Let's roll!
Institutes of higher education have fully accepted their role as competing businesses. That requires new marketing strategies, including trade fair appearances. Cologne University of Applied Sciences has systematically got the ball "rolling".
State institutes of higher education are still not really profit-making service providers. They offer education and research services for students and businesses and attempt to maximise benefit for their customers. However, now that the public coffers are empty, state education services are successively being privatised. State education institutes are now permitted to charge tuition fees in Germany, something that has long been common practice in many other countries.
Because of the shift in higher education policy, institutes of higher education will now have to choose their fields of activity, define their competitive position and their core competencies and develop a marketing concept. It will be necessary to develop a marketing goal system and to run universities like businesses.
Cologne University of Applied Sciences always participates with exhibits from different faculties on the shared North Rhine-Westphalia Land of Research stand. Trade fair appearances have always been part of the marketing success story of the leading (brand) companies, institutes and associations. Now, as competition gets stiffer, institutes of higher education will have to make much more use of this resource. This is being actively encouraged by the governments of the Länder, who would also like to give universities greater financial autonomy in the procurement and use of funds to offload public finances.
Trade fairs enjoy high prestige in marketing. In addition to its participation on the shared "North Rhine-Westphalia Land of Research" stand at lead trade fairs, Cologne University of Applied Sciences will have to attempt a greater presence at smaller (sector) trade fairs, too, where the various faculties can more easily make contacts in industry for fundraising and finding sponsors.
At the same time, the university must address school leavers at an individual stand at education fairs, consumer exhibitions and events to promote its entire range of study programmes (first degrees, further education for professionals). It seems the introduction of tuition fees is even forcing the Cologne academics to fight for each and every potential student as a paying customer.
Until now the education institute has not had its own trade fair stand system. Whenever the faculties exhibited at trade fairs on their own initiative, the stands had very different designs.
Because the Cologne University of Applied Sciences is Germany's largest with 18,000 students, it has a vast need for trade fair appearances and a lot of catching up to do. The products of companies who produce tangible economic goods are identified by a "word-and-image brand". Branding in services has to symbolise an intangible service and promote an image. After all, service providers have just as much need to express their brands as producers of tangible goods. However, because an intangible service, such as teaching, is difficult to grasp for the customer, branding does pose a technical problem. The services of a university of applied sciences cannot themselves bear a trademark.
This is a prime opportunity for Cologne University of Applied Sciences, which has already painted its fleet of vehicles with the catchy slogan "We will get your career rolling". This slogan - together with the brochure material - offers the corporate identity/corporate design basis for a future standard design for individual stands.
For individual participations, the university is advised to procure a modularised rolling container system that can be used to form variable stands of different sizes at trade fairs and conventions and for organizing other specialised events. This system should be especially suitable for performing these tasks quickly, with high mobility, at low cost and a minimum of personnel. Moreover, the rolling container idea is especially good at symbolising modularised study in a European higher education zone. In the long term, it is desirable for these rolling containers to be used not only at fairs in Germany but in other countries too. This would establish a CD/CI-compliant "brand image" for the education services of the University of Applied Sciences with the target groups (that is, both students and businesses as research partners and sponsors).
Doris Müller, mac messe und ausstellungscenter Service, Langenlonsheim, has designed a modularised rolling container system. The colour design with blue (Pantone 2768) and white/orange (Pantone 021) is based on the guidelines for using the corporate design issued by the Vice Chancellor's office of Cologne University of Applied Sciences.
The rolling containers not only have visual appeal but provide a lot a storage space and can be set up on very small stand areas with only one module and on large stand areas with several coupled modules in a straight or curved arrangement. Based on a flyer for image promotion of the university of applied sciences, the orange peaks of the brochure were designed as a "sail" that forms a roof over the stand. All in all, such a rolling container system provides a low-cost, variable, and multi-purpose stand resource for much more frequent trade fair appearances and other in-house events.Hannelore Selinski
m+a report Nr.1 / 2006 vom 13.02.2006
m+a report vom 13. Februar 2006