Judy Purdy
Marketing/Outreach Specialist

Jay Bauer
Art Coordinator

Carol Williamson
Art Coordinator
University of Georgia

Background

While enrollment at the University of Georgia is on the rise, the number of students in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) is shrinking. Our college is not alone; enrollment is down for a handful of other UGA colleges, including the journalism school. But our college enrollment picture may represent one of the more dramatic shifts at UGA. Our enrollment has dropped 25 percent in the past five years, from 1,410 students in 1995 to 1,032 students this past fall.

The college's ratio of returning students has remained fairly constant - 77 percent in 1995 and 80 percent in 2000 - but the composition of its student body is changing. Freshmen are becoming a larger component of the CAES student body and more important in the college's overall recruitment effort. In recent years, transfer students have accounted for two-thirds of the college's new students, and freshmen have made up the remaining one-third. This past fall, however, the mix was exactly 50-50: half were transfers and half were freshmen. The college's new student mix contrasts sharply with the overall University ratios. Of the 5,500 new students who enrolled at UGA this past fall, 4,000 were freshmen and only 1,500, or 27 percent, were transfer students.

UGA's increasing popularity, perceived educational value and steadily climbing academic standards have made it more difficult to be admitted. In its annual ranking last October, Kiplinger's Magazine ranked UGA 15th among the nation's top 100 best values in public colleges and universities. The September 2000 issue of U.S. News & World Report, ranked UGA 38th among the top 50 great schools at great prices, and its 2001 edition of America's Best Colleges guidebook, released September 1, 2000, ranked UGA among the nation's top 20 public schools.

So if the picture at UGA is so rosy, why is CAES enrollment declining? Reasons cited for the decline include the stiffer competition to get into UGA and the demographic changes taking place in Georgia.
· There are fewer numbers of farmers and family farms.
· The state's urban areas are growing rapidly and disproportionately.
· The UGA student body now is predominantly urban/suburban.
· There's a declining interest in studying traditional agricultural subjects.

In 1999, the average age of a Georgia farmer was 57. Farmers represent less than 2 percent of Georgia's population. With the rapid growth of Georgia's metro areas, most UGA students now hail from metro and suburban counties. In 1998, 68 percent of all Georgians, or 5.2 million of the state's 7.6 million residents, lived in metro areas. Four of the fastest growing counties in the nation are in Georgia. In fact, Georgia will gain two more seats in the US House of Representatives, and both delegates will represent metro populations.

Fewer and fewer prospective college students are exposed to agriculture, much less the advantages of attending a college historically rooted in agriculture. Many do not make the connection between agriculture and cutting edge research in food science, environmental health or cloning. For the most part, neither high school students, their parents nor their teachers knows that CAES offers a wide array of majors beyond traditional agriculture, such as pre-law, engineering or economics. In addition, many potential students and their parents and teachers have a narrow view of the academic offerings of an agricultural college and the lifestyles they support. Colleges with the word agriculture in their name must overcome a negative mind set among urban/suburban prospective students and their parents.

You've all heard the forecasts that the number agricultural colleges will be significantly smaller by the year 2020. At the same time, job opportunities in ag-related fields are on the rise. According to a Spring 2000 report, "Employment Opportunities for College Graduates in the Food and Agricultural Sciences," published by the Office of Higher Education Programs at the USDA's CSREES, annual job openings for ag-related fields are projected to exceed the number of graduates. The report projects that food science, engineering, landscape horticulture and plant genetics will be among the hot careers in 2005, the year many of next year's freshmen will graduate.

When you add all this up, it's no wonder that a large number of our prospective students - both those in high school and those already enrolled at UGA - skip over our college. The college needs to explore new ways to engage the attention of potential students.

Last year, ECT completed a new series of recruitment materials that present the college's academic program (English and Spanish versions) and each of its majors. The initial concept for content and graphic design of the entire series of 22 brochures was guided by focus groups of current CAES students. But too many cooks - mostly administrators and departmental coordinators - got involved and spoiled the broth. The original content, photographs and design concepts lost their zest and became watered down. With so many conflicting forces involved, the communications machinery also gummed up, making the production process slow, arduous and muddled. The end result was a compromised version of the original concept, no longer based on focus group findings. The encumbered process with layers and layers of administrative approval delayed some publications by as much as six months.

Method

While the last of the brochures were coming off the presses, ECT was writing a new marketing plan. The plan was aimed at strategies rather than tactics to enhance the college's recruitment efforts. We wanted to use the limited resources - human and financial - where they could do the most good. To enact the plan ECT needed to know the target audience better. What are their perceptions of the college, what information do they need and want, and how do we reach them?

The Academic Affairs department was clamoring for more recruitment materials - a video, a careers brochure and an inexpensive but catchy freebie for a September recruiting event, to name a few. But before developing any more products, the ECT design team wanted to test the ones we had recently completed on prospective students. How would our materials stack up with those from other colleges and universities? What do prospective students want in the way of college information and what materials appeal to them? Feedback from focus groups combined with a strategic approach would guide the design and development of additional materials.

In putting together the focus group survey, the design team wanted to get more than simple reactions to recruitment materials. We wanted to get inside high school kids' heads and find out why they thought things were either cool or "Not." We wrote our open-ended survey questions (see Appendix) to elicit a variety of responses. We suspected that some prospective students would have negative perceptions about agriculture, and about colleges of agriculture in general, so some questions were designed to probe that area as well.

It was too late in the academic year to conduct focus groups through the schools, so we worked with the coordinators of the state 4-H leaders summer camp. We assembled our test materials by calling colleagues at other public and private universities. We told them we planned to do focus groups on recruitment materials with prospective college students. In exchange for a couple matching sets of their materials, we would share our findings. We put together two identical packets of recruitment pieces and assigned corresponding numbers to the 43 printed samples so we could more easily compile and compare our results. The samples represented public and private colleges and universities and included a wide range of content and design approaches. We included the new CAES academic majors brochure as well as UGA's viewbook.

In July, ECT design team members conducted two 30-minute focus groups with college-bound students randomly selected from a group of about 200 junior and senior high school students attending 4-H leadership camp. Participants were randomly selected from rising juniors and seniors who volunteered. Although students needed no incentive to volunteer, we told them participants would receive a gift (a college tee shirt) upon completion of the focus group. Volunteers forfeited their 30 minutes of free time before the evening's planned social activity, which was a dance. The camp coordinators advised us early in the planning stage that the full schedule left campers with little social time, and that for campers, the dance was a "big event." In other words, stay within the allotted time.

We were assisted by CAES student ambassadors. They represent the student leaders in the college and are an important component of the CAES recruiting effort. The ambassadors were to jot down notes of responses and watch for subtle nuances that ECT staff might miss because of our age and cultural differences. We noted the participants' initial reactions and then used the questionnaire to move them into a deeper, closer examination of the materials. We also tape recorded the focus group sessions and transcribed their comments later. The setting and atmosphere were purposely informal, and we encouraged participants to be honest, can did and forthright in their responses. Participants sat in a loosely organized circle with the 43 recruitment pieces spread out in front of them. We encouraged them to pick them up, look through them and tell us what they liked and didn't like, making sure we covered all the questions on the survey.

Focus group demographics:
· All 31 participants were rising juniors (22) or seniors (9).
· All had already been contacted by colleges.
· Sixteen, or 50 percent, had already begun to investigate college on their own.
· Twelve students, or 28 percent, represented families involved in agriculture.

Focus Group Findings
Despite some variation in age and background among participants, responses between the two groups were very similar. Focus group participants were initially keyed into the college's identity. Several lunged for familiar names in the pile. Cover design and images were important attention grabbers.

What they like:
Brightly colored covers with multiple images that show a lot of activity
Large images
Large-format materials
Action photographs that look authentic, not staged
Photographs that realistically represent campus and facilities
Page titles and content that are easy to read - no small print or design that interferes with legibility
Photos that present a wide slice of campus life
Colors that complement the subjects
Pages and sections that focus on individual topics
Images that convey a sense of fun
Athletic events, school colors and mascots, when well-known

What they don't like:
Dull, muted, somber and some pastel colors
Covers with little or no imagery
Boring or small pictures
Designs that look like travel brochures
Staged photos with people looking directly at the camera
Photos of people who don't look like they have fun
Duo-tones and black-and-white photos
Printed materials that look like junk mail
Low-quality and flat-finish papers

Importance of text and photos:
A balance between photos and text
Visual elements should relate to text
Content should include things students care about - extracurricular activities, social activities, majors, cost, size of college, admissions information, everyday life with "real" dorm rooms, campus map, food, sports

Preferred source of information:
All said they want to get information from publications, college reps and Web sites
Prefer to have materials they can examine at their leisure
Colleges need good web sites -- complete information, easy to navigate, different photos than those in printed materials

Role of envelopes:
Stand out from other mail
Addressed to the prospective student, not addressed "to the parents of"
Include first class return postage paid on reply cards

What's important to students (not ranked by priority):
Student life, academic reputation (want to go to a good school; used the term "heifer tech" to describe an agricultural college), majors available (and possible careers), distance from home (want to go away to college), college size (not a vital issue) college cost (not the main issue for most), academic admission requirements, extracurricular activities, leisure amenities in surrounding community and job placement

Implementing the Findings
The idea for "What's with the Dog?" arose from a short brainstorming session among three ECT staff members -- two graphic designers and the marketing/outreach specialist. We met informally to generate ideas for an initial contact piece to be used at an upcoming recruitment event. We quickly agreed on the design parameters: inexpensive, eye-catching, quick production time, high impact, perceived value to the audience, adaptable to multiple settings, interactive and based on focus group findings. Recent experience with developing the academic brochures meant limiting the number of people in the approval process to maximize the integrity of the finished product and to meet the deadline.

Our "wants" list was big. We wanted to overcome the audiences' negative perceptions of an Ag school and play up the affiliation with the university, which has very high status among prospective students. We wanted the final product to have a high "cool quotient" so kids also would want it and would hang on to it, giving it a longer, more useful life. That meant it had to look inviting to the audience.

We also wanted prospective students to somehow incorporate this "something" into their daily lives. We agreed on a brochure of unusual size and format, with a roll-out fold that would reveal something new and unexpected with each unfolding. An additional benefit of the unusual format was that it could be displayed as a poster.

We needed an alternative to photographic images because we didn't have a photographer on staff and we didn't have a bank of useable photo images. Summer school was already over, so hiring a freelance photographer to document student life wasn't an option. What we did have was a lot of artistic talent on staff who could create fun, light-hearted and appealing images that would encourage more than a passing involvement with the material.

We wanted to include the kinds of information that the focus groups found relevant. We would include a quick overview of Athens, extracurricular activities, student life, academic programs, scholarships and application information, and addresses of relevant web sites for later reference.

The idea for "What's with the Dog?" popped up as we talked about using UGA's bulldog mascot and the university's well-known colors of red and black. UGA fans do funny things at football games - things that include "hunkering" down with the dogs and "calling the dogs." When Carol suggested using these and other dog commands and phrases - train the dog, play with the dog, etc. - you could feel the electricity sparking our imaginations. From there it was simply a matter of organizing tasks and timetables. Jay created the illustrations, Carol created original fonts for the titles and did the layout and Judy created the copy.

The client was enthusiastic about the concept and loved the initial character rendering. The team quickly moved into overdrive. Two weeks, seven illustrations and several new font titles later, the brochure was ready for final approval and went to press on time, at a unit cost of $0.36.

Results

From all appearances, the "What's with the Dog?" brochure is an overwhelming success. Because the brochure was printed in September, it's too early to tell what impact it will have on next year's enrollment. However, the brochure is getting an overwhelmingly positive reception with target audiences and stakeholders. More than 600 prospective students attended the recruitment event where the brochure was debuted. They called it "cool" and "neat." Judging by the fact that only three or four brochures were left lying around afterward, the brochure is something they planned to keep.

In follow-up focus groups this past November, junior and senior high school students evaluated the brochure by itself. When the brochures were handed out, the noise level in the room dropped to zero as students became absorbed with looking at each illustration and reading each section. They were unanimous in liking the brochure, the illustrations, the design and the information, giving it very high marks. The College also has received overwhelmingly positive responses from current students, faculty and administrators. The marketing committee of the College Advisory Council was so impressed it sent a letter to the dean commending ECT on an "excellent" publication that appeals to many ages. One council member, a public affairs official for a large federal agency, described it as "the best material I've seen come out of the University of Georgia." He said this brochure is something that would appeal both to him and to his 13-year-old son. Academic departments are excited about the bulldog image and want to use it in their recruitment efforts.

At first glance, many people think it's a UGA piece, which was our intention. People like the unusual layout and find it fun, different and engaging. The bulldog theme has become central to other recruitment materials, including a lapel sticker and a recruitment Power point presentation that expands on the brochure's content. The presentation is downloadable from the college web server for the departments and extension agents to use in their recruiting activities. The college is now the proud owner of a human-size bulldog that doubles as a brochure rack and a focal point for Polaroid memento photos with prospective students.

The college has the blessings of the athletic department in using the bulldog for recruitment. The copyrighted bulldog character is in the process of getting trademark protection and the university has granted the college exclusive use, protecting our dog from being adopted by other colleges. With these safeguards in place, the bulldog will soon be appearing on the college's recruitment web site. The dog will soon come to life as an animated segment of the recruitment video currently in production. Watch for many other materials based on the CAES bulldog to be developed in the coming months.

Conclusions

Take time to do focus groups. Focus groups are fun, exciting and eye-opening. They put you directly in touch with your audience, and they don't take a lot of money if you do them with in-house staff. They may take time to organize and even more time to compile the findings, but the investment yields big time savings on the production end. You can use those focus group findings to avoid false starts, and they give you plenty of ammunition when administrators are tempted to become designers overnight.



Appendix
Focus Group Survey Questions

1. Which publications do you like best? Why?

2. Which publications do you like least? Why?

3. Which is more important, text or photos?

4. Would you prefer to get detailed information from publications, college representatives or a Web site?

5. What role do envelopes play in the overall impact of a college information packet?

6. In terms of content of recruiting materials, how important or unimportant are the following in a printed communication?
a. Student life
b. Academic reputation
c. Majors available
d. College is close to home
e. College is far from home
f. Size of college
g. Cost of college

7. How important is the opinion of your parents or other family members in choosing a college?