Drake University Fails To Make Grade With New D+ Advantage Campaign

As the higher education market has become more competitive and sophisticated over the past decade, both for-profit (e.g, Corinthian Colleges, DeVry University, University of Phoenix, etc.) and traditional non-profit universities have proactively created and executed integrated marketing communications campaigns designed to garner more students, faculty members, government funding, research grants, alumni support and donations, corporate partners, and enhanced local, regional, national, and global reputations in specific disciplines.

After all, higher education is big business, with billions and billions of dollars at stake each year, so it makes sense that today's generation of colleges and universities aggressively differentiate themselves using a broad range of tactics to achieve certain objectives. Most of the campaigns I've seen focus on typical criteria: the latest US News & World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek rankings, recent awards and research grants, diverse student bodies and faculties, athletic team prowess, cultural, social, and recreational opportunities, and a whole slew of other benefits and value adds. In addition, most of the campaigns are relatively conservative and predictable, but occasionally, I see real flashes of genius, creativity, and brilliance. Unfortunatey, this is not one of them.

And that leads us to Exhibit A for collegiate marketing gone awry: Des Moines, Iowa-based Drake University's new "D+ Advantage" campaign. That's right: D+. As Brett Michael Dykes points out in this piece on Yahoo!'s The Upshot, "If you were going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a higher education, would you want the end result to be known as a 'D+' education? Probably not." For the record, the tag line for the new campaign is not all that bad: "Your passion + our experience."

But the general problem with the campaign is in the execution. As we all know, and as numerous Drake faculty, students, and alumni pointed out, D+ is universally synonymous with sub-par academic performance. Adweek's Tim Nudd noted on his AdFreak blog that the campaign "seems to position Drake as a school whose standards barely exceed total failure."

Drake University officials defend the campaign as "intentionally edgy" and appropriate for the target audience. In a communiqué to students, faculty, and alumni, university leaders said, "The D+ was not designed to stand alone or represent a grade. Instead, it was designed to be paired with prose and draw attention to the distinctive advantages of the Drake experience. Our experience in the survey and in the field suggests that the kind of students whom we want to attract to Drake easily understand and appreciate the irony of the D+, and that it is having the intended effect of encouraging students to find out more about what makes Drake so special."

That very well may be, but when it comes to traditional branding and on-point marketing creativity, there's only one letter grade for Drake University that makes sense in this case: F.

Actually, the campaign could have packed the same punch if it was dubbed "The Drake Advantage" and was branded with a compelling, but alternative, visual presence.