Don’t be afraid. Tell it like it is.

Dig out your photos from 2019, it’s time for some “maskless” marketing.

Wait, stop. Don’t you dare do that.

Colleges and universities are announcing Fall reopening plans and though it sorta kinda feels like normal, it isn’t pre-covid normal.

Marketers need to embrace what campus life will be like in the Fall and not advertise what they’d like it to be. For higher education marketers, we still bear the responsibility of preventing a bait and switch. Yes, we have dozens of maskless, “ad-ready” photos, but don’t be too quick to exclusively use these.

It’s not untrue that people are ditching the masks, but it’s also misleading to depict this as 100% the college experience.

The reality is, this next normal will be a hybrid.

Some within the community will continue wearing masks, while some will show their pearly white teeth again. “Traditional” activities and events will be woven back into campus life programming, but these will likely be a mixed bag of masks and no masks. In classrooms where a threshold of vaccinated individuals isn’t met, masks will almost definitely be required. So again, don’t just post full classrooms of unmasked students in your marketing. That won’t benefit…