Profiles Get an Upgrade

Every so often, I go on a tear about something that’s being overused in our industry, and I get fixated on it. My latest gripe: the profile piece. You know, nice big picture of someone followed by an up-close-and-personal about how the product/organization/company changed their lives. Higher ed is plagued with them. It’s not the concept itself that is bad, it’s that most of them end up following a prescribed outline that ends up sounding inauthentic and canned. They’re no longer differentiating.

But just as my grumbling was starting to bug even me, I came across a remedy that I think offers real value. The Simon School of Business recently (I think) redid their site, and their homepage caught my attention big time. What looked like another series of feature profiles is instead a series of hard facts that clearly define the Simon advantage. You still get the nice engaging people shot, but what’s behind it has a lot more tooth and relevance.

Today’s audience is more discerning than ever. Tell me what I need to know, and tell me why I should care. Once I’m engaged, the story telling can take me further, but I think we need to do a better job of making our case up front.