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3 Ways Colleges Convince the American Public we Need them.

Don't be fooled, colleges are a money making industry. Private and public schools a like are using social and persuasive tactics to convince american youth to attend their school and convincing their parents its the right thing to do.

This pamphlet shows college marketing at its finest 

Neuromarketing

One aspect of college and university persuasion lies in the science of advertising, more specificly neuromarketing. According to Persuasion and Influence in American Life Neuromarketing involves our brains accepting attitudes or behaviors that match prior knowledge. This plays into the fact that universities thrive off of that it is a genuinely accepted principle that if an individual wants to be successful they must attend college. Where this is simply not true, and there is evidence that college is a must have on the resume by the gigantic 949 billion dollars of federal direct student loan debt by 2016's fourth quarter.

Branding

Colleges also thrive off of the use of branding. Schools brand by highlighting their features in order to best lure prospective students. Colleges invest a great deal of time and money in creating a particular brand that best suits them in order to successfully capture as many students and parents into their programs as they need. This branding is done over many platforms. This branding taps into our basic psychological needs and in the case of colleges, it taps into our needs of belonging and respect. Which is what supposedly comes from a college degree.

Integrated Marketing  

The third reason colleges have convinced the american public that we need them, is because of frequency of which they market our kids. Upon the Junior year of high school a teenager starts to become bombarded with mail from possible colleges. What colleges are really good at are leveraging each mediums strength to reinforce all communication. This is called integrated marketing. How this communication looks like is the emails students receive, to the pamphlets in their mail box at home, and the colleges even sending representatives to high schools across the nation. All these forms of advertising benefit and work off of each other.