I was watching the telly the other night and on came this ad for Edge Hill University, very professional, very slick (I even fancied going there myself it looked so good). But I also think its a bit surprising to suddenly be confronted by an advert for a university .. aren’t universities, well, kind of above that sort of thing?

Its also a bit paradoxical, because if you are a successful institution then surely you would not need to advertise in the first place. After all, there are only so many places to be filled, and this is dependent upon numbers of applicants wanting to go to your institution. If your popular you don’t need expensive TV adverts (you may well have more applicants than places).

As with all advertising, marketing is about turning a whole truth into a half truth and a half truth into a whole one; its what they don’t tell you at Edge Hill that you really should want to know about! And that is about resources available to the new intake, the staff-student ratio for instance is not mentioned .. now that would make an interesting ad!