Posted on 08/30/2006 12:07:44 PM PDT by Heartofsong83
Ontario university mocks Bush in new campaign Updated Tue. Aug. 29 2006 11:21 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
A small northern Ontario university has sparked controversy by launching an edgy new recruitment campaign that mocks U.S. President George Bush and his Ivy League alma mater.
[b]Dubbed "Yale Shmale," the $100,000 crusade features a goofy image of Bush 'Yale University, Class of 1968' on posters that will be plastered across Toronto in a bid to attract potential new students.[/b]
As well as rolling out a series of posters, Lakehead University also took the campaign to its website, where readers are informed that [i]"graduating from an Ivy League university doesn't necessarily mean you're smart."[/i]
The site then directs readers to a page that says: "There are universities and then there are universities. So let's not beat around the bush. Lakehead is different."
Lakehead president and vice-chancellor Fred Gilbert said the "tongue-in-cheek" campaign by Toronto advertising agency McLellan [b]was designed to lure Toronto students to the Thunder Bay school.[/b]
[b]The website received more than 7,000 hits on Monday, Gilbert said, and online comments had been 95 per cent positive. [/b]
However, Gilbert, who said around 60 of the "Yale Shmale" posters will be mounted around the city, admits not everyone is happy about the new campaign.
Gilbert said the university, which has 7,600 students, had received e-mails which were "running in the opposite direction," which was a concern.
Yale reaction
Yale is not impressed with Lakehead's new marketing scheme either.
"We don't approve of other organizations using the Yale trademark," a spokeswoman for the respected Connecticut university, from which Bush graduated in 1968, told the Toronto Star Monday.
[b]Some of Lakehead's students also considered the campaign inappropriate, Gilbert acknowledged, while the president of Lakehead's student union said it lacked class.
"It strikes me as being very repugnant," union president Isabelle Poniatowski told Reuters. "Lakehead has so many positive attributes that you could really sell to people that live down south." [/b]
Meanwhile, although Lakehead's students may have expressed their feelings about the campaign, the reaction of the university's target audience remains to be seen.
[b]Gilbert says if the reaction in Toronto is as negative as the reaction on the university's campus, the campaign will be dropped.[/b]
The Lakehead campaign comes hot on the heels of a similar promotion that also poked fun at Bush's less-than-cerebral reputation.
Last month, simplyaudiobooks.ca, an audio book rental service, plastered posters and billboards around Toronto featuring a photograph of Bush and the words: "Don't Read Enough? Rent 10,000 books on tape/CD."
The Oakville, Ont.-based company, says the Bush billboards have been met with a positive response and that sales are up 100 per cent.
Yeah... President's Bush shouldn't have gotten an education from such disreputable places as Harvard and Yale. Probably should have gone North to, uh.. what was that school's name again?
Time to ship the Molson's across the lake to me. I'll put them to better use and at the same time respect the world leader that is taking on Islamofacism.
Yeah, if only they had a second university there that was more receptive of local needs and didn't go all-out to pander to the Toronto views (which are VERY anti-American).
The next closest school to there I believe is in Duluth, MN. The next closest Canadian school is in Winnipeg.
Sorry about the bad HTML tags, they wouldn't highlight (maybe I did it wrong?) and I cannot edit it.
Sounds like a real bastion of intellectual enlightment /sarc.
What kind of school has to engage in crass ad hominem childishness to attract students, especially one that mocks a school of far more renowned and a man far more successful than any of their graduates ever have been or ever will?? Who has even heard of this little rinky dink university?
Finally, why would anyone send their kids to a school that has to resort to such low brow tactics to attract students? Don't good schools usually attract students without having to lure them with sophomoric nonsense?
They sound like a real bunch of winners. *puke*
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Anyone who believes it, deserves it.
Jughead university
EDITORIAL: The National Post© National Post 2006
Source
We would be much better off if we had fewer Ivy Leaguers at every level of the government. They have been screwing things up since the days of FDR.
That's all right!
That's OK!
You'll all work
For us someday!
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