Ad Tracking, Brand Equity Research, And ... Your Honors Program?(Programmatic Matters‪)‬

All honors programs face the problem of making their institution's student body aware of the program's existence, its eligibility requirements, curriculum, and benefits. Directors who are already comfortable with the number of the program's members and applicants do not need to think much about awareness, publicity, and advertising. For example, the college's admissions department assists many honors programs in their recruitment. However, some directors must think hard and carefully about campus-wide awareness. These directors will naturally consider some type of advertising method. However, both before and after turning to advertising, directors need to address two important questions. Before embarking on an advertising campaign, they need to know why eligible students are not applying. After the campaign, they need to know how effective the advertising methods were. We will provide a template for other honors programs to use in answering both of these questions by describing a planned marketing research evaluation of a program's image among the student body and of our advertising efforts. Advertising is defined as the communication of persuasive information about products, services, or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media (Bovee & Thill 9). Typical examples of advertising seen on campuses include advertisements from external sources (soft drink and credit card companies) and advertisements from internal sources (the registrar's office), and they may take the form of fliers, posters, displays, informational tables at school events or in common areas, or announcements on campus closed-circuit television. Daniel Starch explained in 1923 that, regardless of the medium, advertisers historically have recognized that, to be effective, advertising must be seen, read, believed, remembered, and acted upon.