"Yale Shmale" Beats around the Bush

News Date: Sep 1, 2006

"Yale Shmale" wild postings in Toronto

On Friday, August 25 2006, Lakehead University launched an inexpensive but provocative ad campaign that caught the attention of millions worldwide, generated hundreds of thousands of website hits and news coverage on CNN, BBC, and many other news outlets worldwide. Downtown Toronto was plastered with simple, black-and-white posters featuring an unflattering photo of US President George W. Bush under the headline "Yale Shmale," and a link to a new microsite, yaleshmale.com. The site elaborated that "Graduating from an Ivy League university doesn't necessarily mean you're smart," and on the second page, said "Let's not beat around the bush. Lakehead is different."

As an awareness-getting tactic, the campaign "exceeded expectations." But many critics felt it was a tasteless and repugnant way to promote an institute of higher learning. Lakehead's student council and faculty union both denounced it as "devaluing" a Lakehead education. Within a week, Lakehead was regrouping and shifted to Phase 2 of the campaign that seemed unrelated -- "Be Smart not smug." (Read about the controversy on Lakehead's Agora Online website.)

Second version of Yale Shmale website

Years later, the question remains: is any publicity bad publicity? By September 12, 2006, Lakehead had logged 1,171 entrants to its Smart car contest and more than 82,759 hits to its recruitment website. Lakehead's application volumes did in fact increase. Global media coverage easily totalled $1 million, "more than Lakehead could buy in ten years". In the US, all that outraged Republicans could remember was that it was "some Canadian university" -- likely reflecting more on new prime minister Stephen Harper than on Lakehead specifically.

What do you think? Was the risk to Lakehead's reputation justified? Did it pay off?

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Comments

Wed, 11/05/2008 - 12:36 — Wendy (not verified)

Problem

Any campaign is great when it comes to promoting the out-of-city smaller universities, however, people tend to attend to certain universities for social reasons. Many Asians join UofT due to its high population of the groups they relate to, same with Waterloo (in certain programs), and Ryerson. It's not hard to imagine that if you want to make the 4 years of your university life as great as possible, you would want to join the schools that not only has your program but the people that attends to it. I'm Chinese-Japanese and I attend to Humber College at Lakeshore. There is NO one like me. I felt a bit alienated but the only person who I really hang around is a Korean girl who sometimes have communication problems because she is not fluent in English. Sometimes, it felt really hard for me to get along with the other girls no matter how smart or funny I may be. It's because of race, right? Could be, but people don't realize this, but this is a condition where people are more comfortable with those who are similar to them, when it comes to age, race, culture, background, personality, proximity, family, and even looks (of course, the beautiful goes with the beautiful and vice versa). The big decision that I choose to attend to Humber is because of the program, it's nice and all, but I feel a bad vibe makes me feel that something is wrong or something will be wrong. Don't know, but my female intuitions usually don't fail. It was a bit intimidating because everyone around me are Caucasians, not that I have a problem with them, but it's because if there are lack of "me" then there is a lack of "confidence" and "comfort". I mean, I really like Caucasian people, more than half of my friends are Caucasian! But why is it difficult to get along with them? Well, they joined Humber for a reason, maybe because of the people who goes there and the program, too. They hang around with other Caucasians and expect to be friends with them. They weren't planning to join a highly multicultural school to make friends from other racial groups. I mean, if they were to join UofT, they probably would make friends with other Caucasian as oppose the other racial groups. They also came from high schools that's further away from the GTA zone, which means the people before college were predominantly Caucasian. So, race and social groups do have a intervention in a student's decision. You wouldn't join a university if none of your friends attend to it; you wouldn't join a university if it's so far away; you wouldn't join a university if no one of your kind attends to there; you wouldn't join a university if your program isn't there, but your friends =P ... Ahem.. yes, you get my point. I mean, you would rather join a university that close to you, save money and live from home, where your friends are attending, and the universities around you would never doubt the fact that they don't have the program for you. Right? Although what IS interesting is that the advertisement from Humber includes Asians and Southern Asians trying to encourage more students of different racial groups to enrol into their programs. However, that message was rather indirect and did not crossed my mind at all. Anyway, enough about that.