Colleges Plan Media Blitz to Reach Out to Students

Some companies sell themselves with Chihuahuas and others use talking lizards.

Ventura County’s community colleges are taking a more refined approach as they launch their most ambitious advertising campaign ever to attract students in an increasingly competitive learning environment.

The district is spending more than $100,000 on radio, television and print media to help the colleges tell their stories to graduating high school seniors and other prospective students.

The schools have a receptive audience. More than 42% of Ventura County’s college-age students enroll at one of the county’s three community colleges in Moorpark, Ventura and Oxnard. But competition for Ventura County’s students may get stiffer in the coming years when classes begin at Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo.

Still, don’t expect the local two-year schools to employ animatronic lizards or toilet-bowl sailors to carry their message.

“This is a place to enrich your life, to accomplish the great things you’ve dreamed about,” said Barbara Buttner, who until recently was director of public affairs for the Ventura County Community College District. “It isn’t just a cutthroat, get students in here [type of approach]. It’s an overall image we’re trying to convey.”

That image is built on low-key, 30-second spots with the theme, “We’re Building Futures in Ventura County.” The spots highlight classroom and campus settings and urge prospective students to enroll now.

Each semester, the advertising blitz begins two weeks before classes start and continues through the first week of classes.

Enrollment at each college is monitored during the three-week campaign, and advertising is increased in markets where a school is lagging projections.

Buttner, who now works as the district’s international student liaison, targeted the commercials to specific audiences. For example, most of the county’s community college district students are women, so advertisements often appear on the Lifetime Channel.

“I know that there is a high viewer audience of women who are tuning into that station,” she said. “That’s a good way to reach them.”

In a survey conducted last spring, more than 16% of the district’s students said they had heard about the colleges through television ads.

Commercials are also run on a handful of county radio stations, although those ads have not been as successful as television in bringing in students, the survey revealed.

Print media ads have been more successful than television or radio commercials. As many as 27% of students surveyed said they learned about college programs from the newspaper.

Other methods have proved less effective. In 1992, officials distributed posters, bumper stickers and buttons that read “Design Your Future. Enroll at your community college” in hopes of boosting name recognition.

But the bumper stickers and buttons ended up as souvenirs for district employees.

The Internet has also delivered only marginal results. Fewer than 5% of students said they learned about county colleges online.

In addition to district funding, each college directs its own money and time into community outreach, offering potential students a number of services to help them get ready for college.

At Moorpark College, parents can spend an evening with college counselors. The school also gives campus tours to students as young as middle school age.

These efforts are about more than just selling Moorpark College early, said Floyd Thionnet, dean of students support services.

“In general, it’s planting the seed that college could be for you,” Thionnet said.

Throughout the year, counselors at each college will spend part of their time at local high schools helping students understand the enrollment process and answering questions about schedules and financial aid.

As a result, by fall, students will have gotten most of the preliminary paperwork out of the way.

“It’s actually marvelous,” said Lack Loritz, a counselor at Thousand Oaks High School. “It makes it an easier transition for the kids.”

Moorpark College counselors will visit the high school six times this semester, giving students plenty of opportunity to meet one-on-one with a college representative.

And they are in demand. More than 50% of seniors at Thousand Oaks High School enrolled in a community college in the fall of 1997, according to a report from the state Department of Education.

Gone are the days when community college was an option for students who weren’t quite ready for a four-year school, Loritz said.

“It was a stigma, but it’s really moved away from that with so many kids deciding to go there,” he said.

And although community colleges generally don’t recruit across district lines, Moorpark College counselors will go to high schools in the San Fernando Valley, if requested.

At Ventura College, counselors also spend much of their time in the spring helping seniors at local high schools. Soon, they plan to take along current Ventura College students so prospective students can ask questions of them.

Ralph James, who has been a counselor at Ventura College since 1974, sees himself as an instructor in higher-education operations, not a salesman.

“We don’t care where students go, just as long as they go,” James said.

Advertising is about more than just recruiting, said Bill Greulich, past president of the Community College Public Relations Organization of California. It’s also about community support. It’s essential to inform taxpayers about where and how their money is being spent.

“We have to be responsive to our communities to let them know where we are and what we are are doing,” Greulich said. “If we don’t, who is going to support us?”

Despite the marketing campaigns, the best advertising may also be the least expensive.

Administrators call it the friend factor. More than half of the students enrolling say they heard about the community college through a friend or a family member.

“It’s the word of mouth,” Thionnet said. “I suppose it could work in the negative, but we like to believe it’s the positive.”

Community college officials say they’ll continue to search for new students on all fronts.

“Do we know which works best?” Thionnet said. “No, we just try to do them all.”

That also means that it’s more than the job of just a few top officials to figure out how to improve recruiting.

“It’s a campus responsibility,” said Joan Smith, dean of institutional services at Oxnard College. “If you don’t get them through the door, you have nobody to instruct.”