrow’s sessions. Until next time.

Anyhow, the first session of the afternoon was Fritz McDonald, who presented yesterday. The session was on web branding, and it was pretty good—a whole lot of information in a short time. I definitely won’t do it justice here. Fortunately, much of what Fritz covered can be found in the articles over at Ubrander.

Fritz started off by trying to get the idea through that a brand is much more than just a logo. (It amazes me that people in positions of power over college marketers still think that and associate the word “branding” with just insuring that the logo is presented uniformly across the campus.) Fritz defined a brand as being primarily:
* A Signifier – A physical representation of your institution, be it a logo, tagline, etc.
* A Repository – A collection of experiences
* An Expectation – Something people expect, associations that have been built around your institution

Fritz said that his definition of a brand differed from the poplar authors on the subject because of his idea of a brand as a repository of experiences. I found the idea very similar to how Scott Bedbury defines a brand in New Brand World. Wherever it comes from, it’s a great way to think about branding and to realize that your brand absorbs the bad experiences as well as the good—you can never fully control it. Riffing some more on popular thinkers in branding, Fritz discussed storytelling as an important way to convey information about your brand. He cited James Twichell who wrote Branded Nation, and most of us will also recognize Seth Godin‘s All Marketers are Liars here as well. Fritz inferred that brand storytelling strikes the same cord as fables intended to teach social behavior and norms did in the past.

A strong brand, he said, has a single overarching relevant story that conveys a promise. This overarching story can be represented in any number of different ways. A brand also defines a category (or a niche or audience). A strong brand rallies its community. Blake Ross, speaking earlier today, told how Firefox’s excellent brand decisions helped galvanize a strong community of supporters who generated on-brand messaging on their own. Fritz went on to say that brands have episodes and evolve. The main soul or identity of the brand remains largely the same, but the way it manifests changes in order to remain fresh and relevant. Above all, a strong brand is durable—it is something that will be remembered long after a certain specific add campaign has runs its course. It forms a part of a business’s identity that isn’t easily ignored or discarded. However, Fritz stressed that you have to tell real stories and not just extol lofty values.

Fritz went on to cover some of the challenges in communicating your brand, which are familiar to most of us already. He stressed the issue of authenticity, which is refreshing every time I hear it.

Where Fritz’s pitch became particularly different, to my mind, is when he began advocating the web as the starting point and central hub for any branding effort or campaign. Basically, Fritz believe that an institutions website should occupy the position of dominance that the viewbook and print pubs largely do now. All effort in a campaign should start with the web and emanate outwards from that. Design ideas, messaging, copy—all should move from a planned website into print materials, signage, etc. Multimedia should start online and only then move to TV or radio. As an example, Fritz discussed the recent efforts of YorkU. They started with a web campaign and then expanded it into their viewbook, campus signage, flyers, and even dominated a subway station by buying every available slot for advertising. Despite the compelling case study, I don’t think he was able to justify his notion of the web as the primary hub of all marketing efforts (not that I don’t think that the case can’t be made, just that I don’t think he provided much support).

There was more than this in his presentation—much more. I’ll leave you with one notion that I found powerful. Fritz suggested that there was no reason that we shouldn’t attempt to create a web brand that occupies a position in the culture. I love that phrase: “a brand that occupies a position in the culture.” It’s a good place to stop. More to come later.

The main conference got underway today with a medium-sized hall filled with attendees from school’s from as far off as Sydney, Australia. As the microphone was passed around for each person to give a brief introduction, I noticed a few trends. Just as in similar gatherings in the past, there are a lot more women and later-middle-age folks than tend to attend the strictly technical con’s. I’m not sure if this is just because colleges are doing a good job of egalitarian hiring in their techy positions or because lots of non-technical staff were present. As people talked about their institutions in the introductions, it was obvious that many schools were only just now realizing that the web has importance. One school said that last year they were allotting only 5% of their recruitment budget to their website despite having 85% of their leads generated there. Others were avowedly print-centric or were just trying to wrest their site from the IT department. Of those school’s that were more with-the-times, the question of “what’s your CMS?” was just as common as “what’s your sign?” at a new age gathering. All of these schools seemed to be in the midst of some sort of apocalyptic redesign. (Am I the only one who loves redesigns?)

The keynote today was delivered by Blake Ross, co-creator of Firefox. Blake is young, which was commented on in scandalous tones by several of the older women sitting near me. He’s in his early twenties and on leave from completing his undergraduate degree at Stanford, but it was clear from his presentation that his experience of marketing and nonprofit management was deep.

Blake’s presentation was mostly a case study of the development of Firefox’s brand message and marketing efforts. There wasn’t very many parallels drawn between higher education and Firefox—he was leaving that largely up to us. Blake related some of the barriers Firefox faced initially, such as trying to reach an older demographic when their main user base was a bunch of college kids. He likened this to college’s marketing to parents as well as prospectives. Firefox’s solution was to make the college kids their ambassadors.

Blake’s main message and the real success story for Firefox seemed to be the use of the web to catalyze a group of volunteers into an organized and powerful team of advocates and supporters. He described the building of several grassroots advertising campaigns that used a worldwide network of volunteers as a base. What helped to keep the volunteers active and involved was a constant sense of ownership and representation in the organization and the product. When Firefox asked for user-submitted materials for publication as part of a campaign, they did not seek to censor it and allowed the criticisms to stand with the praise. Their success was in creating such a strong brand identity and message that the community easily adopted it and supported and submitted material that was largely on-message, and the honesty of publishing criticisms only helped to bolster the strength of the brand (after all, they had a great product and nothing to hide and their messaging conveyed that).

To apply this to higher ed marketing, I imagine that Blake would applaud those schools who use uncensored student blogs and forums as a way to encourage students to participate and take ownership in the brand. He criticized those college’s that limit their advertising to the same, old glossy viewbooks where there is always a group of happy students in the quad and a belltower. What he says is provocative but definitely challenging when applied in a higher ed context. There would be great power in a student body that took real ownership in their school’s brand and discussed and promoted it through their own media, but achieving such a goal would require a difficult and campus-wide campaign, not to mention a pervasive brand message that had an honest resonance. I know Warren Wilson isn’t quite ready to take that jump yet.

Fritz is the Creative Director at Stamats. He supervises web and print designers as well as writers. His ideas regarding breaking out of the web design “frame” are influenced in part by author Brendan Dawes.

(Fritz McDonald begins his talk.)

After listening to Fritz, I’m going to riff on his idea of the “frame” in web design for a bit before giving you the run-down of his points. I think that root concept is probably the most interesting part of his presentation. It was certainly the only part of it that was new to me (and maybe to you folks).

Web Design has undergone a kind of evolution common to many types of emerging paradigms. Simply put, when new systems begin, they are energized by inspired and inspiring prophets. The beginning is a kind of limitless creative time. At some point, after enough different ideas have been tried and failed or succeeded, the new system begins to become standardized and reified. Sociologist Max Webber called this the “routinization of creativity” and applied it to the historical development of religions, but I think much the same can be applied to the web.

When the internet largely arrived in the public world, mostly after the very limited dial-in BBS’s, there was this sense of a new, digital frontier. “The Information Superhighway” was the popular term among the laity, and the prophets discussed cyberspace—an entire world bound only by the imagination and the limits of technology. Many of us watched in awe as computer graphics and virtual reality developed, imagining what the internet may be like in a few years. The first chat rooms and online communities became not only a communication tool but clung to that driving metaphor of a mental space. Early web design began to reflect this with sites that had metaphoric navigation (rooms and doors), or else were built as information environments intended to be explored in a nonlinear fashion. In design terms, this was a time for abusing HTML in ways that the code’s creators had never intended.

At some point, the process of limitless creativity met the business world where the creative development had a specific purpose, was measurable, and cost money. The result was market-based design, usability, designing sites with some sort of conversion intended, and the assumption that users (not visitors) came to either complete a task or ask a question but not to explore or experience. The most obvious and least expensive solution was to apply the grid-based layout systems used in print media. This is part of what Fritz described as “the frame.” With the dominance of the frame, cyberspace, virtual reality, and allot of the creativity in web design went the way of the flying car.

(Fritz describes much of today’s standard web design as coming from USA Today.)

The frame exists all over in the way that the world is designed. In fact, it is nearly ubiquitous when describing doorways into mental places. Think about it—windows, doors, television screens, movie screens, pages, text, and photographs are all presented to the world in square or rectangular frames. Fritz said he thought it was the reflection of a male urge to order his environment. Fritz also blamed the browser wars, the frameset tag, and seemed to link “standards-based design” to “standardized” looking websites. I’m not sure I agree on that part. The point is that a medium that started as limitless and could be described by any number of poignant metaphors became over the years just another representation of a newspaper page designed to be easily scanned for text-based information with a few graphic elements thrown in. Chat rooms and virtual environments are largely gone, replaced with instant messenger clients that are little more than text-only telephones. Where once we imagined a world where you could be fully immersed in a digital environment, now we are impressed at the ability to embed video in a website. Why? Because we don’t expect a website to do any more than a newspaper or book because it is designed just like one.

Fritz described websites that break the frame as those that encourage the user to participate, think, and experience. He advocates bucking the “don’t make me think” trend began by Steve Krug, especially where higher education websites are concerned. Instead, he believes that aesthetics should stand on a level with usability. Fritz described how design, in all aspects of our lives, is improving and increasing with the end result that the aesthetic bar is being raised. Instead of continuing to design websites for the largest common denominator, using a “herd” model to move “users” through the site, Fritz suggests exploring what it means to design for the individual—the human being.

During the presentation, Fritz asked how many understood the soul of their institution and very few people raised their hands. (I did, unfortunately, because he wanted me to share it in a few sentences and I sure didn’t have an elevator speech ready…) He also asked how we could convey the institution’s soul in the design of the site. As an example, he discussed some young people who have created personal brands to describe themselves. These teens create logos and apparel around their personal brand as a way of differentiating themselves from those who wear GAP or the like. If creative teens can articulate how to communicate the essence of who they are as a person in a brand way, then why can’t a college?

Fritz gave several examples of sites that he thinks attempt to break out of the frame. Here are the few I could jot down (We ended up having trouble with the hotel’s stupid Waypoint and not being able to see many of the examples.):

bbdo.com
fullsail.com
modernista.com
www.kpf.com

In the end he went through several of the nitty-gritty barriers and possibilities for breaking out of the frame (things like trimming bloated sites, using basic design elements, campus buy-in), but they were all fairly straightforward things many of us have encountered in the past so I won’t recount them.

I’ll leave you with the bullets from one of his slides that stuck with me as particularly poignant:

* From user-centered to human-centered
* From accessible websites to websites worth looking at
* From sites that serve our needs to sites that we remember
* From separate approaches to one balanced philosophy

The latest set of liberal college freshman have spent the most formative period of their lives growing up with George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and the methods of activism and criticism used by media icons like Jon Stewart. They have seen patriotism shift from a high point to a low. They’ve listened to NPR, voted in elections, and talked amongst their peers. In short, they’ve spent their lives as young adults building a “community spirit” that uses cynical, self-depreciating humor, public criticism, and often truly impassioned vitriol in its self-criticism and defense of social liberal values. They’ve been taught not only to question authority, but also to see authority figures as corrupt and ignorant by default. Having been exposed to one of the twentieth centuries more blatant attempts to build nationalistic patriotism for political gain with the war in Iraq, these students are very leery of nationalism and patriotism.

In short, liberal “community spirit” for the current college set–while it encourages individual moral responsibility, environmental consciousness, a sense of global community, and a desire for equality across race and economic barriers–assumes that public leaders and politicians of all types are going to be self-interested and deceitful. You could almost go as far as to say that liberal community spirit does not want a leader that accurately represents its values and tears down its own political candidates because it only knows how to define itself within a common-against-authority struggle (witness Al Gore). Because the state (or other official representation of the community) is in the hands of these leaders, the images created to represent it are to be questioned or attacked. Community spirit, by virtue of its championship of the individual and of diversity, does not create images to represent itself. One cannot be patriotic to the community, one can only play a responsible role within the community–this is the only appropriate way to participate, as any attempt to hold one small community up in favor of another would be to denigrate the global community.

By contrast, conservative social values seek to find leaders that are iconic and that can represent the community interests. Self-critical only in the appropriate places, conservatives are more accepting of the idea that closed-room discussion is appropriate rather than insisting on transparency. While this may exclude the ‘have-nots’ from political intercourse, it also does not expose the self-critical process to competitors eager for a chink in the brand armor. These are the people who were more likely to feel a greater sense of patriotism and national identity during Bush’s two terms in office. Schools with socially conservative values overall are likely to have a very different, much more exclusive sense of community spirit. This is what we know of as “school spirit.” “School spirit” is defined (in one way) when one school is put over and against another through a sense of competitiveness. For example, organized sports in America–especially football–are very like war in the way that they work to create a proud, insular community with strong self-identity.

In short, conservative “school spirit”–while its adherents are more likely to subscribe easily to “us and them” attitudes that, in a worst-case scenario, fuel bigotry and rigid class-structures–will usually work to support strong leaders and a strong school brand image. A patriotic citizen accustomed to defending the actions of their country and assuming that their leaders are acting in their best interest is likely to carry-over that attitude into their private life as well. School spirit, thus engendered, seeks always to put the best face forward and actively participates in creating images and phrases to support the brand. The biggest danger here is off-brand support, such as taking pride in a fraternity’s partying prowess and associating it with the overall college image.

The Princeton Review and other, similar ranking processes are designed in such a way that school’s with a healthy and on-brand sense of school spirit will always dominate those blessed and cursed with strong community spirit. When students fill out the surveys on the websites and on paper for these ranking publications, their minds are in very different places. The socially conservative, patriotic student with a strong sense of school spirit is likely going to defend his school out of a sense for what is best for it, possibly even to the extent of submitting their comments with a rosy shade in the survey. By contrast, a student with a strong and critical sense of community spirit will, at best, be frankly honest and, at worst, will inflate problems in an attempt to effect change in their community by using the ranking guide to excerpt outside pressure. One set of students is concerned about “the power of pride,” prestige, and what others think of their school. The other set of students is concerned about “question authority,” their immediate living environment, about being a responsible community member, and often does not associate his/herself at all with the school brand image. One student would say “I am College X,” the other would say “they are College X” where ‘they’ usually refers to the administration or authority figures present on campus.

I have been plagued lately by the problem of trying to engage students in the Warren Wilson brand and challenge them to take ownership of it in some ways–to encourage them to say, “I am Warren Wilson College.” Our recent, unfortunate experience with the Princeton Review and the local media makes me wonder how we can keep our strong, niche identity as a liberal campus while still fostering a positive school spirit and strong brand image. No college community is ever going to be all things to all left-fringe liberal students, so how do we encourage them to take pride in what we have achieved, and to represent it to the public with pride, when pride itself is a cardinal liberal sin? By crafting this niche, have we set ourselves up for failure?