NUS admission advertisements: provocative or abstract

Kelvin Lim | kl@nus.edu.sg
the ridge news
A NUSSU Publication

16th March 2008

Story Highlights:

• This year’s NUS advertisement another question mark
• Advertisement series aim to show “the NUS difference”
• Poll shows many students think the ads are abstract
• The ads were intended to be provocative to capture the idealists’ minds
• Mixed reaction from non-NUS students

With university admissions running on an overdrive to woo students from junior colleges and polytechnics, the ridge reporter Kelvin finds out how the latest effort of National University of Singapore is faring.

“The World Will Never Know Peace”, or so the latest advertisement in local print media by NUS claims, “At NUS, we believe peace begins with understanding.”

NUS admission advertisement series
Photo credit: NUS

The advertisement continues to explain that because NUS is able to provide exchange and immersion programmes worldwide, it is able to help future leaders bridge across cultures.

It might be another case of déjà vu for some, especially if one remembers last year’s television commercial by NUS Business School.

The advertisement in question showed a student in suburban America leafing through letters from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management and the University of Chicago’ Graduate School of Business, before squealing in delight at an acceptance letter from NUS.

By comparing NUS business school with the world’s top 10, it understandably stirred up a ruckus in the internet community.

While the current series of advertisements have steered away from making controversial claims like the previous, it has nonetheless raised eyebrows among NUS students, as shown by an opinion poll conducted by the ridge.

Tersely dismissing the whole campaign, fourth-year architecture student, Grace Tan, remarked: “This is simply a waste of money considering how much space the advertisement occupies.”

Mr Bernard Toh, director of the Office of Corporate Relations explained that there was good reason and effort behind the current series of advertisement.

It was intended to be both a continuation and a development from last year’s publicity theme —“That’s the difference between them N’US”.

This year’s theme, “That’s the NUS difference”, highlighted how the various curriculum, specially-designed programmes and strategic researches in NUS can help make a difference and contribute to the greater community and the world.

Nonetheless, an overwhelming majority of the NUS students found it abstract, with some claiming that it was simply unrelated to that of an educational institution.

Echoing similar views, third-year bioengineering student Lee Wong Cheng thought that prospective students might not notice that it was an NUS advertisement.

Unfazed, Toh defended that the advertisement were deliberately provocative to capture the minds of the young with the intention of reaching out to the idealist within each one of them.

This had to be done to cut through the clutter of highly homogenized publicity themes from other institutions, appearing in a same time period.

Photo credit: NTU

Lending weight to Toh’s argument, third-year business student Li Wenjie felt that the advertisements were simply too commonplace to make an impact, while psychology student, Li Wei Xin commended that advertisements by NTU were more relevant to the targeted audience.

On the other hand, garnering views from non-NUS students yielded interestingly mixed reactions.

First-year Victoria Junior College student, Rachael Lam Yi Wen noted that NUS advertisement was effective in a way that captured the audience’s attention, especially in comparison to the one by NTU.

Yet, Kevin Choong from NTU’s Aerospace Engineering felt that NUS was trying too hard to “make a difference or whatever that really means”.

Difference or plain indifference, the fact that only a quarter of students surveyed had viewed the print advertisement before calls into question the efficacy of the print medium.

It may be too early to give a final verdict, but Toh revealed that since the campaign kicked off, responses to the Joinus.sg microsite and online admissions ads have been higher than expected.

Photo credit: NUS

Opinion Poll among 46 students from NUS, NTU and JC

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