That awkward moment when Sweet Briar cancelled an ad campaign

Man, the stories people keep passing to me! I’m told this happened around 4 years ago under JEP…

Here’s the scenario:

You are trying to broaden your reach to try to get more students to attend your all-women’s college in rural Virginia. You want to go for maximum exposure, so you turn to that new fangled Google thing. All kinds of people are getting rich on the Interwebs, right?  So you design an ad campaign for Google AdWords, let ‘er rip, and then sit back and wait for all money to fall in your lap.

But after a while, you start looking at the results and scratchin’ your…head.  I mean, why on earth would people ALL the way over in INDIA be clicking on ads for an all-women college in the USA?  Clearly this Google thing isn’t working! It is completely illogical that the county which is home to almost 20% of the global population (1.2 billion and counting) and has widely held values about their women remaining “pure” until marriage would have any interest in an college only for women in the United States.

<clicks Remove Ad Campaign>

I know what you are saying – “That 4 years ago dude!”

Yeah, yeah…it’s not like Sweet Briar had refocused their marketing strategy, or that there was some big rush of students from India trying to get into colleges in the US…  But just out of curiosity and desire to do a little research on why this person thought the story may have significance, I did a quick Google search…

/facepalm

This story reminds me of a scene from Spinal Tap:

Ian Faith: The Boston gig has been cancelled…
David St. Hubbins: What?
Ian Faith: Yeah. I wouldn’t worry about it though, it’s not a big college town.

I believe “situational awareness” and “working as intended” are the phrases that apply here…