Vice Chancellor Braque Talley of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff knows well that teenagers don’t watch TV or turn on the car radio as their parents and grandparents do.
It’s a web-based world these days, yes, but he also knows Gramps can still be an influencer. Talley took over the historically Black university’s enrollment and student success efforts in 2019, a time of enrollment declines across the board.
But with some “highly intentional” marketing and a growing support system for students, so far he’s bucking the trend. And his communications efforts are being led by The Design Group, the Black-owned Little Rock marketing agency that won a $2.5 million contract last month to represent the university through 2024.
UAPB was Arkansas’ sole four-year public university to report rising undergraduate enrollment this fall. Its total enrollment of 2,800 was up 10.5%, and a direct-from-high-school infusion of 750 freshmen was up from 440 a year ago. Retention is also rising, and the graduation rate has climbed to nearly 38% from 27% in 2014.
Talley, who heads the university’s Division of Enrollment Management & Student Success, gives a fair share of enrollment credit to The Design Group and its multigenerational marketing approach. The agency, led by President and CEO Myron Jackson, has been selling UAPB with a mix of social media and targeted advertising that emphasizes quantifiable results, Talley said.
“This is a plan that Mr. Jackson and The Design Group have been working on for a while, and I was privileged to come in at the right time [last October],” said Talley, a native Mississippian with a Jackson State University Ph.D. “The key word we’ve adopted is ‘intentionality,’ with a unity of purpose.”
Jackson said The Design Group has worked with UAPB for seven years, “and we just recently won a competitive bid to renew that contract.”
High school students may be far more likely to consult their phones these days than tune in to urban radio, Jackson said, but they still listen to their elders on matters like choosing a historically Black school. “There’s this huge love affair with the idea that young people are not watching TV, they’re not listening to radio, so all the marketing has to go in digital, social,” he said. “Yes, you need that. But the greatest influence on a student choosing a college is their parents, even their grandparents. And their parents are consuming media uniquely different from them.”
So UAPB’s media mix targets “the student, the parents, intermediary influencers like school counselors, and, especially in the HBCU space, grandparents, who often have a legacy connection.”
Regardless of the precise mix, which Jackson described as a proprietary “secret sauce,” all the messaging stresses UAPB’s affordability, its student success commitment and its academic value.
UAPB’s 2020 tuition is $8,248 a year for in-state students, $14,908 for out-of-state, making it “the most affordable four-year school in the state,” Talley said. “So that weighs in our favor, along with the completion rate. As soon as parents visit an institution, they want to know the chances of graduating and going on to a salary and becoming independent.”
UAPB’s new marketing contract, signed by Jackson and Chancellor Laurence B. Alexander on Aug. 25, specifies a Year 1 outlay of $441,000 to The Design Group, with subsequent payments of $344,000 a year. The money is from tuition revenue, according to the contract, which was obtained via a state Freedom of Information Act request.
During Alexander’s seven-year tenure as chancellor, UAPB has revved up fundraising and development, gathering multimillion-dollar commitments from Simmons Bank of Pine Bluff and the Windgate Foundation of Little Rock, among others. Alexander’s goal is to eventually build UAPB’s attendance above 4,000, Jackson said.
“These are challenging times for college attendance,” Jackson noted, and state enrollment records show the rolls at all Arkansas colleges are down 13% over the past five years. “So there’s a struggle to reach students, especially in terms of historically Black colleges. There was at one point an idea, are they still relevant? But clearly we see in today’s climate that they’re more relevant than ever.
“Still, these institutions have to differentiate themselves,” Jackson continued. “That’s what we’re doing by emphasizing UAPB’s value, and the amazing student success outcomes.”
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