St. Bonaventure University is launching yet another marketing strategy, as seen in this prototype advertisement.
Unimpressed by results from previous marketing campaigns, St. Bonaventure University officials Saturday unveiled a new slogan meant to attract prospective freshmen.
The new “St. Bonaventure University: Just %#@&in’ Come Here!” campaign replaces “Becoming Extraordinary,” a strategy that lasted 13 months and reportedly cost the university $30,000 to design and implement.
“The president, cabinet and trustees were all getting bored with the old slogan because they felt it wasn’t imperative enough,” said Colton Crosswire, university spokesman. “An independent survey of prospective students found the campaign to be too bland and passive, so we went for a more risqué approach.”
Crosswire said university officials developed the new strategy in-house, in consultation with students and faculty in the advertising and marketing fields.
“With money tight, we needed to do things a little thriftier, but we certainly didn’t want to come up with something like that ‘Get a life’ atrocity we used a few years ago,” Crosswire said, referring to the old university slogan, “Get a life worth living at St. Bonaventure University.”
A spokesman for university relations said the department would roll out its new advertisements and a new front page for the university Web site in the coming days.
The “Becoming Extraordinary” campaign was launched in October 2007 and saw limited success, but critics derided it for the repetitive commercials and soft language it used.
Junior Eric Morales, a marketing major who worked on the new campaign, said he thinks it will be more successful than past strategies.
“Kids these days have too many options for everything and that makes them indecisive,” Morales said. “They need someone to tell them what to do and that’s exactly what this campaign strives for.”
Yolanda Germaine, associate professor of marketing, said using the phrase “Just %#@&in’ Come Here!” will appeal to prospective students with its straight-forward, forceful language.
“We’re using the vernacular of this particular generation,” Germaine said. “It will appeal to them on a subconscious level — it’s like how a friend would talk to them.”
St. Bonaventure students’ receptions varied.
“I think it’s a little too off-color for a Franciscan university to use,” said sophomore Caitlin Ogilvy, a theater major.
Her boyfriend, Jason Fitzpatrick, disagreed.
“St. Bonaventure has to do whatever it can to get people to enroll here and if this is how they think they need to do it, great,” Fitzpatrick, a senior physical education major, said. “Plus I think it’s pretty sweet they’re using the language we use. That’s exactly what I said to my roommates Friday night when they didn’t want to meet me at the bar. And you know what? They %#@&in’ came.”
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