Posted by: Martin Bojam
on Mar 9, 2010
With HE making headlines about funding cuts, FE can easily be overlooked. Yet this sector drives the economy by providing skilled technicians and that's what most companies want. Funding is also tight for FE, and leaders in the sector will have to learn the lessons others have learned before them. Apart from the miserable business of cost cutting, there are a number of pro-active steps which can be taken and which can lighten the gloom.
Is branding still important? Most certainly, yes. Stakeholders have to understand what a college is all about, what its core brand values are, what it stands for, what benefits it brings to stakeholders. New college structures will undoubtedly emerge, as a result not just of mergers, but of the formation of federations and other groupings and the need for powerful branding which presses the right buttons with employers and stimulates them to pay for training will be paramount.
Posted by: Martin Bojam
on Feb 17, 2010
Even today, parts of the Education world regard Branding with great suspicion, a symbol of commercialism, a waste of resources, and an encouragement of competition, something which has no place alongside research, teaching and training.
Years ago, when I used to run a youth club, I was in no doubt that I wasn’t running a business – the outcomes sought were human, not financial, for a start. Nonetheless, I used to make a critical distinction between a business and behaving in a businesslike manner – I never saw any virtue in having no members, or no money! The analogy is not really far fetched – educational institutions need to behave in the same businesslike manner.
Posted by: Martin Bojam
on Aug 25, 2009
Tagged in:
Warwick ,
Martin Bojam ,
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Ian Rowley ,
FE Colleges ,
Education sector ,
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CASE ,
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Branding ,
360 Education
Well, here goes, my first ever blog. Time, I guess, for me to join the 21st century.
Last December, Ian Rowley (Director of Development, Communications and Strategy at the University of Warwick) and I gave a talk at the CASE Asia-Pacific Conference in Hong Kong. It was entitled “The Perfect Storm” and was about the confluence of trends in demographics, globalisation/competition, finance, and technology, leading inexorably to a vision of a small number of elite campus based institutions whilst everyone else sat at home studying in front of their computers. Needless to say, the white knight riding to the rescue was called Branding, on his trusty steed Marketing.
