“Branding in Education is important for the target audience to know what is being offered. It should be informative in nature, factual and unbiased. If done with a purpose of selling the course or the institution, it is bound to backfire. Education is definitely an industry but lots of academic institutes tend to miss the fine line when it comes to education. Here, our young consumers are not commodities”, said Dr. Jitendra K Das, Director of Delhi based premiere B-School, FORE School of Management.
He further added, “Creatingperception of what is being offered is fine but at the same timethe education institute has to perform really well and live up to the expectations built thru perceptions created earlier, for all the stake holders in the value chain – students, employers and society. If there is a mismatch it will be lead to disastrous outcome for the education institute. Our target audiences have high expectation levels, to say the least. They are more informed, cynical to any marketing messages and smart enough to understand or turn away from any ‘sales attempt’ under the garb of branding. Before undertaking any initiative in Education-Branding, academia has to understand the behavioral patterns of students, respect their aspirations in order to meet those expectations”.
Touching upon Social media and branding communication in the current times,Dr. Das mentioned that social media must be efficiently tapped as the target group is likely to be there and not in the print medium.
Dr. Jitendra K. Das was talking on the topic “Branding In Education: Role of Social Media and Technology” at a seminar recently held in the capital.
Dr. Das, an alumni of IIT-Delhi earned his Doctorate from the University of Toronto, has to his credit many national and international publications in the areas of Marketing Management, Advanced Marketing Research, Strategic Internet Marketing and Customer Relationship Management. He has been teaching at IIM Lucknow, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Kozhikode and was the founder Dean of the IIM Lucknow Noida Campus. He has a wide-ranging Industry experience at various organizations including Wipro Information Technology Ltd. He has been a consultant to the World Bank, IDRC (Canada) and GWB (for GTZ, Germany). He has been a member of many Policy Level Committees of the Government of India. He has also addressed distinguished gatherings at national and international forums. He has been awarded “Transformational Leadership Award" in the LEADERSHIP Awards 2016 organized by ASSOCHAM India.'