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Kevin Tyler
Time for another episode of Higher Voltage. Today we have one of my friends on the show as a guest. I find it always kind of weird and fun to have a friend on because I have to introduce them professionally, but I know all these other things about them in the background. So with me today is Jamie Hunt. After a 20-year career in higher ed leadership, Jamie founded Solve Higher Ed Marketing, bringing her signature blend of brand-building passion, storytelling magic, and empathetic leadership to institutions that need a fresh perspective.
Jamie's done it all. She's been a media relations leader, a branding strategist, a digital storyteller, crisis communicator, enrollment marketer, and even public radio whisperer. Also, as I mentioned, my friend. She is a natural born collaborator. Jamie has been a highly visible leader in the higher ed marketing world, serving on boards and volunteering for organizations like the American Marketing Association, where we crossed paths, in the Public Relations Society of America and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
Jamie, welcome back to Higher Voltage. We've had you on a couple of years ago and I'm happy to have you back today.
Jaime Hunt
I'm so happy to be here and be here with you, Kevin. Thank you so much.
Kevin Tyler
Any time. Thank you for making time for this conversation. I am so excited to be one of the first folks to interview you about your new book, Heart Over Hype: Transforming Higher Ed Marketing with Empathy. Before we dip into that, I wanted to offer you some space to just talk a bit more about solved marketing if you'd like. If not, that's totally fine, but I wanna make sure that we have space for that.
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, thank you so much. I started Solve almost exactly a year ago and it has been such an amazing journey. I have gotten to work with some amazing folks, folks at Boise State, UNC Pembroke, East Carolina University, schools all over the country. So I've gotten to go to five states I've never been before, doing all kinds of stuff from student journey mapping all the way through branding and positioning work, AI training, crisis communication training.
And it has been so fun. I'm working way more and way harder than I thought, like, because it's going to be semi-retirement. No, it is not anything like semi-retirement. But I'm having so much fun doing it. And I can't, I think things happen at the timing they're supposed to happen. So I never want to say I wish I would have started sooner. But I'm really glad I started in the moment that we find ourselves in in higher ed right now.
Kevin Tyler
Totally.
Jaime Hunt
And I'm having a blast. It's been fun.
Kevin Tyler
I love it. I'm so happy for you. It's exciting to watch you crisscross the country, leveraging your expertise and having opportunities to share what you know with folks who need some solutions. and at some point during all of that travel, you wrote a book.
And so, Heart Over Hype, which I have to say is such a joy to read. It's so engagingly written. It takes really complex concepts and breaks them down very easily. I love your voice in it. I can hear you saying it, not just because I know you, but you can tell it's from a human and empathetic place. I love your shout out to your Starbucks barista. I love these little moments of humanity that are sprinkled throughout the book.
Ultimately though, the book is about how to incorporate more empathy into higher education marketing. And I know that you researched several different types of empathy in order to inform the book. And I just want you to share what you've learned around the different types of empathy that you researched that makes marketing and how empathy makes marketing better.
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, I felt like it was really important to really understand what empathy is when writing this book, obviously. And I felt like a lot of people think of empathy as being nice, right? Or being kind, being a good person. And it's so much more than that. It's really multi-layered. And there are a lot of different variations of empathy. There's this cognitive empathy, which is really, I understand what you're feeling. It's about perspective taking, being able to really intellectually grasp what someone else is going through or experiencing. And in marketing, this type really helps us anticipate concerns, fears, motivations, even if we don't share those concerns. And then there's emotional empathy, which is more about actually feeling what someone else is feeling. And that's like creating marketing that's a lot more human. You're moving away from selling something to storytelling, from facts into feelings and I honestly believe that feelings are what drive decisions. I think there's very few people who are just making a pro and con list that's just facts and making that decision. And then the deeper form of empathy that I really resonated with me was called phenomenological empathy. And it's like next level stuff, right? And it's about not just walking in someone's shoes, it's noticing how those shoes feel to that person. And it's rooted in Edmund Husselr's, and I probably am butchering how to pronounce his name, but he has this concept of intersubjectivity, which is really understanding that people have unique lived experiences. A lot of people don't understand that. They think everybody thinks the way they think. They think that everybody's inner world is the same as theirs. And with phenomenological empathy, you're really understanding that people have lived experiences that are just as complex as yours and might be different from yours.
And I see that as the type of empathy that lets you design campaigns that allow you to really see your audience, not just what they do, but why they do it. And that allows you to build journeys from the website to the campus tour, to interactions in person, to virtual interactions that really reflect what real people are feeling and not just based on the assumptions that we have about people.
So I'm a big fan of that variation of empathy, the phenomenological kind, but I do think it's important to understand cognitive and emotional empathy as well, because those are really big drivers too. So those were the three. There's many more forms of empathy, but it's so far beyond just being nice. It's like being able to see this is a whole complex, beautiful, messy person that I'm trying to communicate to. And it's not a monolith, it’s not like just this, it's a prospective student in like a chunk. It's individuals that have hopes and fears and desires and are on different parts of their journey. And how do you reach them in a way that answers the questions that they're asking, answers the concerns that they're having and really speaks to them.
Kevin Tyler
I think that It's such an important component that we have been talking about in higher education marketing for so long, right? Understanding culture and For the Culture of Marcus Collins and how that input informs how we go about marketing empathy and being an empathetic leader that feeds into how successful marketing can be being seen. We have this whole plan of questions that we've already kind of prepared, but I just want to like read one of the early sentences in the book, “The most important thing that we can ever do, whether for our families, our teams, or our audiences, is to make them feel seen. And for so long,” which I think is a very powerful passage, “so long, higher education has endeavored to have people see them as opposed to seeing the people that they're trying to attract.” And I think the currency has just kind of shifted value and that we have to understand where people are coming from in order to communicate with them in a way that will move them to a decision that will hopefully, you know, be the institution that's talking to them. I really appreciate the context that you provide in the upfront of this book around the different types of empathy, what it means and what it can feel like to the person who receives it, who is the beneficiary of it. I think it's really exciting. And I also appreciate you saying phenomenological for me, because I read a lot and that was one word I was like I have to keep practicing how to say this “phenomenological.” So that was my cheat way of saying you say it first.
Jaime Hunt
I love it. I love the honesty.
Kevin Tyler
Before we dip into the meat of the book I think it's important to talk about how the book is built and I really appreciate the sections and then how those sections break down. Can you just speak a little bit towards that?
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, so really the book came out of two ideas. One is I wanted to talk about marketing in higher education and to put the hook of empathy around that. But then as I was working on that, I realized, you cannot have empathetic marketing without empathetic leadership. If your teams are not able to be creative, they're not able to be innovative, they're not able to be authentic, they're not going to be able to create work that is creative, innovative, and authentic.
So the book is really in two parts. The first, probably two thirds, is empathy and marketing. And then the last third is empathy and leadership. And as I was working through all of this, I was like, you know what? I have all these chapters, all this content in here. But I feel like if I were reading this, I'd be like, hey, what do I do with this information? And so, I created a section that has the key takeaways and then action items that you could actually say, this is how I'm going to implement it in, for each chapter.
And then at the end of the two main sections, I have exercises to kind of, you can take them to your team and say, hey, let's use this exercise to kind of reevaluate how we're looking at our communications. Let's use this exercise to think about how we're thinking about accessibility. And then on the leadership side, the exercises are designed to kind of help you become a better leader, help you think through some of the decisions that you're making, the way you're presenting information to people, the way you're thinking about challenges that you're having on your team. And so it's kind of a toolbox all in one book. I did not intend to have those in there. This was very organic. But as I was going through it, just thought, honestly, I applied empathy. If I were reading this book as an end user, what would I want? I would want some exercise that let me put this into action. And so that's how I ended up structuring the book.
Kevin Tyler
I think it's brilliant. And it makes perfect sense. And I appreciate that not only is it connected to being the type of leader that allows the type of creative problem solving to occur, but also that is practical application, questions, exercises, audits. We'll get to some of that later on in our conversation, but it just feels really thoughtfully laid out and in a way that exists to serve who it's talking to, which I think is really smart.
Jaime Hunt
I appreciate that.
Kevin Tyler
Plus it's funny and comfortable, we mentioned, like we talked about before we started recording. I can just hear your voice and how thoughtful, how much you care about the work that you get to do. And also how much you know about it, which I also very much appreciate without it feeling like it's coming across from a condescending tone or, you know, punitive negative. It's very easy in these days, especially in higher ed to be very negative about what is happening to the industry. And this feels like a little glimmer of hope in how we can do a better job and what we do.
Jaime Hunt
Thank you. My sister said her favorite parts are all the parentheticals.
Kevin Tyler
What I've discovered is that we kind of write in similar ways where it's like, let me just add some personal little dash personality over here. But it is fun. I do, you know, broad brush kind of out the gate. What do you think higher education's biggest opportunity is when it comes to marketing right now?
Jaime Hunt
So I think higher ed is really has a moment here, right? We're in a situation, we're in a world right now, where there's a moment where we have the opportunity to try to win back hearts and minds. And we have an opportunity to really convey what the value is of what we offer. And I think, if you look at the schools that are not necessarily doing as well, I think one of the things that they're not doing is really making themselves be distinct.
And when I wrote this book, I thought about distinction not as what we offer, right? Because accreditation really restricts how much flexibility we have in what we offer, right? And so, how do we truly stand out? And I talk in the book about nobody, every campus says, you know, we teach, our dedicated faculty teach a high quality education in an inspiring environment. And everybody can say that. Everybody does say that. So where is there opportunity to differentiate? And I'm thinking that it's not in the things that we offer, it's in how we talk about them. And so, if we're able to take the things that we offer and break them down into answering the questions and the challenges and the fears and the concerns that a student has, make them feel seen, then they're going to see themselves on that campus more easily than if we're just talking about the features that we have. I tell a story about how it was Christmas time, we were in another city at the mall and we saw a sign for a campus on one of those kiosks that said, small classes, big value. And I just thought, like, what student is laying in bed at night going, gosh, I wonder if I'm going to have small classes and big value in my school, right? Nobody's thinking that. How do we convey what small classes actually mean for that student? How do we actually answer the concerns they have? Am I going to be lost? Am I going to be just a number? Am I going to have relationships with people? Am I going to be, you know, fit in with the culture that's on this campus? Can I afford this? What does affording it look like? What's my debt load going to look like? Answering the deeper questions that the students have, that's where I think higher ed can differentiate itself a lot better than it has been.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah, I would agree. And there's always those, you know, walking through airports, doing the type of work that we do. You notice things like that all the time. You just kind of like, I think of the Detroit airport all of the time, because they have those gigantic boards. And you're like, dang, dang, they did not use that space thoughtfully, right? Small classes and big value does not tell me a thing, a thing.
Jaime Hunt
Mm-mm. Nothing.
Kevin Tyler
And so being more thoughtful about how we approach our messaging from an empathetic place is so important. It's so important. I'm curious if you could speak to what you think the challenge will be in meeting the opportunity that exists before us in this whole quest for distinction, which is beyond differentiation.
Jaime Hunt
Oh gosh, there's so many challenges. I think some of the biggest ones are going to be presidents that don't want to hear it.
Kevin Tyler
Yep.
Jaime Hunt
So there are so many research projects that happen from a branding's perspective where there's a piece of information that the president doesn't agree with and so we throw the whole thing out. Or we don't, let's say we hear that students don't feel that the campus is safe, the president disagrees, so we never address that, right? We don’t develop a proactive plan for addressing the very real fact that students don't feel safe on campus or they feel like their prospective students don't feel like they will feel safe on campus. So I think the biggest thing is getting presidents and leadership to think about the end user instead of themselves. Even things...
Kevin Tyler
What?!
Jaime Hunt
What a shocker! But even things like, we have to talk about how 90% of our faculty have terminal degrees. I would have had no clue what a terminal degree is, when I was 16 or 17 years old. And I don't know why that's important. Terminal is such a loaded word.
Kevin Tyler
It is.
Jaime Hunt
Probably the only context I heard of it was like terminal cancer, right? I have no idea why that's important, what value that offers. And by putting that kind of content out there, 90% of our faculty have terminal degrees. You're putting in the heads of first gen students, students who just don't know what that term is. You're putting in their heads, I don't know this, so maybe I'm not good enough.
Kevin Tyler
I love that you write to that point in this book that, if we are talking in a way that we think makes us feel quality, quote-unquote, quality, I'll just leave it at that, we are also communicating, I might not be ready for this experience if I don't know what the entry material looks like. And I'm so glad that you called that out.
Because what we know about language like that, it's actually not for the incoming person, it's for the other institutions and for rankings. So speaking to the customer, and I know that folks in the higher ed environment might not always enjoy using customer in that way, but that's the reality of it. And people are making decisions based on how you communicate with them, and that's where the empathy comes in. Like not knowing where they're coming from.
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. How do we think that makes them feel if they don't know what that means? It doesn't make them feel inspired. It makes them feel anxious.
Kevin Tyler
Yep.
Jaime Hunt
It makes them feel like they're not going to be, that this is not a place of belonging for them. And that's gross. I mean, it's just gross. And if you think about, maybe think about buying a used car. Let's say you already know what car you want to buy and you go to two dealerships and you have one dealership that all he does is talk about how great it is to buy from that dealership and it's very slick and it's very polished and it's pushy. And then you go to another dealership to buy that exact same car and that dealer is interested in you and interested in what are you gonna do with this car? This car is, you have kids, this car is great for transporting kids. These are some of the things that we can do for you based on your unique needs. You might wanna get this extra protection program because you're gonna drive it off road or whatever, fill in the blank. And at the end, have this connection with the other salesperson because he's really made an effort to understand you and to see you. If you had all things being equal, which one would you choose? You're going to choose the salesman that built the relationship with you and you feel seen by every single time. Why we don't market higher education like that is beyond me. It’s beyond me, to be perfectly honest.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah.
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Kevin Tyler
Folks could argue that this generation of students just wants the degree. They just want the transaction. And that might be true, but there is a part of it that does require to get them to make the decision. You have to pull at other strings.
Jaime Hunt
Yeah.
Kevin Tyler
And I think that that's what we are talking about here. The outcome is the same. The transaction still occurs. But getting them to make the transaction that we want them to make as marketers in higher education will take other kinds of work. And I think that's what we're getting at here.
Jaime Hunt
Absolutely. I've been somehow I've gotten on #collegechoice TikTok and so I get served.
Kevin Tyler
Oh my gosh.
Jaime
That's awesome. It's so great, right? And you see like the students will post pictures of every campus they're considering with their pros and cons list. And so many of them have like, the vibe is great. I love the vibe. I love the feel or I don't love the feel of the campus. I don't, I don't feel like this is for me or whatever. And they certainly have the like cost factors and things like that. But all of that vibe type of decision making, that's what we're doing as marketers. We're setting the vibe, right? And that's something that if you're not doing that with empathy, they're going to feel that, right? They're going to feel like it's just like a sales copy. They're not going to feel connected to the institution. And when you have this experience where you feel connection, that's going to drive you to a decision to choose that institution. Or at least put it, maybe it was at the bottom of the list based on those pros and cons list, but you just can't get past how they make you feel. That's gonna move you up on that list.
Kevin Tyler
You know, I really love the idea of empathy driven marketing, as you can imagine. But I also love how you put it in practice with the empathy audit. I think the same can be extended to processes because what we are talking about you are going to experience you can see on again, college TikTok, you know, you see comments that are like, what's it like going to that school? Well, it's really hard when you can't get to your class on time from this side of campus to this side of campus, you're running and it's uncomfortable and it's hot, whatever else. Those are experience points. Those are experience metrics that can be avoided if you operate with empathy. And I think that's all very, very important. What we do is not just marketing messaging or marketing experience. And where are the places that we can make it as smooth as possible for people to understand that we understand where you're coming from and what you need. And we will get you there as smoothly as possible.
Jaime Hunt
I love that. And I talk about WSSU throughout this book, because that was the campus' attitude, right? Elwood Robinson was like, we have such a privilege to be educating this group of students and we tell, we sell them hard on getting them here, right? And then we want the experience to match what we're saying. So when I'm saying, you know what, this isn't an authentic story that we're telling. He's not saying, well, then we should change the story to match what's going on on campus. We should change what's going on campus to match the story. And we need to make sure that every student feels supported, cared about, and have a connection. And that was just, it was the most powerful five years of my career working there. Because it became a whole campus endeavor to create a brand and a student experience that was really, really true and authentic and wonderful. I think students felt the love and support and it made it so easy to talk about when that happened.
Kevin Tyler
I think it's really important to add context to this. I think you and I are talking about this as a reflection, right? I think it would be fairly difficult to just do an empathy audit for all of the things and make it super successful in the next cycle of admissions. This is one of those chip-away-at-a-problem kind of things. And so by no means are we approaching this conversation as like, get a group together and ask the questions, do the focus groups and bada bing, bada boom, you're done, right? It's not that kind of thing. It's a very long-term kind of intentional decision that you want to serve and message differently. And I appreciate the experience that you had at WSSU because it seems like it informed how you approach this work now, which I think is quite great and very thoughtful, but it requires the intentional decision that you want continuous improvement. Every messaging opportunity is also a chance to make a different decision if a different decision is needed. And not say, this is how we've always done it, and these are the people who always handle it, and there's always room, especially now, to shake some of that stuff up because it's necessary.
I’ll say I don't know if I've said this on every episode, I may have, but what got higher ed where we are today, is not going to be the thing that gets us to where we need to go next. So new thinking, new messaging, new empathy, new processes will always be needed because someone's going to need something different.
Jaime Hunt
Yeah. When you made a point earlier about students seeing colleges more transactional than perhaps previous generations. And I think that while that is true, I think that humanity longs for connection and longs for belonging. And so, while we have done a really okay job, I was going to say good job, we've done a really okay job with transactional messaging and getting students like this is what you need to know to take the next step throughout the college experience. What we haven't done an exceptional job at, in my opinion, is nurturing them along that path and helping them get there. And I think, like, we're both Gen X. Our parents just basically shoved us out of the car and said, see you in four years, right? If that.
Kevin Tyler
Basically.
Jaime Hunt
And parents now are so much more involved. And we have to think, like, put the lens on what does that mean? That means a student is used to more hand holding. They're used to someone helping them get through the challenges that they have in life. How we can expect that the second they set foot on campus, they're just going to be able to navigate it all without any assistance or support is just, it's absurd, to be honest with you. It's absurd.
Kevin Tyler
It's super absurd. And we can't continue to communicate as if we were talking to GenX people.
Jaime Hunt
No, no. But the thing is, leaders are all, for the most part, Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, right? And we just grew up in a different reality than today's student is. And I think it's important to understand that. And I think it's really funny that people think that the way they parent is the way they parent, but not the way that the whole world is parenting, right? It's a huge cultural shift, the way kids are parented today. And we have to be aware of that. But likewise, I talk in the book about timing and having timing be part of messaging. Not all of our students are undergraduate, like traditional undergraduate students.
Kevin Tyler
Right.
Jaime Hunt
And so we have to apply empathy and not just, I see so many campuses do this, our messaging is geared towards that 17 to 18 year old, high school junior and senior. And what are we doing for those adult non-traditional students? Are we doing special landing pages for that audience? Or are we sending them to these sort of very young feeling pages that don't answer the types of questions that these adult learners have? So it's really, it's really multi-layered and you're completely right. It's not something you do overnight. It's something that you have to be in for the long haul.
Kevin Tyler
Exactly, exactly. I very much appreciated, especially right now in the leadership section, you share ways to create environments where people and ideas can thrive. And I think that, you know, we have talked about on this show and on many shows about the turnover in higher education marketing, well, in higher education at large, but also in marketing specifically. And so this conversation is so relevant right now. Can you share one or two of the ideas that you propose in the book for creating an environment or context where people and ideas can thrive in the higher ed context?
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, I think, we've probably all experienced being in those environments where you're afraid to put out a new idea because people are gonna react with judgment or react with disdain. And I think that one of the most important things we can do is create that psychological safety that the leader needs to model, but then needs to really press the team that there aren't bad ideas. There might be ideas that aren't going to necessarily work on our campus. Or there might be ideas that need more fleshing out, but there aren't bad ideas, because maybe a hundred ideas aren't great or aren't gonna work, but that one magical idea could completely change everything. And if somebody's not comfortable saying, expressing that idea, then you're not gonna hear, you're not gonna be able to act on it. And so, part of that means the leader has to be very, very careful at how they give feedback. They need to be very, very careful in preventing themselves from saying things like, oh, we tried that and it didn't work. Dig in deeper. Say, that's interesting. Tell me more about that. Tell me how we might be able to address this potential challenge that might come from that. Show excitement. Show enthusiasm. I love that you brought this idea forward. Let's explore it a little bit more.
Another thing I think is really important is to focus on purpose over perfection. Instead of thinking about, like, everything must be polished before it's shared, have opportunities for people to bring half-baked ideas forward. Because sometimes that baking that idea into its full and best form, it's like somebody has this great idea, but I have to present the super polished concept in order for it to get any traction, but I don't have time or I'm not sure or I have questions or I need support to be able to get it to that polished point. So I'm not gonna ever bring this idea forward.
If you're a leader, start thinking about progress over polish. Be willing to share rough drafts. Ask those really purpose-driven questions like is this answering the need that we're trying to solve here? Because we don't want ideas to be judged too early.
Kevin Tyler
Right.
Jaime Hunt
Because the craziest ideas, even if they're completely impractical, there might be a nugget in there that is doable. And so when you completely shut down the idea, you lose that opportunity to have a crazy idea become something that's palatable and doable. And some of the work I am most proud of in my career is things where I just said in a meeting, what if we did this wild thing?
Kevin Tyler
Exactly. Exactly.
Jaime Hunt
We didn't do the wild thing in the wild way that I projected, necessarily, but we did something riskier. We did something that hadn't been tried before. We did something different and it was beyond expectations. The results ended up being beyond expectations.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. Ideas are such fragile, fragile things. And a person who is bringing an idea that feels new in the moment, regardless of what the institution's past looks like, is showing a bit of themselves, right?
Jaime Hunt
Yeah.
Kevin Tyler
And they're also indicating that they have thought about this out. They are showing their care and concern about the brand as well. And when that gets shattered, especially in a public way, it doesn't have to be public, even in any way. If it's, you know, flippantly dismissed, we've already done that, we did more, whatever the thing is, the likelihood of that fragility or that vulnerability to show itself is so much lower. And we are not at a time where we can kind of uproot people who are bringing us ideas. We are in the idea generation phase, we are in the idea era in higher ed. And I think they should be cared for very thoughtfully, I think.
Jaime Hunt
Oh, a hundred percent. For someone to bring you an idea is a risky thing.
Kevin Tyler
It's a risky thing.
Jaime Hunt
And it is a privilege that they feel comfortable enough to bring you an idea. Particularly if you're the VP and the person's, you know, two or three layers lower than you. One thing I would never, ever, ever do, ever, when I was a leader is if one of my staff, the several layers down in the org chart said, can I meet with you? I have an idea. I never said send it up through the channels, right?
Kevin Tyler
Yeah.
Jaime Hunt
I always said, yeah, let's schedule a time to chat. And some of the ideas were just like, I wish I would have thought of that.
Kevin Tyler
Right.
Jaime Hunt
The great ideas don't care about the org structure.
Kevin Tyler
Exactly.
Jaime Hunt
Great ideas can come from any, the craziest ideas, the best ideas could come from an admin assistant, it could come from a housekeeper, it could come from literally anywhere. In fact, it's probably more likely to come from those folks than the VPs. Our jobs aren't that creative anymore.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah, no kidding. How do you hope this book serves higher education and higher ed marketers?
Jaime Hunt
I hope that people read this book and it inspires them to think about marketing differently and inspires them to think about our audiences over our institutions. Because, I think, if we center our audiences and center what they want and need in the work that we do, it will benefit our institutions. And so, instead of this is what my institution wants to convey, this is what the org structure says we need to convey. This is what we've always done. This is the tradition. This is the history. What do people want? What do people need? When we answer that question, when we solve that problem for them, that's when the magic really happens and people feel a sense of belonging and a sense of connection to the institution and then the institution will thrive. There are a lot of schools that aren't going to make it. There's a ton of schools that aren't going to make it for myriad reasons.
Kevin Tyler
Yep, yep.
Jaime Hunt
If you want to be at an institution that is going to make it, you have to figure out how to differentiate. And I hope this book inspires people to think about a different way to differentiate that's not just about talking points, but is about human connection.
Kevin Tyler
Are there examples that kind of float around in your head of schools that have made that intentional, necessary decision to do something differently that's really paid off?
Jaime Hunt
The example that I would have, honestly, Winston-Salem State has done a really good job with that. We thought about, like I said, hey, how do we create a brand that's really authentic? And then how do we create an experience on campus that is very student-centered and very much around creating this sense of belonging, this sense of family? And we really set out to then push that message out there to get student ambassadors to get the campus, the whole campus community around that messaging. And the results that we saw, is there's this study that, I think it's Stanford does in partnership with schools around the country every year, and in 2015 when I got there, only 42% of our students said that WSSU was their first choice. The majority of students said it was a third or lesser choice for them. And within four years, so when that study was repeated four years later, it had moved to 62% of students that it was their first choice. This is a highly scientific survey. Over 85% of students are surveyed for this. It's Stanford's research tool, so it's very sophisticated, very scientifically sound. That's a massive increase in the percentage of students saying something is their first choice. And when you're a first choice for students, that means we weren't trying to grow enrollment. We were trying to attract the right students. We were trying to create an environment where students would come in, be successful, have greater graduation rates, have greater retention rates. And we ended up, at the time that I left, our graduation rate was the second highest for any HBCU in the country. Second only to Spelman, which nobody's going to catch Spelman. Like Spelman is just phenomenal.
Kevin Tyler
Right. Right.
Jaime Hunt
But you know, that was, we didn't just have a brand. We didn't just have a communications message. We had something that impacted lives. Every single student that graduated, meant there was one fewer person that had debt that they couldn't pay back. They had the career choices. They had transformative experiences for their families. They were inspirations for their little nephews and nieces and their cousins and their baby sisters. You know, it was all through what started out with brand, right? Think about that. The power that we have to transform lives. It's in our hands as marketers if we take it seriously.
Kevin Tyler
I could not agree with you more. I agree with you 100% with every syllable you just said. What do you think the next five years will look like? Maybe even 10 in higher ed. You already mentioned that you predict, and I am with you on that, that there will be several closures. I think that that's right. What else do you see in the future for higher education?
Jaime Hunt
So I think we're going to see a bifurcation of those institutions that are able to weather the current presidential administration and get through all of these executive orders and these attacks on DEI. And I think that some of the bigger, more resourced schools like Harvard, the schools in the Big Ten, the flagship campuses, I think they have to have one strategy. And I think the schools that are the regional campuses, the smaller publics, have to have another strategy and then I think the privates have to have a third strategy. What that strategy is is way too complex to kind of hash out in this, but I think what's really important is that those schools are really intentional about how they respond to these attacks on higher education. And I think that what the Big Ten is doing about creating a coalition, I think more schools need to be doing that. If you talk to Lauren Griswold, I know you had her on the show a couple of months ago about what Idaho did to build messaging around the value of higher education. Every state should be doing that.
Kevin Tyler
I could not agree with you more.
Jaime Hunt
I mean, every athletic conference should be pulling those schools that are in that conference together and saying, hey, let's everybody chip in this amount of money to try to do some counter messaging. We have to do that or we're not going to make it or a lot of schools aren't going to make it. Higher ed will survive. There are campuses that will absolutely survive. But if we want the smaller schools, the regionals, the privates, if we want those schools to make it, they have to start pulling together and stop thinking about “me” and start thinking about “us” as a collective.
Kevin Tyler
I could not agree… Yes. I think these fractures that we're seeing are going to land in a place that impacts the most vulnerable institutions extremely hard. And what does that mean for the industry or what does it mean for the market? What does it mean for student choice when it comes to where they can go? What does it mean for access, when it becomes the only thing that's left is a really expensive institution? Like all these other questions get raised for not protecting each other. For years, as the host of the show, I've been saying, we've got to get them together and talk about what we do from a more unified front, as opposed to this competitive edge or competitive place that we've been in for so long, because we are shooting ourselves in the foot every single time we talk about it.
Jaime Hunt
Absolutely. Every day, every day. And every day that a leader, a president says, well, I don't want to sign on with my “competitors,” I'm putting that like in air quotes, to try to elevate the category because that might elevate them more than me.
Kevin Tyler
Right. That's the wrong president.
Jaime Hunt
This isn't about you. Stop thinking about it.
Kevin Tyler
That's the wrong president.
Jaime Hunt
Right. A 100% and this isn't about your legacy what you accomplish at your institution. This is an existential threat and this is about all of those people who are losing the opportunity to get higher education because we are not fighting for them. And I love that, and we talked about this before the show started, like it's Harvard that's doing the fighting, of all places.
Kevin Tyler
Who would have ever thought? Who would have ever thought it would be Harvard to be standing up in the way that they are. And you talk about a legacy, a legacy is this is what I did to help save an industry.
Jaime Hunt
Yeah, 100%.
Kevin Tyler
I'm in, I'm 10 toes down, 100% of that. But the ones who are like, that's not for me, we have competitors that we have to think about, you're leaving out a legacy that you don't want.
Jaime Hunt
Nope, nope. And it's such a shame. It is such a shame. I hate to see these institutions that are going to struggle and suffer because somebody was selfishly thinking about themselves.
Kevin Tyler
They're all over the place.
Jaime Hunt
All over the place.
Kevin Tyler
Jamie Hunt. Oh my God. First of all, congratulations on this book.
Jaime Hunt
Thank you.
Kevin Tyler
Heart Over Hype, we’ll have the link to purchase on our episode page. I would highly suggest as many people as possible who are listening to this episode to buy this book. This book is very interesting because I feel like it is good for the incoming new marketer in higher education to give them a sense of what could be in the space that they're entering. But it's also very valuable, it's a very valuable read for those who have been in the work for a while and reminding ourselves of what is possible in the work that we do and what this moment means for the work that we do in marketing. It's a very ripe opportunity for us to change the way we do what we do in a way that connects with more people in a much deeper way. But also, like, changes the nature in the framing by which we have these conversations with prospective students, traditional prospective students and adult prospective students. And I think that that's super, super important. Thank you so much for writing this book. I feel like it's like a flare sent up in the air from a very urgent, very urgent community.
Jaime Hunt
Thank you so much. Honestly, the way you're talking about it makes me feel really seen. Because that's what I was trying to do. And I really appreciate it, because this was, my husband will tell you, this was, he did not see much of me while I was writing this book. This was a labor of love. And it's a love note to higher education in a lot of ways. Like, please, everyone, understand how much I love higher education and know that I just want the best for it.
Kevin Tyler
Totally, totally.
Jaime Hunt
And that's all that motivates.
Kevin Tyler
And one more plug for it, I guess, is that there is a lot of things in this book that are just like freebies, free giveaways of like, if you just change this question or this wording to this, it might work. So like, it's not about like, you know, you have to have a $250,000 contract to get any of this knowledge to help your institution. That's not what this is about. There are some really smart, very practical solutions that are at your fingertips, literally, in this book. And so I just appreciate the thoughtfulness, the strategy, and the passion that is clearly dumped all the way in to these pages. Jamie Hunt, thanks for joining me on Higher Voltage. Yet again, you're, I think, our second or third repeat guest.
Jaime Hunt
Oh, nice. Thank you so much for having me. I always love chatting with you, Kevin. It's a highlight, highlight for me.
Kevin Tyler
Too kind. Luckily, I love to talk all the time. You can just ask my husband. Thank you so much. Hang tight.
