Most College Marketers Flunk Distribution

Brandweek, June 1, 1998 by Robert Bugai

Robert Bugai is president of College Marketing Intelligence, North Arlington, N.J. He can be reached at (201) 998-0173.

Accountability in the college marketplace continues to be a topic of concern for those pushing products and services through college marketing firms. With more colleges refusing on-campus promotions, advertisers must insure they get what they pay for.

Do you remember the National Student Marketing Corp. scandal in the late 1960s? Andrew Tobias, a former executive of NSMC, wrote a book, The Funny Market Game. In it, he reported, "It is unlikely that the core company's profits were ever much more than the result of creative accounting. Almost without exception NSMC programs were unprofitable and NSMC media were ineffective." In fact, his reporting showed many of the campus promotions contracted for never happened and others were falsely reported.

Have the college marketing companies learned any lessons since then? It doesn't seem so.

The list of college media companies defeated by lack of reliable distribution is not one of no-name enterprises: McGraw-Hill's Business Week Careers, Newsweek's Newsweek on Campus, Whittle Communications' Campus Voice, Time Inc.'s Student Life and Student Sampler, American Express' Connections, National College TV Network, NCAA Campus Welcome Pak and so on.

There were many complex factors involved in the demise of each of these media properties. But distribution tops the list. And it remains the single biggest problem for companies still in the business.

In the fall of 1990, my company, College Marketing Intelligence, conducted the first National College Media Audit It was the first attempt ever to do a syndicated national audit of media produced off campus and directed at students on campus. Most of the college marketing companies would not cooperate with the audit. Six of the 23 companies audited went out of business within six months of the audit. The overall results of the NCMA suggested that college media distribution practices were extremely weak. Eight years after the audit, after visiting over 250 schools nationwide, we found that the same problems, and even worse scenarios, exist today.

In The Funny Money Came, Tobias reported incidents all too commonplace, such as a Gillette sales rep finding cases of Right Guard, intended for distribution to students, in a fraternity house. Today, my company finds hundreds of such examples: Campus Source posters from MarketSource Corp. that are one to 12 months old; lighted displays damaged or not connected to a source of electrical power for months or even years; Cass Communication's Media boards and Headliner units along with American Passage Adrax boards broken, without posters, backboards or take-ones; display racks in disrepair; The Unofficial Student Guide, published by Campus Concepts, left unopened on campus for months; Link Magazine left in boxes, undistributed; boxes of U magazine used as door stops in dormitories instead of being inserted into the campus newspaper; MasterCard posters and magazines hidden in janitor's closets and student newspaper offices never opened and never delivered: The College Television Network TV sets turned off or unplu gged; TGIF product sample kits from Follett Campus Resources sampling program 7-8 years old in dormitory basement storage areas.

While visiting campus student activity offices, we discovered large quantities of undistributed posters from Collegiate Advantage, MarketSource and Intercollegiate Communication's campus tours. Lack of distribution explained the low student attendance at many of the events.

College marketing companies must face the issue of accountability. First, open acknowledgment of a problem is essential. Present-day American culture likes to sweep problems under rugs, particularly profit-oriented corporate culture. The bottom line is everything. Excellence takes a back seat to short-run pragmatism.

One verification method, job completion forms, should not be utilized as the only proof of performance. Next, brand managers and marketing managers must speak up. If airlines ran their maintenance departments the ways some college marketing firms manage their services, none of us would fly.

Reform and accountability must occur. Otherwise, many more colleges will declare campuses off limits to marketers, and advertisers will shift away from college marketing programs to other marketing vehicles they believe are more accountable and justifiably cost-effective.