My Grey World

24 May, 2007

UNSW Asia Closing Down.. Why?

Posted by: Sylvia Giacinta In: Current Affairs| something spotted

Somehow I’m not really surprised with the news. Maybe I’m heartless. Ha ha ha.

It says that it doesn’t fulfill the expectation of 300 students for the first year. They only got 148. And to make their dream ubercool building come true, they would need more fresh cash injection.

My friend said the reason is that their satellite university style would not work ever. But that’s his opinion and I’ll let him blog by himself. Hehe.

First off, look at this…

Yes, that’s an UNSW Asia ad. I took the picture at February 2nd, 2007. (provided the clock in my cellphone doesn’t cheat me).

Okay, first off. I think the ad is very aesthetically pleasing. Perfect juxtaposition of the model’s half-face and the texts, and the words are visually striking.

BUT.

The next captain of industry.

The next captain of industry? When you enter a university, is that your purpose?

Wouldn’t this be more appealing..

(cut from several different SMU advertisements. Full list of advertisements here)

THIS is the one you want to see, right? Career. Job. Those are the things you want, right? You enter university in a hope to have a career. To have a steady job. To be hired. And you want a university of choice.

And then can you see the website URL in the first advertisement? No? Well, yea. And it’s only “Visit www.unswasia.edu.sg”. Visit, then what?

Compare that to this…

I mean, isn’t the purpose clearer here? And moreover the website URL is not really easy to remember. Compare that to another university, which has the simple URL for their undergraduate admission advertisement : joinus.sg.

Oh, and the placement is simply not good. At all. Guess where’s the ad placed?

The exact same place as this ad (originally posted at Putu’s blog on March 2006)

(photo by Putu Sanjaya Setiawan)

Guess the newbie doesn’t learn from the mistake of the old guy.

Putting another ad in front of another university? Erm. I mean, hello, who do you target? The university students that are so desperate, that they want to be a captain of industry instead? Or somebody that is so desperate because he/she can’t get into insert-any-name-of-the-university-here?

Like, duh.

Why don’t they spend the money used to rent the ad space (I’m sure they do it purposely, right? You can’t just randomly assign an ad there, right?) to rent the ad space somewhere in some Polytechnics or Junior Colleges? I mean, that’s where the talent lies. That’s where the potential “consumer” resides.

So..

Uninformative ad + bad placement = not good advertising strategy.

No wonder.

Disclaimer : I have never had proper nor formal education in advertisement. Opinions expressed are personal opinions.

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