Editorial: Pitt should look to Applebee’s for ideas

It’s obvious that student debt is a problem. The data suggests higher education is better at producing indebted students than it is productive members of the workforce: 15 percent of student-loan holders are in default with total student-loan debt now surpassing total credit-card debt. With less than half of graduates getting jobs requiring a bachelor’s degree, the efficacy of this debt is questionable.

This debt can take a toll, as we report today in The Pitt News. It defines our lives now, and even more when we reach six months after graduation and bills start coming.

Since debt is such an integral part of the college experience in the U.S. today, colleges and universities should address this in their marketing.

Not in some idealistic attempt to do the public a service. But in a spirited, competitive drive for more students and customers.

This suggestion may seem silly. No company markets itself for its worst qualities. Toyota doesn’t broadcast its brake failures and Apple doesn’t try to market its notoriously ethically murky supply chains.

But when companies properly market the true, authentic experience of a product and show how they differentiate from competitors, companies can thrive.

And since debt is one of the truest, most authentic experiences of college living, universities should use this as a potential reservoir of consumer resonance.

You could call it the Applebee’s approach to college marketing.

When Applebee’s CEO Julia Stewart took control of the company in 2007, the company was facing declining revenues and a tarnished reputation. Applebee’s was a punching bag, representing everything soul-crushing and terrible about monotonous, suburban casual dining.

After closing poorly managed stores, Stewart redirected the chain’s branding to embrace this characterization. Since customers know Applebee’s isn’t a French bistro or quirky small business, the chain embraces its ordinariness and encourages customers to come specifically because of its low-key appeal through social media and its “See You Tomorrow” campaign. Applebee’s tells customers it’s the best at what it does: providing a good environment to enjoy reasonable food.

This non-glamorous approach, emphasizing the ordinariness of the dining experience, could have been viewed as highlighting the negative aspects of the company, but the method has led to two years of same-store sales growth. Telling customers what to expect and showing them how to deliver works.

The best way to see how this could work is to imagine a theoretical ad campaign highlighting Pitt’s internship program. If this program is successful and it does lead to better prospects for Pitt students, the University should take the Applebee’s approach to advertising.

Remove from advertising materials the picture of beautiful, variously ethnic students listening to a professor lecture on a lawn. In big, bold text, simply say, “Debt blows.” Then, on the next page, show a young adult at a desk with text underneath saying, “but Pitt will make it worth it.”

Simple, effective and honest. Pitt could differentiate itself from similarly ranked schools on an emotionally important front such as debt. You’ll be in debt wherever you go, but Pitt gives you the tools to manage it.

The obvious idealistic public service announcement of this is that broadcasting the debt aspects of college more loudly might help slow down the administrative bloat and building arms race that is partially responsible for high tuition in the first place. Effusive mailers highlighting debt might make an expensive university investing in aquariums and nap pods less appealing.

Overall, Pitt marketing agents could learn from Applebee’s. While they’re at it, riblets in Market Central wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.