Edu-leaders

Eighteen-year-old Ashish Mehta scored a respectable 70 percent in his board exams. However, he fears that his marks aren’t good enough to get him into a well-known college in his city, Mumbai.

He is prepared to look beyond the top-notch colleges, and even move out of Mumbai. “Right now either the institute will eliminate me or I will eliminate the institute based on what I hear,” says an exasperated Ashish. His parents are ready to empty their bank accounts to get him into an institute that will guarantee him a job. Ashish’s story is being played out across households in India, as demand for quality education institutes outstrips supply. This demand has led to education institutes mushrooming across the country. People who earlier ran family-owned businesses in garments, sweets and manufacturing are becoming “edupreneurs”.

A variety of general as well as niche institutes have emerged. Some of these new institutes fill their seats within days of putting up admission notices. The opportunity is huge — a recent report from brokerage CLSA estimates that students in India will spend $68 billion (Rs3.5 trillion) on education by 2012. India’s 75,000 private schools account for 7 percent of total institutes but enroll almost 40 percent of the country’s 219 million students.

Creating A Unique Brand
As institutes look for ways to attract students, the question is whether the well known marketing principles apply to them?

Is it the same as marketing shampoo or telecom services? Typically, branding principles are universal. You define your brand, decide what it stands for, articulate its distinctive features, develop a brand plan and then implement it. The tricky part, however, is that the creator of the brand might want to present his product in a certain light but the audience could perceive it in a totally different way. This is especially true for subliminal services such as education.

An educational brand is defined by intangible factors like the quality of the education it imparts, its faculty, culture and resources available for students. The other factors are campus size, quality of the graduating batch and their track record in getting jobs. For education institutes,the “product” to be branded is very different from regular consumer product.

“The relationship between the product (education) and the consumer (student) is time bound and predetermined, and the consumer cannot enjoy two competing products simultaneously,” observes Biju Dominic, CEO, Final Mile Consulting.

Making The Right Noise
Institutes in India, spend around Rs. 150 million annually on advertising and promotional activities. According to TAM Media Research, ad spends by the education sector have been growing steadily over the last three years, with the education sector accounting for 15 percent of overall print advertising and 1.1 percent of TV advertising in 2008.

Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), the pioneer of “full page color ads” in national newspapers says it has an annual marketing budget of Rs. 800 million and concentrates on print. “The IIPM brand has been created through smart content-driven advertising,” says Amit Saxena, president, Corporate Communications, IIPM. The institute has been dogged by several controversies, the most recent being the nasty blogger controversy in 2005 regarding the veracity of its claims in its print ads. “There is no such thing as bad publicity. 2005 was a very good year for IIPM in terms of the quality of students we attracted,” says Saxena.

Lovely Professional University (LPU), a three-year-old private university based in Punjab, has been going all out to promote its brand using TV, radio, newspapers,Internet and Out-of-Home media. LPU says its annual advertising budget is Rs. 50 to 60 million, and it tracks walk-in-inquiries, telephonic queries and hits on its website to gauge the effectiveness of its ads. “TV has the highest and deepest reach as far as numbers are concerned. But when it comes to converting inquiries into admissions, newspapers are the best medium,” says Ashok Mittal, Chancellor, LPU.

Building Reputation
Some institutes are working on targeted marketing campaigns to build reputation. The upcoming OP Jindal Global University in Haryana has been talking to reputed schools in Uttarakhand as part of its publicity campaign. Earlier this year, the Jindal Global Law School, a part of the same group, ran several promotional features on CNN-IBN in its “Law Schools of the Future” series. Amity University’s journey from a backyard college to a private university is often attributed to its aggressive marketing. In many circles, it is known as the “safe” option for students who cannot get in anywhere else. Ditto for IIPM which has consciously positioned itself as a ‘not for the cream’ students, and asks students to ‘dare to think beyond the IIMs’.

Some institutes have roped in celebrities to endorse them. Cricketer Anil Kumble endorses the Manipal Education group, while IIPM roped in Shahrukh Khan to host its annual business and marketing quiz. NIIT’s brand ambassador for several years has been world chess champion Viswanathan Anand. “You can’t force-fit an actor or a beauty queen as a brand ambassador for an institute. The brand  ambassador has to be completely convinced of the brand he is endorsing,” says Sanjiv Kataria, a strategic communications counsel and brand custodian at NIIT until 2006.

Skeptics warn that institutes often confuse spreading awareness with brand building. “Reputation is not bought by buying media space and PR. Repute is built by the quality of students, the faculty,and the research backbone of the institute,” says brand strategy specialist Harish Bijoor. According to him brands can be built two ways — “top-down” by using advertising to build brand name and appeal or “bottom-up” by building a brand through grass-root work and reputation build-up. He compares the “bottom up” approach to the way Mahatma Gandhi built his brand. “He did not take full page ads saying “Gandhi Shining”. His brand was built through subliminal experience of the brand through his work,” he says.

Putting Branding Into Action
“Branding of education institutes is more than creating a brand name or a logo ,” remarks Uday Salunkhe, Director, Welingkar Institute of Management. According to him what unites the people that connect with a brand is the value of the engagement it creates. More than implementing a new logo or a tagline, effective brand building should take a holistic view of the institute and capitalise on its strengths and unique qualities. Fine-focused positioning is very important for branding institutes.

Take the case of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). What makes it the brand it is today? Is it because it has been around for a long time or is it because there are only six of them while the whole country is clamouring for more?

Branding is all about telling a story. Institutes need to develop a hook and pitch their story to prospective students. The top institutes spread the story of how difficult they are to enter, while the upcoming ones tout their infrastructure and teaching methodologies. The key is to effectively use overt advertising and mass media in the short term, and then let the product speak for itself in the long-term. “Till the first batch of students come out, you can only speak about founders, the faculty, and processes. After that you have a product (passed out students) to showcase,” says Kataria.

The Indian School of Business (ISB) seems to have got this strategy pat down. When it first launched six years ago, ISB used media to create awareness of its world-class faculty from Wharton and Kellogg. It created differentiation by introducing a one-year MBA program, the first of its kind in the country. After the first two years, it relied solely on word of mouth to get prospective students.

Word of mouth is really effective since the choice of an education institute is influenced by external forces like parents and friends. Leveraging the alumni network is one of the most effective and low cost option to keep the brand alive.

Another important aspect of branding is to effectively use the Internet (see box). According to an IMRB survey, 49 percent people surveyed used the internet to search for education information. “Education institutes need to invest in social media solutions over the long term. This will help them create and entrench a positioning, engage prospects, and counter negative feedback,” says social media expert Saurabh Pandey.

Staying Relevant
Even established brands might need refurbishing. Manipal University is the oldest private university in India and has over the last 50 years made the township of Manipal in Karnataka synonymous with education. It has carefully kept the brand evolving. “A bit of re-branding is required every now and then. New infrastructure, new courses and new facilities are being added every year and we need to ensure that the brand stays relevant in people’s minds ,” says Alex Chandy, spokesperson for Manipal University.

While debates might rage over exactly how to assess the value of brands, everyone agrees that brands represent real and significant financial value to their owners. Managing a brand therefore definitely requires careful and strategic investment and stewardship.