Ypulse Mashup Sponsor Interview: Ryan Garman, Tissla
Posted by meredith on 05-20-2010
Today’s Ypulse Interview is with Ryan Garman, Co-Founder and President of Tissla Marketing, (formerly AllDorm) our Anchor Sponsor for the Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup.
We caught up with Ryan over email to talk emerging trends on campus, the best (and worst) practices for brands looking to reach college students and more of the topics he’ll delve into during his presentation Cracking The College Code: Motivating and Mobilizing a $200 Billion Dollar Market. To hear more insights from Ryan live, register today!
Ypulse: What are some of the emerging trends you see having the biggest impact on the the college market?
Ryan Garman: Luxury Brands & the College Market – Brands understanding the long term ROI that investment in the college market represents. College graduates represent the future’s high-earners and therefore the most significant chunk of disposable revenue. Just because you are a luxury brand doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be building a relationship with students now. You want them to be champing at the bit to spend their first paycheck on your brand and not another.
Mobile – It is no secret that mobile phones have been part of a college student’s life for quite some time now, but it is just the beginning. The number of college students that carry a smart phone is still quite small as a percentage, but as this grows and mobile web pages become more dynamic, we will see new opportunities arise that are only in our wildest dreams at this point.
Students Reigning in Their Social Networks – Students are responsible for making Facebook what it is today, and they will also be the ones that change it, and possibly, if I dare say, drive the “next facebook.” Students are less and less likely to share information with individuals outside their peer groups, less trusting than ever before of outside influences and shockingly less interested in the “cool factor” than we have seen in decades past.
Social Responsibility – This is no longer a peripheral movement: college students nationwide are concerned about the future of or environment and taking action on it daily. They have grown up in a world where turning off the lights is the only thing to do, recycling is second nature and that it is everyone’s responsibility to help make the world a better place.
YP: What are the biggest myths or misconceptions about today’s college students that you’d like to debunk?
RG: That brands need to adopt a “hip/cool” voice. Students are crossing the rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood and are in a hurry to already have made the leap. Speak to them like they are the mature adults they want to be and many already are. The best way to repulse a student is by stereotyping them, and it is quite amazing how many brands do it.
YP: How do you see the dynamic between college students and brands continuing to change with social media platforms?
RG: See the social media response above. Also, Peer-to-peer recommendations and user-generated content trump brand voices within social media platforms. As students continue to tighten up their networks and close out 3rd parties, peer-to-peer marketing becomes exponentially value.
Social media is going to have a massive impact on the way good is done in the world, and we are making large investments to allow college students to do this at an ever faster and more efficient pace.
YP: Are there any recent campaigns that you can point to that really get it right when it comes to connecting with college students? Which ones and why?
RG: Of course! The one that comes to mind first is a program we lead call, Get Your Move On with Comcast. Research has shown that a decade old trend of signing up for internet and television service just a few days prior the first day of class has totally reversed itself. This past year 39% of college students set their installation from home, prior to returning to their college campus. This presents a massive problem. How do you reach students living in Maine but attending school in California?
Get Your Move On has turned cable marketing on its head… The program brings together Facebook (both pages and events), mobile markets (both SMS and WAP) with on-campus events to collect priceless information about each individual college student, which in turn allows Comcast to start a dialogue with students when THEY are ready to start thinking about television internet service.
The program works as follows… AllDorm secures space on college campuses through the country, which are in the Comcast footprint. At the event AllDorm’s student staffers and project managers give away free moving boxes to students that take a simple SMS survey informing us of the exact date their new lease starts next school year, and what year they are going to be. They then complete a WAP lead for giving Comcast permission to call each of these students a few days prior to their new lease start date. On the Comcast4College facebook page, AllDorm creates individual events for each school, allowing our student staffers to share this event with their fellow students, informing the entire campus that they no longer need to purchase moving boxes when they are moving out. AllDorm manages a lead follow up platform which begins a dialogue with each student two weeks prior to each student’s new lease start date while feeding each lead to an outbound telemarketing group within Comcast.
YP: What will attendees take away from your presentation at the Ypulse Mashup?
RG: How to structure campaigns that leverage cause marketing in a new way. How to capture students hearts, minds and disposable revenue now and in the future. If you are not doing this: you are already in the rear-view mirror.
More on Ryan
Ryan co-founded Tissla as a student at Santa Clara University in 2000 and has been a guiding hand behind Tissla’s transformation from a small marketing services house into a nationally recognized collegiate agency. Ryan and his team have spearheaded campaigns for clients as diverse as Comcast, Microsoft, Ford Motor Company, Chase, Yum! Brands, MTV, Folgers Coffee, Army National Guard, Unilever, Bebe, and Lucky Brand Jeans.
Categorized under: 2010 Mashup, Collegians