one stupidly simple strategy to immediately increase the perceived value of your college or university by 2700%

Show Notes:

• Text version of this episode below.

• Download “The Unignorable College Enrollment Video” - A simple storytelling template for creating emotional stories that boost enrollment.

• Cliff notes: in one research experiment, 100 insignificant items were sold at a 2700% markup when there was a compelling story behind them. This illustrates how people don’t buy the thing, they buy the story attached to the thing. How this impacts higher ed marketing is that by telling stories - actual stories where there was a before and an after - the perceived value of your school is heightened. This can be done for example through student testimonials or alumni testimonials provided you know how to tell a great story (if not, see download above).

The influence that stories have on perceived value of a product is summed up perfectly in this research experiment that I'm about to share with you. This took place over a decade ago, back in 2009. Two reporters - Rob Walker from The Washington Post and Joshua Glen from The New York Times - They set out to test their belief that “stories are such a powerful driver of emotional value that their effect on any given object's subjective value can actually be measured objectively.”

So here's what they did. They purchased 100 totally insignificant objects; dumb stuff from garage sales and and thrift stores. There's a kitschy little statue of a horse's head, a coffee mug made to look like a baseball… there's a monkey puppet thing, like a monkey that you put on your hand and do like a puppet show. Some glass serving platters.

Stuff like that. I mean, if you've ever been to a thrift shop, you can probably picture what I'm talking about. Every thrift store has an entire wing dedicated to ugly glass wares. I would know because I worked at Salvation Army in high school, which was a miserable job, by the way. But I digress.

So they spent $129 on these 100 items altogether.

Then they went around to various writers. So they tapped journalists, mommy bloggers, book authors and people of that nature - professional writers who wrote fictional backstories about these items, and then they listed them online for sale. I think they went through eBay or something. I've read about this before, and I think in another article they said they went through eBay.

All of these items together ended up selling for a combined total of $3,613, which is a 2700% markup from what they were originally purchased at. Now, I sincerely hope they gave the money back to those poor people that bought these things. But it does go a long way to illustrate how a good story catapults are perceived value, because oftentimes we don't buy the thing.

We buy what the thing represents. My daughter just turned seven this past week. About a year ago, she broke her foot. We had a we had her in physical therapy and everything, and her foot was just really sensitive to re-injury. On Halloween, for example, she tripped on on a crack like I feel like pretty much every kid does and busted her foot all over again.

I was literally I was like she was six at the time. I was literally carrying a full grown six year old from house to house to get candy. It was awesome. My biceps are gigantic now as a result. So we had her in physical therapy and all that. And and she'd been doing all this great work to heal her foot.

And of course, me dad comes along and I'm like, Oh, hey, you. You guys are making progress here. I'd like to put a stop to that. So this one Saturday, I've got the kids by myself. My wife is out doing something, and and I'm like, All right, I got a reputation to uphold. Fun, dad. Mode. Here we go.

And so I decide we're going to go to a trampoline park. Long story short, I'm an idiot. I'm totally wasn't thinking about Lee's foot we were there for. I'm just. I'm not even exaggerating. 5 minutes. And she landed wrong on her foot and busted it again so she can't jump, and she's she's super upset. My other daughter, Rylan, is like, what the heck?

Like, why can't we jump? This is dumb. So thankfully, they have arcade games at this place. So I give her some money to to play those. And what does she beeline for? The claw game? The game where you, like, try to get those claws to pick up some cheap, like, stuffed animal. This, that. You know, my daughter loves the claw game.

Like, she's like a casino addict about it. Like, I have this image in my head. The first time I ever went to a casino saw this, like, weathered old lady with a cigaret in her mouth, and she had a drink in one hand and she had her credit card on a leash tied to her hip like her belt and was just swiping it, swiping it, swiping it, swiping it at the slot machines.

Like that's Ali with the claw game. She is so determined and like, she sincerely thinks she's getting a good value. Like, this is a good deal. I put in a dollar of my dad's money and I get this cool toy that I couldn't get anywhere else. Just insane return on investment. So by the time you actually managed to get the claw to hang on to one of these cheap toys, you've you've likely spent significantly more money than you would have if you just went to the dollar store and bought something like that or bought something similar.

But that's not what it's about. It's not about the thing for kids, right? It's it's about the story that the thing represents. My daughter could care less about the actual toy, but by the next day, that thing would be buried in the in the couch with all the Cheerios and whatever else is in there, God knows what and just forgotten about.

It's it's the thrill, the anticipation of winning something and of a victory, you know, overcoming the odds that keeps kids coming back and spending dollar after dollar after dollar on these games. So higher ed marketing, higher ed storytelling. What can we take away from these examples? Prospective students don't just buy a college education. So if we're honest, they can get a quality education in a lot of schools.

I'm sorry to say. No, I'm not I'm not saying that, you know, your school is the same. This is just a copycat clone of everyone else. There is something magical in your school. And the way you talk about it is how that magic comes to life. But they're they're not buying a piece of paper that says they went to college.

They're buying the story that's attached to that piece of paper. They want to know that someone like them had a transformational experience as a result of your school and they wouldn't have gotten to where they are today if it weren't for the specific environment that your school provided them. Prospective students are buying the opportunity for that to be their story.

They're buying this story of finding their way in life, finding their vocation, finding what they're good at. They're buying freedom. They're buying the freedom to try new things and learn and fail and have more autonomy and navigate life apart from their parents. They're buying what your school's logo represents prestige, history, a track record of successful graduates who are out there doing big things.

And maybe your school has a strong online focus, and they're buying the story of what it takes to have the life that they want on their own terms, on their own schedule from anywhere in the world. You know, that story of a single mom with young kids who decided to make a better life for herself and her family by attending online school.

And and she's worked all day, and now she's got her kids to bed, and she's putting in that extra push to just set herself and her family up for a better future. You know, that's the story that they're buying. And when we tell unique stories, stories that people can see themselves in and want that person's story to be their story, we differentiate our school in a way that communicating the features and benefits can't do because features and benefits fall short of creating an emotional connection.

People don't connect with information or at least not very easily. Like, it's nice to know that you have modern technology in your classrooms and professors are good at what they do. And your food court has plenty of vegan and gluten free options. But they connect with other people. And stories are about people. People don't buy the thing. They buy the story that's attached to the thing and to take that even further.

They buy the emotion that's connected to the story that's attached to the thing. A little over a year ago, I bought a pickup truck. It's a ram 1500 and I love it. My first pickup truck. And now I will never not own a truck. And yeah, like a truck comes in handy and in my line of work with lugging video gear around and I'm also a homeowner.

I do lots of projects around the house and around the yard. So it comes in handy then, too. But what it really does for me is make me feel like the kind of guy that drives a truck. When I first got it, I halfway ironically had the the country music station on all the time. I used to hate country music.

Now I only hate like half of it. But I had country playing because every song is about driving a truck. Down a dirt road, kicking up mud, going to a bonfire on a Friday night, drinking a cold beer. Like I live in Troy, Michigan. It's a suburb outside of Detroit. Not like totally not in the country. There's like a Huntington Bank around the corner from my house, Somerset Mall, where all the rich people go hang out.

But country folk, those are my people. We drink Folgers, we drink Miller Lite. We're not taking crap from anybody. At least that's how I feel when I'm driving the truck, when I drive my wife's Chevy Traverse, it kind of brings me back to reality. Like, I like, I'm reminded that I just bought a flower pot at Target recently, and I'm just like a normal suburban guy.

So the moral of the story prospective students don't buy your school. They buy the stories that your school represents. So I run a video production company called Unveiled, and if you're a higher ed marketer, you want to do more storytelling or you want to do better storytelling. I have a free resource called the unlike normal college enrollment video.

It's a simple storytelling framework for telling more impactful student or alumni stories that will resonate with people emotionally. And additionally, it comes with a free list of actual questions that we use at Unveil to draw out more compelling responses from people whose story we're telling. So I'd love for you to download that, put it to use. You can get that unveiled that TV slash on ignorable college video that's unveiled is unwieldy and unaccountable kids keeps giving me like the red squiggly line under that.

I swear I Googled this a billion times. It is a word that you and I know are a bully and I'll put a link to that resource in the show notes or on this page, depending on where you're listening from. Thanks so much for listening, and I hope that the next thing that you put out into the world is a story.