Dr. Scott Powell - Part 2: Positioning Grove City College

Join us for part 2 of our interview with Dr. Scott Powell, Professor of Marketing at Grove City College. Dr. Powell discusses how outside forces and four different presidents in 14 years impacted the marketing of the college, and how he would alter things if he were in charge. Mark and Lorraine also ask about the macro trends going on with higher education and why Dr. Powell believes Grove City College has been able to buck those trends.

Spend 30-ish with Mark, Lorraine, and Dr. Scott Powell to discuss all things marketing, advertising, and positioning.

Transcript

Mark Vandegrift
Welcome to the latest episode of the Brand Shorthand podcast. I’m your host, Mark Vandegrift, and today, Lorraine and I pick up on the second part of our interview with Dr. Scott Powell, professor of marketing at Grove City College. We’ll start with the last portion of where the interview left off last week so we can get a running start into the topic of re-positioning Grove City College.

Dr. Scott Powell
So if you're looking for some place that has a challenge and is conservative and Christian and you want to be able to afford it, we're kind of your place to go. And as Hillsdale has done a really good job with fundraising, I think they have like a billion dollar endowment or something, it's very large.

Mark Vandegrift
Yes. And 98 % of their donors have never stepped foot on the campus. Yep.

Dr. Scott Powell
Yes, that used to be a really significant part of donations to our campus, but that has, that has, it's not as important as it used to be anymore. I remember when I was assistant to the president in 1991, we would often get, you know, letters from people, “I appreciate your stance and here's a check to support that.” And it was really central to who we were. But I think as Hillsdale kind of started to own that position and we kind of were going slightly different ways, that's when we had to kind of reposition a little bit. 

And I think about the time that you and Lorraine got invited over to help us, I had kind of come up with the idea of Ivy of a different league. We're an Ivy-like school in that we're very serious about academics. We've got this beautiful campus that looks kind of Ivy League-ish, but we're not woke. And you're not going to go broke because of our tuition being so high. And so that was kind of a category that I was trying to figure out how to communicate that and you guys came over and helped us pitch some ideas and unfortunately, I was outgunned and outvoted and we didn't end up going with you, which I think was to our true detriment because after, shortly after that I gave up my position as marketing director and moved to faculty and we've had like four or five different, How can I put this tactfully? Four or five different directions that we've taken that none of which I think are really truly differentiating or really clearly communicate who we are. And most recently, just about, oh, I think two, three weeks ago, our marketing director retired, she resigned. And the president of the school called me down. He said, “I'd like to talk to you about strategic marketing.” 

And he said, “you know, what do you think some of the issues are that we have here at the school?” And I said, “well, number one is, we've got so many different communication silos on campus.” We kind of have the alumni office saying one thing and development is saying one thing and admissions is saying one thing. And we have a graduate program that's saying one thing and we've got departments saying different things and the sports, you know, all the sports programs. And I'm like, there's just no unity in our message. And I said, “I think we need someone to really bring all of that together, point us on the same direction and have a clear and compelling and concise position.” And he, he not being a marketer, he's like, well, tell me what do you mean by positioning? So I actually did a little primer for him and the vice president. So I'm kind of what is marketing strategy, what's positioning, how do you differentiate? And so I was, I was encouraged that they wanted to hear that because I, because I think we need to do a little bit better job of that. So I don't want to talk too much. I'm sorry if I'm too long -winded here.

Mark Vandegrift
That's great.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, one of the things that you said, I think, is one of the... To those who are listening, this is something to watch out for. You said you had like three or four different directions within a short period of time. One of those, and maybe even the tertiary one, could have been a fairly good direction. And it requires constancy and consistency, right? Sometimes it's not that you have... there's a perfect position and you have the less perfect. If you say the same thing that has some value with constancy and consistency over time, it begins to take on… it's like a snowball going down the ski slope, right? It's going to get bigger and bigger. But when you truncate that constantly, and this year it's this and next year it's that, and we're going to add to it and now devolve it, that's kind of a problem.

Now, you said something too I'm interested in. You said going back to the beginning, there was, and this almost relates to a Simon Sinek idea, there was a “why,” like why do we exist? And we exist to create leaders. And I would add the word, “principled leaders.” And where's that in today's narrative for the college?

Dr. Scott Powell
I meet with a lot of prospective faculty… I'm sorry, prospective students and their families. I always communicate that. I think some departments and what I'm calling silos, but just different communication departments on campus here, some of us say that pretty consistently, but not all of us. And I think that's a big problem. Everybody knows Nike's slogan is just do it. What's Puma's? I don't know. You know, what's Adidas'? I don't know. For a while it was “impossible is nothing.” I don't know if it's still that or not. But it's that consistency of, like you said, of saying the same thing repeatedly, oh, I understand what this is about. 

Lorraine Kessler
In the same way, largely in the same way. Yeah.

Dr. Scott Powell
And I think, yeah. Yeah. And I think we have not done as good a job of that as we can.

And, and Grove City is not struggling. I think we're doing well, but I think we could do a lot better if we could more clearly articulate our position.

Mark Vandegrift
What's funny is in the church arena, because we all come out of churches if we're in the Christian realm like you are, we get the VBS, the Vacation Bible School approach to marketing. And the killer thing there is that what's typical with VBS, there's a new theme every year. Every year it's a new theme and we have to interest kids in a different way with a different theme. And that's what happens to marketing.

That's what fights against the church is probably the worst in terms of being contrary to what Lorraine just said of consistency and constancy.

Dr. Scott Powell
Yes, it is. And it's funny because I remember kind of fighting this battle when I was the marketing director and I pitched this, this Cord of Three Strands idea, that it's these three things that make us strong and unique. And I used to get pushed back all the time. It's time for you to change that tagline. I'm like, no, it's time for you to come up with something new. You're getting paid every year and you're not creating anything new. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. And well, you know, we're tired of seeing this. I'm like, I don't care.

You're here, you're faculty. I'm trying to recruit new people. And as long as this keeps working, I'm not going to change it. I always tell my students the only time to change an ad campaign is when it stops working. That's my belief.

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, that's absolutely true. I mean, and that is the problem that people, insiders end up being saboteurs.

Mark Vandegrift
I have one thing to share with you, Scott, and maybe this will help as you share with the leadership that's talked to you. We always say branding is boring business. And it's boring for the people putting it on, but if there's a place that has a completely new audience every year, it's a university. I mean, every year you have thousands of kids you're trying to reach that they might have started to hear about you two, three years ago, but they only got serious their junior and senior year.

Dr. Scott Powell
Yes, you're right.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah. So they're going to have to, you know, kind of live with whatever's developed or you will go back to that VBS style of marketing.

Dr. Scott Powell
Yep, absolutely.

Lorraine Kessler
So one of the concerning trends, not a fad, right, is that in the field of higher education, there's been a dip, a persistent dip in enrollment. And of course, the pandemic took a bigger dip, but it's still a dip historically from 2011 to 2022. And related to that, males only represent 41% of the students now today. So it's skewed now more female. And I just wonder, you know, how is that affecting Grove City College? How is it affecting your marketing? Have you seen that dip in enrollment that's consistent with the larger scene or have you been anomalously happy?

Dr. Scott Powell
Yeah, so there's a couple things there. I think one of the biggest trends is that we are in an area of the United States, Western PA, Eastern Ohio, that not only has been losing people at a greater rate but is projected to continue to lose population. If you look at the demographic trends, maybe it's the lovely weather we get here, but people aren't just dying to live here and they are leaving the area, which is a challenge when you're a regional school which is predominantly Pennsylvania and the contiguous states, and you are having a smaller base to draw from or market to every year. That's a challenge for us. I think the thing that has really helped us is the fact that there are fewer and fewer conservative schools each year. This week, I've met with students from Utah, California, Tennessee, and Texas that came here because they're like, we didn't know there was a school like you still around.

So while the demographics in our area have been against us, the fact that we are increasingly different than most universities that are becoming much more progressive and liberal and very different culture than we have here, we've benefited from people coming from larger distances. So we have not seen an enrollment drop. We've stayed really consistent. We're about 2 ,300 students every year, and that's right-sized for us. We don't really want to grow because that changes who we are. It changes the feel. And we've never had an enrollment issue. 

As for the males, we are anomalous. We actually had the last two years; our incoming classes were 54% male. So we actually have a slight male majority by a few percentage points. And I think one reason is, that we have a lot of majors that tend to attract males. We have a strong engineering program, strong business program, things that sometimes are a little more attractive to males. Not that females don't find that interesting, but they skew heavily male, some of the harder sciences. So I don't know if it's that. 

We've noticed that we've been getting fewer applications from females, and the research that we've done is showing it because they tend to be more price sensitive. And because we don't take federal funds and because we don't have a billion dollar endowment, we're not as relatively affordable as we used to be. And we lose a lot of females who say we would love to come here, but we just don't have the financial wherewithal to pay for that. Or we're getting a huge discount or a huge scholarship elsewhere. And males have not seemed to be quite as price sensitive. So I don't know if that answers your question at all.

Lorraine Kessler
It does beautifully and it shows that, you know, when you take these macro trends, they do factor in public institutions, private institutions, and so it's not always the same. I think to your credit, that's great, but it also suggests to me an opportunity. If this conservative value set is missing and now your geography has expanded, there seems like there's more opportunity through very targeted psychographic marketing to that ideal, to that mindset to reach beyond the regional area. And are you doing that? And if so, how?

Dr. Scott Powell
Yeah, and you're exactly right. I could not agree more. And when I met with the president about two or three weeks ago, and I said, I basically said, we have some challenges, but we also have some opportunities. I think our biggest challenge is not the demographic challenge right now. It is how do we reach a larger group of people from a more diverse geographic region? And that's going to take some finances. 

And I looked over at the CFO, who kind of grimaced a little bit at me because they're always a little reticent to say, oh yes, let's increase the marketing budget. And I'm like, you know, to do that, we're going to need to increase some marketing budgets here. So I think that's on the table, and I would say that they're receptive to that. Because if we continue to lose population in this area, and fewer people in general are going to college at all these days. 

It's funny. I just read a journal, a Wall Street Journal article yesterday that was saying only about 38% of all Americans over the age of 25 have a BA degree, an undergraduate degree. Most people think it's higher than that, but it's actually in the high 30s and it's dropping, and it's been dropping every year. Because people think, you know, I'm not going to spend all this money to send my child somewhere and have them indoctrinated or not really prepare them for a career. And so I think the whole mindset of college itself is, is changing.

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, the idea that that's the only path for every child is changed. And I think that's actually healthy, right? And for a lot of reasons. 

But I would be interested because as you, one of the definitions I've read about positioning by other writers is, that your idea, you want to appeal to people who care a lot about what you value, right? So if you value, fast sports cars or affordable electric car, then that's what I need to talk about. So I think it's interesting. There are people throughout this country who care a lot about conservative values and they're not in one geographic cluster. They're not like our urban centers of New York City or LA, who are all together in one fish pool. And I think, Mark, you could probably talk to how to reach those people with that mindset affordably. That might be beneficial for you to hear because Mark is like an expert in some of the digital means that would actually, and not that we want you to say this to your, you always want more money, but actually could be done with the same budget, more effectively. So Mark, why don't you talk about that?

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, with programmatic, you're probably familiar with all those different channels, but the targeting capability that's available with ConnectedTV, audio advertising, all of your search platforms are focused on that now. And of course, social, you can do so much targeting now that is real time and turn it on tomorrow, turn it off the next day.

And the return on that is far more impressive than just trying to do the broad-based advertising that's been done in the past. A lot of organizations, business to business especially, never thought TV was an option. But now because I can go out there and I can reach a family that has teenage people in it, that has a capability to be very attractive to organizations like a university. And you already have your modes of going out and selling and being at college fairs and things like that. But even as you travel geographically to do that, you're not, I mean, you do have to spend more money because if you come over to Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy, which is north of us about a half an hour for you all, that's like an hour and 15 minutes.

But if you go out to Indiana, now you're looking at four hours, five hours, six hours, so your staff has to pay more to get out there. It would be much better to develop that advertising that brings the prospect to you rather than having to go the other way with it. So geographically, the way that you could expand that way is through the programmatic channels that are available that have a lot of targeting involved. 

And we know we had Roy Williams on here last year. And he was against targeting entirely. And I think, you know, he's talking about retail and he's talking about many times, very local organizations. We couldn't agree with them more. But when you're looking at this scenario where your dollar is only going to go so far and you need every impression to count, those programmatic channels that are available now are just, they're so attractive.

You can't argue with them. They might cost more per impression. You only have maybe five to 10% wasted impression instead of 90 to 95% wasted impression. It's almost upside down in terms of that.

Lorraine Kessler
And since I'm the oldest person on this panel by far, I'm going to go back to something I long ago used to introduce a new brand of cat litter and have forgotten about. And it was called indexing, indexing markets. Like we actually indexed markets by cat ownership and therefore we didn't have money to spend everywhere.

So we decided to pick off the top 10 markets because we could afford to be in those markets. And indexing combined with the programmatic and the targeting today still seems to me to be a perfect blend of old school, new school. You know, yeah. I totally forgot about that. In all the flurry of the new media and everything that's happened. It's like, let's just do an index. Yeah.

Dr. Scott Powell
Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Yeah, and I think you made a good point. It's not out with the old and in with the new. I think it's a combination. I think it's a both and. And using them together, I think is a really effective means of reaching audience. I mean, that's why Walmart just spent, what, $2 billion to buy Vizio TV because of the set top data that they're going to acquire and to be able to understand what are people watching and how do we target different products to them based on their viewing preferences. And so, yeah, the whole move towards programmatic and retail media, I think is proof that this works.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, the psychographic targeting is unbelievable. It's a little scary. And with AI now, they're able to quickly develop models that you wouldn't otherwise be able to figure out on your own.

Dr. Scott Powell
Right, yeah. But you're exactly right. I mean, our product is one, our college is one that definitely needs to do psychographic modeling and targeting because we're looking for a particular kind of student here. We're not for everyone.

Lorraine Kessler
And I think a particular type of family who supports that student, because I know some people from our church who attended your college. In fact, I think we interviewed them. And it was not… most higher ed involves parents as well too, especially when you're talking about living on campus type of situation. But I think what came across very loud and clear was this decision for Grove City seemed to be more influenced by family commitment than other schools like Ohio State or some of, well, maybe Ohio State's a bad example because people are rabid about that. But it just seemed there was a lot more involvement and appreciation for the values of the school.

Dr. Scott Powell
Yeah, and honestly, that's why I love teaching here. It's like a teacher's dream. I go into the classroom in the morning. Students are respectful. They're sitting there. They have their notebooks open, ready to learn. I'm like, you guys are a teacher's dream. I can't imagine what some classrooms are like these days and the students aren't motivated to learn and they don't really care. It's really nice to be in a place where students really, really desire some learning and willing to work hard to learn.

And so yeah, it's kind of a unique student that we bring here that I'm blessed to be able to teach.

Mark Vandegrift
When I taught there, it was night and day compared to some other colleges that I go into and lecture. The students at Grove City were outstanding. The engagement with the questions that evening that I did the lecture and then the next day in the classroom, all attentive. And I think you were the only one that fell asleep while I was lecturing.

Dr. Scott Powell
I didn't think you saw me.

Lorraine Kessler
So Mark, you could have been a pastor. It was going to be your direction, but the Lord directed your steps elsewhere, as I heard. That was your plan. Oh my God, that's so funny. That's so funny.

Mark Vandegrift
Well, ironically, I was in seminary in Indiana, just like where Scott was and God directed us otherwise. So.

Dr. Scott Powell
Well, I was the black sheep because both my father and my grandfather were pastors, one for 52 years, the other for 42 years. And it started a very large church here. And I was just the quote, heir apparent. I was next in line and I'm like, that's just not my calling. And for a while I was kind of the family black sheep, but they've accepted me now that I'm a teacher instead of a preacher.

Lorraine Kessler
One of the other questions I had was it's kind of an interesting thing, you know, all this politicking about the government freeing students from debt. An NPR survey showed that most Americans prefer that the government help rein in college costs. Now, you don't accept government funding, so. But... Rather than forgiving debt. 

So I guess the question is we're in this idea today of the affordability of the four -year college. And while I think it's good to have other paths open and vocational, and I certainly applaud that, what effect do you think that the higher costs have had on maybe deterring students who should choose a four-year college as a path?

Dr. Scott Powell
Right? You know, first of all, I completely agree. I don't think a four-year college is right for everyone. I think there are a lot of students who have abilities and career paths that a vo-tech school or a technical school or even a high school degree where you can get on the job training are really the best courses of action for them. That said, the students that do want a four-year education, most colleges are spending so profligately. It's just... It's ridiculous how much money is spent. 

Grove City has always, by definition, kind of been forced to be a little bit more efficient with their use of money because we don't get any government funds. And we don't have a huge endowment to just rest on our laurels and take all the interest and spend as we wish. So we've always been kind of forced to be efficient. And I like that it's kind of in our DNA. 

And again, it's hard. I feel for these students that actually graduate with mountains of debt. And I'm like, especially if it's in a career path that's a really valuable career but may not pay a lot of money. If I'm a social work major and I'm coming out and I've got $90,000 in debt, how do I pay that debt? just seems irresponsible to me, not for the person but for schools to do that to someone. 

Lorraine Kessler
Yes, I totally agree. And I think what's happened is we went through this empire building phase, right, where everywhere you turn, they're building new buildings and new amenities and all to attract students. And it was as if there was never going to come a day when you had to pay the piper. I mean, and then to participate too… I think forcing students to take loans or to, let's say, this is the bad use of marketing, to incentivize students to take loans that their career would never pay back in a reasonable lifetime, I think is criminal. Yeah, I hope that stops.

Dr. Scott Powell
I agree. And it's like those credit cards, you know, no credit bad credit. We've got a card for you… It's only 70% interest like okay, you're someone to dug themselves into a hole and you're giving them a bigger shovel I just don't think that's good marketing

Lorraine Kessler
No, it's not responsible at all. So, and I know Grove City from what you said earlier, you know, you're managing your size, you're managing because you feel that that's key to the quality and the type of education and even who you are DNA wise. I wish more colleges had that kind of tether to their position, to their idea of who they are and what they offer. That's a powerful thing.

Dr. Scott Powell
Yeah, I agree. And it's just fortuitous that God led me here because I didn't know a lot about colleges. And I just happened to be connected with one that I think has done a really responsible job and is trying to really do a good job of educating students without financially paralyzing them for years.

Mark Vandegrift
Very good.

Dr. Scott Powell
Well, this has been such a pleasure. Thank yi for having me guys. Lorraine, it was so nice catching up with you, it's been too long.

Lorraine Kessler
It’s really good catching up with you too. 

Mark Vandegrift
This concludes our interview with Dr. Scott Powell. A huge thank you to Dr. Powell for taking the time to chat with us and give us insights on how he’s integrating positioning into the world of academia and what’s happening at Grove City College.

As always, we ask that you like, share, comment, and tell others about the Brand Shorthand podcast, where we cover the principles of positioning and all things marketing. Until next time, have an amazing day!