Anyways so in a savvy marketing move, West Georgia has seen the Kennesaw State growth and decided that they need to recruit more applicants to the university with a directed marketing campaign. The campaign primarily relies on radio and billboard advertisements encouraging students to “Go West”. Apparently UWG is spending over $1 million on this advertising campaign.

The first spot I heard was actually pretty slick, it told of how Samuel Clements became Mark Twain because he decided to “Go West”.  Now the second spot, which debuted around Black History month, told about Harriet Tubman’s experience when she “Went West”. The spot itself is a reach and admits that Harriet Tubman didn’t exactly go west…she more or less went North but the audience got the picture.

The real comic piece of the advertisements is UWG’s new slogan. The slogan reads that UWG is “the most future oriented, forward looking institution in the state of Georgia”. What exactly does that mean? It sounds like a mission statement from a bad internet start-up from the late 90s.  The other funny thing is that of all of the schools in Georgia, I would probably least associated that term with UWG. I will admit I have not been to UWG’s campus in about 4 years but I can’t imagine Carrollton or its campus has changed that much.

I have no problems with an public school spending $1 million dollars on an advertising campaign, I just have a problem with them spending $1 million on a campaign that doesn’t seem very accurate.