Silly Experience Swinburne Online TV Advertisment

Swinburne University wins the Higher Education Whisperer award for the silliest TV ad, for the third successive year with "Experience Swinburne Online". Last year it was online learning like a Zoomba class, this year it is students from other unis doing an interactive learning taste test (like the Pepsi Challenge). The ad doesn't quite work, with the pixeliated faces looking more like criminals than students. Of course prisoners have always been clients for distance education, but I don't think that is what Swinburne has in mind here.

Swinburne University must be feeling a little aggrieved. They have been providing online education for more than a decade, along with Australia's other teaching orientated universities. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, every university is suddenly offering online education. So Swinburne is trying to point out it is doing this better. That may well be the case, but this may not be an effective marketing strategy. 

The research orientated universities discovered long ago that students don't select a university based on the quality of the education. They select a university based on reputation, which is mostly about research prestige, and a campus with social activities, neither of which have anything to do with education. 

Despite Swinburne's slogan "Not All Online Universities Are The Same", they pretty much are. Swinburne might do better to either adopt the marketing techniques of the major universities, or attack them with humor. 

Swinburne could show people in lab coats doing science stuff, and students relaxing in the bar, then briefly mention at the end there is an online option. Or they could show a mock ad for an sandstone university with labs students are turned away from (because they are not PhDs)  and sports fields they can't use (because they are not in the elite team), then show Swinburne students happily engaging online.

How to sell a quality online course remains an unsolved problem. Students assume online courses are second best, despite research showing the learning outcomes are just as good. But facts have never been much use for selling anything. A better approach is Holly Hapke's 3-in-1 Hybrid Learning, where the distinction between on and off campus learning is blurred, with students not forced to make a choice in advance. The university can then continue to market a campus, as a symbol, if not a place where actually go very often.

Lets Do Online Learning for Social Distancing

Swinburne University's "Let's Do This" TV advertisement for e-learning has been slightly modified from previous years, to allow for social distancing (I can find the modified version online). This was originally produced by the creative team of director Curtis Hill, DP Joel Betts and Producer Elise Trenorden. In past years Swinburne have had the less silly TV ads for online courses. It will be interesting to see how the universities which have offered online courses in the past, and marketed them on TV, handle the current situation, where just about all students at all universities are studying online. This raises some difficult quesitons for the universities which are members of the Open Universities Australia consortium: if they have been able to provide most courses for most students online, why not keep doing that?

University Advertising Failing to Make the Grade

Australian universities are currently using TV advertisements to attract on-line students.

In 2016 Swinburne University's "We're here for you" campaign,  had a tutor appear in person, seemingly out of nowhere, to help an on-line student in a cafe. This year their "Let's Do This" is less silly, apart from having a cat in it. One annoying point was when the narrator says "... lets make the grade ..." the screen shows the word "Distinction" and a tick. Universities should, I suggest, avoid giving students unrealistic expectations of how easy study is and in particular distance eduction. Students should not be given the idea that making the grade means getting a distinction. This may contribute to the high levels of stress and mental illness experienced by students.

In contrast, Open Universities Australia's 'Stop asking "What if?" and find out "What now?"' campaign focuses on ease of enrollment. This is much more low key (perhaps too low key) and doesn't set too many unrealistic expectations. While I found being an on-line student very stressful, enrolling proved relatively simple. One difficulty OUA have is explaining exactly what it is: not a university, but a consortia of universalities, offering on-line courses.