I Know Bobinski or His Folks Read This...

BarrelORum said:
I was a business major at Tech. Own a small commercial construction company now. You seriously just don't get it.
I have to believe this type of thinking comes from an engineering grad with no concept for marketing and sales but a background in being a desk jockey drawing pretty lines on paper.

You have a 30 second clip during a football game to sell your school to a National audience. More importantly, these ads are used to market to potential student athletes. So you do that by showing tricycle racing or your typical Tech nerd giving speeches about Iron Man suits?

Understand something please, It has nothing to with an insecurity or feeling embarrassed. When that video went viral, it was cool for a few days. As Techies, we can all appreciate the Iron Man Suit speech. When you use it to market your school to outsiders on national tv you are driving a wedge between you and your audience. That guy appeals to less than 5% of your öööö audience! It's ööööing stupid to use that as a marketing tool.

What would be better? How about a commercial utilizing Calvin Johnson's science project of building a waste water system for third world countries and capitalizing on his high powered image? You bring athletics and academics together and you are utilizing a guy who has become a household name and is possibly the most visible athlete next to Lebron James? You think that sells to the entire audience?

How about a commercial showing Bey Bey, Derrick Morgan, Calvin, Wheeler, etc etc highlighting their college careers mixed in with some accomplished students like the Iron Man suit guy and then panning to a shot of them sitting in a classroom with other students with the narrator saying "Greatness starts in the classroom"? That appeals to the entire audience and it sure as öööö looks great to potential recruits!

We have more big name stars in pro sports right now than ever before and were rolling out videos during sporting events that show a bunch of kids on tricycles and a dude giving an Iron Man speech that appeal to less than 5% of America!

Know your öööö audience! Some of you need a freaking clue! This is exactly the same mentality of the poor leadership we have that is wasting an opportunity.
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BOR...I think you absolutely nailed it on this one!
 
EffinDane said:
I'm totally shocked to run into an m-train grad who is totally convinced that he is way smarter than all those engineering grads across campus.

I don't even totally disagree with you regarding the effectiveness of our marketing and branding. I think it's a weak spot, but blushing and blaming our recruiting failures on a commercial is just dumb and a waste of time and energy.

Auburn, Oregon, Kansas State, etc. are not seeing loads of recruiting success because of their commercials. They are successful because they have no standards, and their boosters can and do gladly pay future NFL, JUCO criminals to play for their teams.
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Don't jump to conclusions. You haven't been listening to what I'm saying. I'm not blaming our recruiting woes on that. I'm saying these commercials illustrate that there is a massive disconnect between our academic arm and our athletic arm because they clearly cannot grasp the opportunity they have and the audience they are Exposing themselves too. To me those commercials are a fine example of the mentality of The Hill and its Disconnect if not complete Apathy towards a strong Athletics Program.
 
Some of you are complete retards. Yes, I didn't go to Tech. I know that commercial is ööööing retarded. You guys who defend this whole "Tech has nerds and it is the cool thing because we are so much smarter than everyone..." are clueless. Yeah we get it. GT has nerds in the classroom and on campus. However on the football field this is not the case. These are athletes who are here to play football and get the easiest path to an education along with it as possible, for the most part. Sean Bedfords and Roddy Jones types aside.

If you want elite recruits to pay any kind if attention to you and you have 30 seconds on NATIONAL ööööING TELEVISION when no other game is going on and folks are paying attention you better make the commercial count. We are marketing to elite athletes not more nerds to go to Georgia Tech. That's the message this commercial is directed to. The pocket protector nerds who want to build suits because that gets them amped up because they saw it in that cool comic book movie.

Wrong audience. That's the issue I have with the commercial. And please spare this thread with y'all's need insecurities. Those of you who think I take issue with the skinny nerd yelling on TV are not getting the full picture. It's the message to the wrong audience basically a complete and utter waste of marketing time. People watching football want to see things highlighting football at the program. Not iron man suit making 101.
 
beej67 said:
I'm pretty sure the only people who have a problem with that commercial never went to Tech.

Newsflash. GT has nerds. So what. It's 2014, nerds are cool now.
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You are very wrong in that assumption.

But if you were not, are you also thinking that children are born as a fan / supporter of a particular University?

You don't think that, during their lifetime, they can start to love a certain University. What would attract, or detract, them from doing so?
 
But our audience IS less than 5% of America. It takes special people to want to be engineers and like it or not, engineers and engineering research are what we are built on. That commercial does appeal to the average Tech matriculant.

If we make your average university commercial and it appeals to more people, so what? Great, we've caught the attention of a bunch of folks that probably can't hack it at Tech anyway.

I like your ideas for commercials. Seriously, they would be great spots. But until there is a fundamental change in how Tech operates (including privatizing to escape the reach of UGA regents, adding majors and building well respected non-engineering schools, finding a calc-free jock major or two to stick JUCO kids into) we're just rearranging the furniture. We are already getting the best and brightest students in the state and bringing in lots of smart kids from out of state. You say that you aren't talking about our lack of decent football recruiting, but that's really the only other piece of the puzzle that's missing.

I understand and agree with your frustration with the apparent lack of cooperation between the Hill and the GTAA.
 
EffinDane said:
But our audience IS less than 5% of America. It takes special people to want to be engineers and like it or not, engineers and engineering research are what we are built on. That commercial does appeal to the average Tech matriculant.

If we make your average university commercial and it appeals to more people, so what? Great, we've caught the attention of a bunch of folks that probably can't hack it at Tech anyway.

I like your ideas for commercials. Seriously, they would be great spots. But until there is a fundamental change in how Tech operates (including privatizing to escape the reach of UGA regents, adding majors and building well respected non-engineering schools, finding a calc-free jock major or two to stick JUCO kids into) we're just rearranging the furniture. We are already getting the best and brightest students in the state and bringing in lots of smart kids from out of state. You say that you aren't talking about our lack of decent football recruiting, but that's really the only other piece of the puzzle that's missing.

I understand and agree with your frustration with the apparent lack of cooperation between the Hill and the GTAA.
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I do not agree. You're not just advertising to potential students. You're putting out there the perception of your university. More importantly your doing it in a sporting environment. You can accept the top 5% of the potential student field yet still send an attractive message to the masses that builds interest. We're not doing that.

Privatizing isn't ever going to happen. That's not realistic. What I've said is realistic. You're trying to make it sound like its a mountain of a job. It's not. It's really simple but we just fail miserably at the details.
 
BarrelORum said:
I was a business major at Tech. ...an opportunity.
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This is a great summary. We could have capitalized better than we did on his 15 minutes of fame. Plus, there are so many other things that could sell the school so much better than we currently do.
 
Without getting into the whole management vs engineering argument, I actually think BOR's ideas for commercials are freaking brilliant.

Which one of us wouldn't love to see players like Calvin Johnson, Michael Johnson, Demaryius Thomas, Morgan Burnett, Mark Texiera, Jason Varitek, etc in Tech commercials? Seems like we're leaving an incredibly valuable set of resources untapped.
 
If you don't think we can make any of the big changes I mentioned, what is your point? Who cares if the AA/the Hill are team players if it doesn't win us more football games? Right now you are basically saying that if more people like us, the better our school and athletics will be. It's just wishful, feelgoody, magic fix thinking that doesn't actually solve any of our problems.
 
EffinDane said:
If you don't think we can make any of the big changes I mentioned, what is your point? Who cares if the AA/the Hill are team players if it doesn't win us more football games? Right now you are basically saying that if more people like us, the better our school and athletics will be. It's just wishful, feelgoody, magic fix thinking that doesn't actually solve any of our problems.
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We can't privatize. There's actually a good post about this on the board a few months ago that explain this better. Search function.

I'm not looking to solve all of our problems overnight. I'm just suggesting to solve one right now which is the image we are selling. Adding majors, lowering requirements all these things, I'd like to see addressed. In the immediate, however, lets at least address the things we can do right now to maximize the current product offering. We can't even do that.

Step 1: let's maximize what we are currently trying to do.
Step 2: explore and execute ways to make GT more competitive both academically and athletically.

To not go thru with step 1 because you're trying to figure out step 2 is just laziness. That's just throwing out excuses. There's no öööö reason for it.
 
The commercial is cringy, no doubt. I'm still dumbfounded by those of you who essentially want to change the entire academic composition and focus of the school to win more football games though.
 
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