Aug 31, 2006 1
Despite slurs, Jughead U still less prestigious than Yale
Special hello to my readers from Thunder Bay–what, didn’t think to cloak your IPs? Moving on.
Looks like that publicity stunt I wrote about earlier overlooked a large portion of its audience in targeting young people. What a perfect example of the risks of edgy marketing that Morgan Davis and others have been reminding me about in comments!
School knocked for mocking Yale grad Bush
Reuters: Mon Aug 28, 2006
Lynne Olver“It was literally a tongue-in-cheek way of getting attention,” Frederick Gilbert, president and vice-chancellor of Lakehead University, said on Monday.
“The young people picked it up that way,” he added. “I must say that older generations, well even some of our students, have looked at it as not appropriate.”
Gilbert said there have been more than 7,000 hits on the Web site, and online comments were about 95 percent positive. But e-mail messages to him and the university’s communications staff are “running in the opposite direction” and that is a concern, he said.
Okay, 5% is no big deal, right? Depends which 5%. By the way, which “young people” picked it up “that way”? As mentioned in the above quote, that 5 percent includes some of Lakehead’s 7600 students.
Isabelle Poniatowski, president of the Lakehead University Student Union, called the marketing campaign low-brow and lacking in class.
“It still strikes me as being very repugnant,” Poniatowski said. “Lakehead has so many positive attributes that you could really sell to people that live down south.”
In a weekend editorial called “Jughead University,” the right-wing National Post newspaper wrote: “It is a serious mistake for Lakehead to try to inflate its own appeal by attacking other, far more prestigious institutions.”
I am not sure if “people that live down south” refers to America, but I think that’s a fair assumption. In any event, what will Lakehead do now?
Gilbert said Lakehead plans to ride out the public relations storm without removing the posters or taking down the Web site.
“You don’t undo the damage that has been done, if there’s damage, by simply retracting,” he said, adding the school will try to respond individually to people who expressed concerns.
I thought this whole promotion was quite cute until I realized that Lakehead is the same school which banned WiFi on the basis of its supposed health risks, without citing any scientific support for that ban. Decisions like that make even the most simian of politicians appear quite bright. I wouldn’t be very happy if I were a Lakehead alumnus right about now.

I'm currently a junior at Yale University and I've been blogging about college admissions and higher education marketing trends since I began my college application process in 2005. I now also write about my experience here at Yale. I just got back from studying abroad at Peking University this past Fall 2009 in Beijing, China!
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