The tour guide didn't have one bad thing to say about Tufts. Not a coincidence. Any university wants prospective students to be interested in their school and to apply. It would seem counter-intuitive to tell visiting students all the bad things about the school. So, the school only shows the best and most appealing parts of the campus to visitors.
This reminds me of a story a friend of mine once told of her uncle who sold used cars. In the newspaper ads he would post, he would write things like "Please get this piece of crap out of my garage. The breaks squeak...". Apparently, within days people would come up to his house to buy the car because they knew what they were getting into and, for whatever reason, they wanted that piece-of-crap car.So, I wonder which strategy is best when trying to sell a story. Is it better to be completely crystal-clear honest, like the car guy? Or is it better to paint a picture of what you think the consumer wants to see, as most universities do when they cater to visiting students and try to show them the "perfect school"?
This is a really interesting topic, and I would say that it is entirely situational. Both ways can work, and both have their drawbacks. It becomes a question of whether or not you want people to have no expectations and be pleasantly surprised, or to have very high expectations and be completely crushed. Although in this case, it makes sense why the choices were made. With the college, it is only marketing itself to a group of people that very badly want to get in. They do not have to worry about a bad turnout as they will always have a demand, yet this is not true in the case of the car salesman. It seems as though he is trying to attract only people that would feasibly want to buy his car, and being honest with them is the way in which he can attract them. So I guess it boils down to whether or not you need to attract people, and what kind of people you are marketing towards. In the situations described though, it does make sense why the people chose what they did.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jon. He wisely points out that it really depends. In addition, I think that a college experience depends on the students that go there. The mix can make or break it. A car is objective. It can be broken, fixed, new, or old. A school is just a building without students. If your roommate is bad, or you don't like the professors, it can make your experience bad, and you can't necessarily fix them. This might be why colleges find the need to point out only good things. The students will figure out the bad things from other people and websites and books before applying (if they do their research). With the car, prospective buyers already know what is good and bad. In the end, each customer will choose what is right for them.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Jon's post above. In my opinion, every college wants students who are accepted there to attend their school. Since they are promoting their school, why would they display negative information to their "audience". They initially would lose business. Overall, I think it's up to the customer or student to do the backup information about what's not displayed.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Jon said that "It becomes a question of whether or not you want people to have no expectations and be pleasantly surprised, or to have very high expectations and be completely crushed." Always when I go to a movie that I assume will be very bad, but then turns out to be mildly better than I thought, I'll say it was a good movie. However if I go to see a movie that I've heard is amazing, but it turns out to be only decent, I'll say it was a bad movie. In reality, the second movie could still have been better than the first, however since it did not live up to expectations, it was more of a disappointment and only viewed in a negative light.
ReplyDeleteI think the majority of advertisement though is based on high expectations. Most companies would simply consider it too risky to always tell the costumers about the fault in their product. If they did, but everyone else continued to say their product was perfect, no one would buy the product that openly admitted to having faults.