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MEDIA BUYING DIRECT RESPONSE TELEVISION (DRTV) ARTICLE ...... |
Eyes on the Prize - UMass turns to Nobel as academic, corporate magnet
By: Lisa Eckelbecker
Published: 03/07 Worchester Telegram & Gazette |
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The buzz of conversation, when Jean F. MacCormack walked into a meeting of the Prince
Henry Society in New Bedford last October, was going strong.
Gathered to hear about the Portuguese-American Archives at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, what the
crowd of Portuguese-American business and professional people really wanted to chat about was the Nobel Prize just
awarded to Craig C. Mello, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. The Mello
family, those attending knew, is of Portuguese descent.
After the meeting, the society committed $250,000 to the archives project, and Ms. MacCormack, chancellor of the
UMass at Dartmouth campus, thought she knew why: Mr. Mello.
"It was this tremendous sense of family and great pride in his achievement, and it didn't matter to them that it
was UMass Medical School," she said. "It was Our UMass."
Such is the power of a Nobel Prize. Marketing and branding experts say it can do more for a university than any
other honor or achievement by drawing prospective faculty and students to a campus, inspiring alumni to make
donations and luring in corporate collaborators.
Even in our sports-obsessed society, it's bigger than a national sports championship, according to Christopher
Simpson, chief executive and partner of SimpsonScarborough, a marketing firm in Washington, D.C., that works
with colleges and has done market research on Nobel Prizes.
"Football is a boy's game played with men," Mr. Simpson said. "A Nobel laureate cuts right to the heart of the
institution."
UMass officials seem to know they have an opportunity. Since the announcement of the prize, the university has
taken out advertisements in state and national newspapers, hosted a gala dinner at the DCU Center for government
officials and members of the medical and research communities, and promoted the prize on university Web sites.
The day the prize was announced, UMass hired a video-production company to shoot footage of Mr. Mello for a television
commercial that is now airing.
Mr. Mello, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Blais University chair in molecular medicine at the
medical school, has accepted invitations to speak at fundraisers and even at a meeting of the Greater Boston Chamber of
Commerce.
The medical school's public relations office is working with Mr. Mello's office to figure out how to keep him in the
laboratory doing research while also taking on speaking engagements, fundraisers and meetings.
UMass officials think it may be easier to document the impact of the prize after more time has gone by. Some say,
however, that they already have hints of a positive impact. About 200 people, some of whom might be future donors to
the university, paid $250 each last week for dinner at a high-end Palm Beach resort in Florida and the chance to hear
Mr. Mello speak, said Jack M. Wilson, University of Massachusetts president.
"It's raised our profile so much," Mr. Wilson said. "To some extent, what it's done is it's brought attention to the
quality that was already there." But, he said, "now there's this visible symbol."
The medical school's efforts to reach pharmaceutical company representatives about technology development at the school
seem to have become easier, too, said James P. McNamara, executive director of the medical school's office of technology
management.
One company with connections to Boston-area research institutions recently agreed to a meeting, he said.
"They realized they needed to come out and deal with UMass," Mr. McNamara said. "I attribute that to the Nobel Prize."
Kevin O'Sullivan, president and chief executive of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives, an agency that promotes Central
Massachusetts economic development, said he is seeing the same enthusiasm in business circles.
"There's not anywhere I go that people do not recognize Mello and Worcester," Mr. O'Sullivan said.
The Nobel Prize is not the first honor to come Mr. Mello's way for the RNA interference findings that he and researcher
Andrew Z. Fire made in the 1990s.
Working with tiny worms, Mr. Mello's laboratory at UMass and Mr. Fire's laboratory, then at the Carnegie Institution of
Washington in Baltimore, unraveled a process that blocks genetic activity in cells.The findings have been highly
celebrated and spawned a growing field of research.
Among companies, Sirna Therapeutics Inc. of Boulder, Colo., has an RNAi drug in human trials for the wet form of age-related
macular degeneration. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge is testing an RNAi treatment for respiratory syncytial
virus.
A local subsidiary of Los Angeles-based CytRx Corp., RXi Pharmaceuticals Corp., has signed up several UMass researchers as
scientific advisers, including Mr. Mello.
For UMass, the challenge is to leverage the Nobel Prize so it affects a number of constituencies, according to marketing
and university experts: students, prospective students and their parents and advisers, faculty, alumni and, for a public
university, state politicians who decide on public funding levels.
The prize can make current students proud, attract more top-quality students and faculty, and inspire alumni to write
checks.
"It's an opportunity for the school to raise money, because once something like that happens, people like to be
associated with a winner," said Peter S. Koeppel, president of the Dallas advertising firm Koeppel Direct.
The university system raises millions of dollars a year for programs and faculty, and the University of Massachusetts
Foundation had more than $251 million in assets at the end of June 2006.
Mr. Wilson said UMass is planning to tout Mr. Mello and the prize at a May fundraiser at the Boston Pops. The
university will also arrange private meetings between Mr. Mello and potential major donors.
Meantime, UMass is aiming to translate the Nobel excitement into state financial support and backing for
initiatives, Mr. Wilson said, declining to be specific.
"The governor is very, very interested in what we're doing, and we're discussing all sort of things that might be
possible from there," he said.
Some institutions do fumble Nobel Prize marketing, said Mr. Simpson of SimpsonScarborough. In the past, one
university he follows issued a press release, then did nothing, he said.
"I talked to the local media months later, and they said the institution did not even make the Nobel laureate
available the day of the announcement," Mr. Simpson said.
Another potential problem lies in making sure an institution can live up to its own marketing, said Lydia M.
Pastuszek, senior adviser to the Clark University president for marketing and corporate affairs.
"What you have to be careful of is when you're marketing, you're promising something that you can deliver," she
said.
"One of the things you discover is that this is a kind of celebrity that really lasts," Mr. Wilson said. "People
will look up to them for a very long time."
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