The Whitman School of Management is trying a new way to reach out to prospective students. Its students are making a promotional video, and they’re using YouTube to distribute it.

‘A lot of the time the strategies are designed by people who are outside the target market, and you really need to hear genuine opinions and responses,’ said Scott Nadzan, an instructional technology analyst at Whitman. ‘We want to discover what real students believe about what is unique and what is special about the Whitman School of Management.’

Whitman is sponsoring a contest for groups of students from Syracuse University to create a promotional video, as long as there is one management student on each team. The videos need to be between 30 seconds and three minutes, and no more than three students are allowed on each team.

Three top awards will be given, with prizes of $600, $300 and $150 for first, second and third place, respectively. Registration closes March 15.

‘I hope a lot of other people join because it would be really interesting to see everyone else’s ideas and what their opinions are of the school,’ said Oriana Bafunno, a senior communication and rhetorical studies major participating in the competition.

‘We want to make something that will show the environment and the sense of community that Whitman offers,’ Bafunno said of her vision for the video. ‘It’s going to show the typical day of an undergraduate, and how they interact with other people, their professors and everything that goes on.’

Amy Mehringer, the communications manager for Whitman, created the contest.

‘We’re looking for students to use their own production,’ she said. ‘Nothing super-polished and official. Nobody can tell the story as well as a student can, and it’s got to be authentic.’

The winners will be announced during a special screening May 2. And while there are no concrete plans for the top three videos, the idea is to upload them to YouTube, Mehringer said.

Whitman has a YouTube page featuring a few promotional videos Nadzan maintains.

He said he posts the most interesting of the 200 videos in their database on the site, which can be found by searching ‘Whitman School of Management’ on YouTube.

The most popular video, a description of the MBA program, has only 270 views, in comparison to videos from other business schools such as USC, which have more than 800 views.

Mehringer said she hopes the student-generated content will help increase the site’s popularity.

‘The whole idea isn’t so much promotion as it is viral marketing,’ she said. ‘It’s just another way to get our name in a place where we think a lot of college-age students are looking. We’d sort of hope that it’s happened upon and circulated naturally.’

She is also planning other potential methods of distribution, including screenings at meetings with potential students and DVDs included in information packets.

‘We’re leaving it open in case we get something we’re not sure we can use for promotion, but that’s our hope,’ Mehringer said. ‘We want to show them to prospective students so they can get a better understanding of the school.’

Nadzan said he the student competition will blow the judges away.

‘These students know what’s going on,’ he said. ‘They’re in this industry. They live online, they’ve been online forever, they know how to communicate online, especially if they have some of the technical tools. I think it’s going to be amazing,’

esmeyers@syr.edu

Published on February 25, 2008 at 12:00 pm