I have been with Ex'pression for several years and have experienced various changes from market downfall, to passing of the Founder and several management changes. This "takeover" by SAE is embarrassingly disorganized. From the change in people, who I am sorry, but we lost some very sophisticated and experienced employees, and settling for the SAE people. The marketing is a joke and low class, the HR is amateur, the COO is a child. This acquisition has made Ex'pression less valuable and our students are suffering for it. I'm sorry about your layoff, as I would never want anyone to lose their jobs. But when we laid off people. It made sense as to which positions and we gave people notice. I thought SAE and Navitas had money and class. The fact that no one had any idea that they were in the hole is amazing. And to do it in the manner in which it was done was absolutely wrong.
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The high school program was cut too short. Most everyone understands that HS is lead gen.
The high school program was cut too short. Most everyone understands that HS is lead gen.
Well part of that marketing was the High School Ambassadors. Since SAE doesn't spend much money on marketing for lead gen (if they do I don't see where its going) the High School Ambassadors were tasks with lead generation. The problem with the whole concept of the High School Ambassador program was that the schools and Navitas were looking for fast results and enrollments for every start. NEWSFLASH PEOPLE: They were called High School Ambassadors!!!!! High school kids only graduate once a year.......IN MAY! High School ambassadors MAIN focus was getting into high school and educate not only the kids but also the high school itself that SAE is a school for audio production. These kids had never heard of SAE. The high schools had never heard of SAE. Navitas never gave the ambassadors a chance before they let them go. How can you create positions in Jan 2014 and disband them in Nov 2014 because you didn't get the results you had hoped for? Again......High School kids will only affect one maybe 2 starts....Summer starts and Fall starts...period. Now SAE will revert back to being an obscure music school with obscure lead gen marketing who no one has ever heard of
The back grounds of the majority of then marketing people are in content and creative. We need more strategic and lead gen. That is where the disconnect is. It's like Admissions people having great tours of prospects, but not enrolling. Or Academics, teaching and doing a great presentation, but no one passing, or career services having nice events and fluff, but not placing. We need more than fluff. In ALL areas. Not just marketing.
I don't know how this post became all about Marketing. In general, I agree with the poster that SAE US does not quite have it together.
No one said Marketing had much to do with the layoff. (or I don't believe so). But as an employee for a proprietary college where the usual primary purpose of Marketing is to generate leads, I, as many others are not confident that the SAE marketing "Gets it". Now, if their primary goal is to make things look more aesthetic, I disagree with the original poster and believe SAE has talented, creative people. If the purpose of the SAE US was to "brand" the US Division, then they do a good job putting together material to celebrate what SAE alumni do using PR strategies. Again, our revenue is based on enrollments. As much as I'd hate to say it, I do believe that Marketing needs to put more focus on initiatives to generate good leads. That's why you'll see in most proprietary schools there is a VP of Admissions AND Marketing in one role. I actually am surprised I'm speaking to this affect, but to see our enrollments go down since acquisition, it makes me nervous. For such a robust Marketing team, I, like many others, expect more.
I wouldn't expect Ex'pression to know good work if it booped them in the face because they have been living in some unicorn/kitsch comic book/eggplant color schemed twilight zone, refusing to embrace the positive and constructive creative changes that have been such a proactive impact in merging us as one. The SAE website was a huge stride for the marketing team, countless hours were spent on creative direction, pre and post production to make an organic, in house content while being a user friendly site. And yes, Ex'pression was applauding and BEGGING for new creative in the same direction as SAE. We understand how having such a huge change with a new company coming in and copious changes happening so quickly can be an awful, terrible experience. But hey, that's the way the creative world works, trust us we would be upset/livid/bitter too. With that being said, SAE Marketing had NOTHING to do with the structure changes/layoffs of the company. Do some artistic research, go visit a museum, evolve into 2015, bark up another tree and get your facts straight.
Website
What template?
How many US marketing employees does it take to copy the European template after three years?
That's because no one in the marketing team had education lead flow experience. Only creative. They just hired a guy with experience. But seriously. They could have saved money hiring people or person with specific experience. Cost per start! It's not rocket sciencem
And lead gen really stinks and has for a long time. I've never seen a worse attempt at trying to figure out lead flow. Someone obviously does not know what they are doing.
Trust me. No Ex'pression employee is impressed with SAE US marketing.
Isn't the main purpose of marketing for leas generation? How is it that expression AND SAE are not hitting enrollments? Do you all even look at lead to start conversions?
New materials does not mean SAE materials
The Expression website and materials were so outdated and the old marketing team had no idea what they were doing... Pumping millions of dollars into projects without any ROI. Everyone was begging for new materials and they're still begging for a new website because they want it to be more like SAE's. It's a joke you think the old materials were "sharper" or "high class".
Last time I checked having a Wordpress for a website aka. Ex'pression (especially a website for a school offering Bachelors Degrees in the creative media field) was not consider a good thing and especially not a "better" thing.
They had money that they really didn't have. lol
Our website is better than SAE's. Our marketing materials are sharper. Our forms are better. How is it that SAE came in, so pompous and arrogant as if they were going to transform it to SAE. All because you THOUGHT you had money?
52779- I couldn't agree with you more about the buddy system. If we did our org chart based on how people are connected, you'll clearly see how the COO brought in his own people and so forth. The COO, controller, academics, new student guy, FA. So basically, he hired based on connection and not so much experience.
SAE also had a family feel until the Navitas takeover and all of these "better qualified" people were put in charge. SAE was in better financial shape before Navitas took over and decided to fix us. They got rid of a lot of really good, passionate people who knew how SAE worked and replaced them with their buddies who couldn't perform at the same level as the people that "resigned". When the buddies couldn't perform, they created additional roles to support their buddies. It makes perfect sense to replace 1 person with 3 new people, definitely a money saving measure. With math skills like this, no wonder they are losing money.
I couldn't agree with you more. The family culture is gone, replaced by mistrust and apathy. My Dean cared about me and turned my life around. Yea, I was a little wild, but he stuck with me and gave me a second chance. Now, nobody cares. It's like the leather had been replaced with plastic, you feel me? Too bad they can't undo the bad moves McKinley made and bring back the trust and the family feel. This place has changed for the worse by far.