We have a fun and exciting challenge that we’d like to offer to each and every member of ESCAPE this year and we hope that everyone will take a shot at it.
What’s the Challenge?
As you know, we are always working on the marketing message that we use when promoting European Studies and recruiting students. One of the things we always struggle with is the name. When you hear ‘European Studies,’ you can’t immediately picture a job like you can with other programmes, and this makes it harder to explain the programme to people. That’s a shame, because it means that people don’t get to hear that our programme offers so many job options, but we are stuck with the name and cannot change it.
What we can do is try to add something under the name: a sub-title or ‘tag-line’ that summarises the programme in a bit more detail.
Some other programmes do this. User Experience Design (an IT programme) uses the sub-title ‘Communication & Multimedia Design’ to make it extra clear what the programme is about.
We want a tagline. Preferably one that’s a little sexier than ‘communication & multi-media design’ and one that captures the most important elements of ES: the variety of career options, the combination of business & politics with languages and professional skills, etc.
This is where you come in. You are our target group (see below for target group details) and we think you’re probably the best people to help us find a good tagline. And so we want to ask you guys, working individually or in groups, to do two things:
- Imagine that we were allowed to change the name of the programme. What would you call it?
- Give us your subtitle or tagline.
That’s it. Think it up and write it down. You can make more than one attempt, but make sure you keep the following in mind:
A tagline can be a few words, or a full sentence. There aren’t a lot of rules, but we do have some requirements. Our tagline must:
- Mention our Unique Selling Point (that we are interdisciplinary, that we have job options and not just one job, that we’re multi-lingual, etc.) in some way.
- Try to distinguish us from other programmes (IB does business and IPM/Law do public policy, but we do both and add languages, etc. Nobody does that).
- Try to stress that our programme is practical and career-oriented, not academic.
- Be short – preferably under 10 words.
- Be appealing to our target group.
Beyond that, there are a million possibilities and options. These include mentioning the city of The Hague, the international city of peace and justice, the international character of the programme, the diversity among staff and students, etc.
Speaking of that Target Group….we have a lot of research on the ideal ES Student. This is how it describes our target group:
- Dutch students with a HAVO, VWO or MBO4 diploma (all profiles are accepted) and international students (Especially Europeans) with a comparable secondary school education.
- Students who are interested in and suited to the careers that match the ES programme and its learning outcomes and/or interested in having a variety of (international) career options, or who are not necessarily certain of what type of career they aspire to, and therefore likely to want an interdisciplinary programme.
- Students who are interested in both business (but not economics and math) and politics (but not political theory) and culture and who are interested in exploring opportunities in all of these areas, or careers that bring them together, or who are not yet certain which of these disciplines interests them the most.
- Students who are interested in the main types of careers associated with ES, especially those listed in the ES profile (see career context above).
- Students who seek practical, career-oriented learning as opposed to academics and theory.
- Students who are interested in and comfortable adjusting to an international environment, where English is spoken and inclusion is practiced.
- Students who are interested in and/or gifted at learning foreign languages and who are likely to have studied foreign languages in secondary school – though previous experience is not required.
- Students who are open-minded and interested in interacting with other cultures in an inclusive environment in and outside of the university.
- Students who like to travel and want to visit, live and work in other countries as part of their personal and professional development.
- Students who are committed to global citizenship and want to contribute to making the world a better place, either through public policy and public organisations (including the EU) or through sustainable business practices and/or multi-stakeholder collaboration.
What Will Happen
We’re hoping to get as many suggestions as possible and we’ll consider them all. We may choose one, or make a combination of them, and we’ll keep you posted. We’ll also be rewarding the best suggestions with prizes. Stay tuned for more on that.
How to Participate
Annija Gulbe has agreed to run point on this, so send your suggestions to her at A.Gulbe@student.hhs.nl. She’ll assemble them and send them in for consideration.
Make sure you send her an email with ‘tagline suggestion’ in the subject line and include:
- An alternative name for European Studies.
- Your suggested tagline.
That’s all there is to it. Get to Work. Your deadline is 10 December.
