Defining the Stakeholder

The assignment we are working on pubs right now includes developing a direct mailer to send to a target audience. I did not realize how specific target audiences could be until discussing it in class and looking through Facebook’s ad creator. Keeping that in mind, I tried to pull specifics of my own experience when I was applying to OU and reach out to high school students going through the same things I was.

Looking back to my senior year of high school, I was hardly targeted by OU’s recruitment services at all. I have a family legacy at OU, so perhaps they thought they didn’t need to target me. I also have family living in Norman but, if I did not have those familial connections to the city and University, I wonder if I would have ever applied to OU. I went to a small, private, Christian academy in Flower Mound, Texas. Many of the students who graduate from my high school, Coram Deo Academy, attend a Texas college or university. Texas A&M attracts a lot of graduating seniors from that area, but many, many students attend TCU, Baylor, Abilene Christian University and other private Texas universities after graduation.

From this experience of my own, I believe OU does a poor job of reaching out to high school students attending private schools in Texas. I think this is unfortunate because these private schools are typically very rigorous academically and the students would offer much to OU.

My main stakeholder will be 16-18 year old high school students enrolled in private schools and academies in the North Texas area, which encompasses the DFW metroplex and all smaller towns north. This age range would include students who are currently applying to college and looking for places to apply.