The Sincerest Form of Flattery?
The honor code is perhaps the most ironclad shared value schools share. It unites all academic institutions and is taken seriously with virtually no exception, yet there is a chance that school marketing is exempt from these values
For a while now we’ve been arguing that talking-head videos, across the board, copy one another, look like one another and try to be like one another. You’ve seen it time and time again, the same (now meaningless) buzzwords and turns of phrase about diversity, inclusivity, pedagogy, being supported, community yada. yada. yada.
This will make more sense soon.
Just read on.
♫ It’s like raaaaiiin on your wedding day! ♫
Isn’t it ironic?
I get it marketing isn’t necessarily a school’s expertise, but how can the grader (in this context, a prospect) give you an A if it’s clear you’re passing off someone else’s work as your own.
I’m going to share a radical bit of wisdom: authenticity means being yourself.
I said it folks, it’s out there. Authenticity can’t be faked, and the way to find it is to dig deep and make something that is truly representative of who you are. It doesn’t have to be literal, and it doesn’t have to boring (it can actually be quite ridiculous), but it’s gotta be you.
When you let others heavily influence how you present yourself, your videos won’t feel like your school and they won’t feel like anyone else either. They’ll just float in limbo aimlessly searching for identity. We recently found a video that very neatly demonstrates this point. When talking to a potential client in Canada, we were passed along a video with the question:
You said you don’t make the same video twice, but this one is oddly close. Did you make this and not put your name on it or what’s going on?
If you have a couple minutes to spare, watch these two videos. Go with the golf cart first. Keep that word authenticity in mind.
Isn’t it marvelous in how brazen it is? It wouldn’t be very collegial of us to make much of a problem, but I think it’s fair for us to make an example of it, at least.
Let’s open our friend the Miriam Webster
Authentic, adjective; : 3: true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.
Being yourself means you express yourself honestly. You don’t cheat, you don’t copy, and you truly express your own individuality. This is what we try to do with our work and this is what we encourage you to do too.