University Advertises on a ‘Need to Know’ Basis

A new campaign for a university is borrowing a page from Dale Carnegie in trying to win friends and influence the influencers.

The campaign, now under way, promotes Boston University as a center for world-class research. The image-building campaign, in print and online, is different from the typical campaign from a college or university that is aimed at potential students and their parents.

In this instance, the primary target market is so-called thought leaders who influence the rankings on the surveys of best colleges and universities published by the likes of U.S. News and World Report, The Times Higher Education, The Princeton Review and The Fiske Guide to Colleges.

That target audience is composed of deans, provosts and presidents at other universities and colleges — the people who respond to those surveys. For example, Boston University is ranked 59th in the 2010-11 edition of The Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

The campaign carries the theme “The world needs to know,” which is meant to have two meanings. One is that “the world needs to know” more about the important discoveries being made at Boston University.

The other meaning is that “The world needs to know” more about B.U.

Each ad is illustrated with photographs that are devoted to a type of research, in fields like sports-related head injuries, engineering and global climate change.

The text of each ad describes those findings as a reason that Boston University is among the “leading,” “most respected” or “great” centers of “research and knowledge” — and “why thinking differently about our world begins with B.U.”

The campaign, with a budget estimated at less than $500,000, is the first work for Boston University from Allen & Gerritsen, an agency in Watertown, Mass.

The campaign is among many timed to begin with the start of the 2011-12 academic year. Now that the Class of 2015 has settled in on campuses around the country, the chase is on among universities and colleges to fill seats in the classes of years beyond.

And that chase is intensifying because of demographic factors. For the last several years, it was a seller’s market in higher education as millions of “echo boomers” — the children of the baby-boom generation — went off to obtain degrees.

But the next batch of youngsters climbing the educational ladder is smaller, meaning it will be more of a buyer’s market.

“You’re seeing the demographics shift as the number of students coming out of high school is going down,” says Steve Burgay, vice president for communications at Boston University.

As a result, he adds, “we’re finding a shift down in the number of applicants.”

That change portends “fiercer competition for the best possible students,” Mr. Burgay says, “and faculty as well, people we hope will spend an academic career here.”

Another factor that is making recruitment more challenging is the economy.

“When you’re charging, as many colleges do, $50,000 a year, people need to feel they’re getting value for their money,” Mr. Burgay says, “especially when money is tight.”

(He estimates that tuition, room and board at Boston University, which is a private university, costs about $50,000 a year.)

Offsetting that, Mr. Burgay says, is the belief that “in tough economic times” there is “almost always” among consumers “a flight to quality” — “particularly in higher education, where people are being asked to pay a high tuition bill.”

Indeed, the increasing costs of attending well-known colleges and universities during this fraught economy have produced critics who are asking students to consider alternative choices.

“If a few high-resolution photos and some clichés about ‘thinking differently about the world’ are enough to influence your decision about an investment in higher education, you really have to rethink whether you have the brain power to benefit from college,” says Zac Bissonnette, the author of “Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships or Mooching Off My Parents.”

“There is some irony in an institution that purports to teach critical thinking engaging in branding campaigns like this, the goal of which is to bypass critical thinking and create an association of a ‘name’ with ‘quality,’ ” Mr. Bissonnette writes in an e-mail.

Mr. Bissonnette recently graduated from a public university, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and in his book asserts that an expensive education from a private university will not guarantee a young man or woman a better job or a higher salary.

Needless to say, the powers that be at Boston University have a different opinion. And it is opinions that are motivating the campaign.

Students considering attending B.U., as well as professors considering teaching and conducting research there, “base their thinking, and ultimately their decision, on reputation,” Mr. Burgay says.

Among their questions, he adds, are these: “‘Do I want to get a degree there?’ ‘Will I feel good and proud when I publish my papers?’”

Donors, too, “want to know they’re putting their money behind a leading institution,” Mr. Burgay says. “It all comes back to what do they think about us.”

And in many instances, he adds, people “have a very dated perception” of Boston University that “goes back to the days when we were a commuter school, a local college, a subway college; people would take the T to B.U.” (The reference is to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, nicknamed the T.)

“When you’re defined by perceptions that are 10, 15, 20, 25 years old, it’s important to bring the university’s current state to people’s attention,” Mr. Burgay says.

So the idea behind the campaign “is simple,” he adds. “We’re holding a mirror up to the institution; every one of the ads is tied to a faculty member.”

For instance, the ad about the research into sports-related head injuries carries this headline: “Some football players are rewriting the record books. Others, the medical journals.”

The text begins: “It’s pretty obvious. You get hit in the head, you get brain damage. But by looking at sports-related head injuries beyond the obvious, you’re also getting a better understanding of diseases like A.L.S. and Alzheimer’s.”

“It’s this kind of different perspective and approach that has made Boston University one of today’s great research institutions,” the text concludes. “And why thinking differently about our world begins with B.U.”

After describing the research as “the kind of different perspective and approach that has made Boston University one of today’s great research institutions,” the ad directs readers to a section of the Boston University Web site, where they can watch a video clip about the research.

The ad about the research into climate change follows the same template. The headline reads: “The latest findings by a leading expert on global warming. The loblolly pine tree.”

The text begins: “Conventional wisdom says that planting more trees will reduce carbon dioxide levels and combat global warming. But the trees themselves are telling us they can only do so much. And that we need to keep working to find other solutions.”

That ad directs readers to another section of the Web site, where another video awaits.

Likewise with the ad about the engineering research. Its headline reads: “Medicine has taken us far in treating age-related diseases. Engineering could take us the rest of the way.”

“As the aging population keeps growing, there’s a real need to understand what happens inside cells that can lead to diseases like Alzheimer’s,” the text begins. “By using engineering principles in our study of cells, we’ll be able to identify genes that can be ‘tuned up’ and help reverse age-related conditions.” That ad directs readers to another section of the Web site, where another video can be watched.

Boston University “wasn’t known as a place where a lot of research was being done,” says Doug Gould, a creative director and art director at Allen & Gerritsen, who worked on the campaign with Eivind Ueland, a creative director and copywriter.

“It’s hard to change people’s impressions,” Mr. Gould says, a fact that was proved at the agency itself.

“We were skeptical to begin with” about the concept of a new Boston University, he adds, “because many of us grew up here” — including Mr. Gould — and had perceptions based on what B.U. had been.

“When they told us how much they’re doing, our minds were changed,” Mr. Gould says, and the agency executives then told the university executives that “we need to tell people the story the way you’ve told it to us.”

“One thing we felt was, ‘Let’s not sell,’ ” he adds, but rather “talk about what you’re doing and let people draw their own conclusions.”

“We haven’t done anything with a heavy amount of spin,” Mr. Gould says, because that would be counterproductive in trying to reach the educators who influence where universities and colleges rank in the annual listings of the important guides.

“Running an ad about knowledge and learning should be interesting on its own merits,” he adds, as the target audience learns “what drives the people who teach and do the research at Boston University.”

Mr. Burgay says he agrees with that approach, which he calls “very straightforward, and that’s appropriate for a university.”

“Our core mission is education and research, and the way to demonstrate that is to help people see what your educators and researchers are doing,” he adds. “Otherwise, it sounds like a sales pitch, reaching for a false point of differentiation.”

Mr. Gould says there is “clearly a ‘spill’ effect in this campaign,” as the ads also reach potential students and their parents, which will be useful because “schools are going to have to work harder to attract the best students.”

“One way to do that is to change the minds of thought leaders as to what’s going on,” he adds. “What the impression is among thought leaders is equally important as what parents and students think.”

The campaign will run roughly on a semester schedule, continuing through late November and then pausing before returning in February and running through May.

The ads will appear in the print and online versions of publications like The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Times of London, the parent of Times Higher Education.

They will also run in the ranking issues of publications like U.S. News and World Report.

•

If you like In Advertising, be sure to read the Advertising column that runs Monday through Friday in the Business Day section of The New York Times print edition and on nytimes.com. And read coverage anytime of advertising, marketing, television, print, movies and new media on the Media Decoder blog at mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com.