The High School Hallway, Higher Ed's Last Untapped Channel | Harrison "Soup" Campbell, NextGrad

Gjergj Dollani: Welcome to the latest episode of the Enrollment Clinic. I have a very special guest today. my guest is Soup Campbell. He is the Chief Growth Officer at Nextgrad. you have a very very varied experience and very deep experience in higher ed and education specifically. and I'd love to hear a little bit more about your background and how you got into higher ed.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, thank you for having me on on the podcast. I've watched a few of the episodes you've done. They are fantastic. So I was

Gjergj Dollani: Thank you.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: honored when you reached out and gave me an opportunity to join. So great to chat today. So yeah, I mean, if anybody's listening, that that's who is this guy? I don't even know who this is. I'm certainly happy to share a little bit about my background. education has just been kind of just my life's work. years ago in an earlier previous life, I was a I was a secondary high school, middle school social studies teacher. and actually a lot of people don't realize this, but before that I actually went to Bible college. I was a full-time youth pastor for a while, was working in full-time ministry, but transitioned

Gjergj Dollani: Yes.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: over to secondary. I taught middle school, high school for I think five or six years. before deciding, I don't know if I can really, if this is it for me for the next 30 years. And of course, at that point you're thinking, well, what do you do? Like you you've got a degree to teach middle school and high school social studies. Like, what else can you really do with that? And like all of us who have worked in colleges, enrollment or universities and enrollment or, any any type of job really at the higher ed level. We typically stumble into it. You don't go to school to get a degree typically to work for colleges and universities. And so I stumbled into an entry-level admissions counselor position at Indiana State University and was just immediately hooked. There was a lot of transferable skills. I was still working with students and parents. So that educator in me still felt kind of natural in that environment. And I just I just fell in love with. with higher ed and admissions and enrollment. So I spent about 10 years working at colleges and universities here in Indiana where I'm still located. And then back in 2018, a friend that had kind of gotten to know me a little bit reached out to me on LinkedIn one day and said, Soup, you were one of these early pioneers of leveraging social media and to to really use it to engage and reach students. And I work for this company called Zimi and we're we're thinking about building something new here. And feel like you'd be a great fit. you'd

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: get to you'd get to work remote from home. And this is 2018 and I'm like, work remote from home? Like I'm a very social person. I love being on a college campus.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: I don't I don't know if it's a good fit. So long story short, I took a chance on coming over to that side of higher ed and just absolutely fell in love. I was with Zimi for seven years and and helped be be a part of a great team that really built a fantastic company. And here and more recently I I made a quick pivot. I I worked very briefly for a company that I was close with and used when I was on the college site, Ardeo. I was with them very briefly, just under a year. But I kind of the the dream opportunity landed, landed here just a few months ago. And a friend that I knew that I had followed for a while, Michael, the CEO, president founder of of an amazing company called Nextgrad, just reached out

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: to me. We started having a conversation. And it was just the absolute perfect fit for what I was really looking for at this point in my career. And so yeah, I've stepped into the role as their chief growth officer and and it's crazy. It feels like, I'm a few months in, but it feels like I've worked here forever. So very excited to be where I am. It's been a crazy journey. And if you'd asked me all those years ago, how could you go from having an undergrad degree in secondary ed social studies and you could end up being the chief growth officer for, basically a tech company in the in the education space, I would have said there's no way, but but here we are.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. I think that's what's great about higher ed in general, that you can come in from any s any background and still make something here. I think it has room for for everybody. one of the one of the the things that I I love about your background is and and when I was thinking about this podcast episode, I don't know if you've seen this new meme going around about, you are a TikTok emo, I'm a MySpace emo, and there's pictures posted in there. MySpace pictures from twenty years ago. And and I and I the reason why I I thought of you about that is because y you were really kind of at the forefront of just using social media at a time when we don't even even know what that was to

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: connect to connect with students to understand really w what what their drivers and motivators are. talk to me a little bit about that. Like what what kind of

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: No.

Gjergj Dollani: made you go, my space is where it's at. Let's let's let's dive into

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: this.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: my gosh. Yeah. And I'll have to tell you a story too that ties in with this that was so funny. So yeah, going back specifically to MySpace, this actually MySpace was at its peak when I was teaching high school. and I was also a head baseball coach, a varsity head baseball coach. And I mean, I fell in love with MySpace. And I also have this secondary hobby of of doing web design and coding and that stuff. And and a lot of us from that era. That was the first time we started to learn how to code and HTML and div overlays. And so I mean,

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: I had made this crazy cool MySpace, even for our high school baseball program that started getting lots of people like or like following this MySpace for this high school baseball program. And I did a lot of custom div overlays and made it look incredible. And now bands are reaching out to me and like, man, we saw what you did with that page. Like, we need a page done. And I'm like, this

Gjergj Dollani: That is great. Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: is crazy. So I was obsessed. I loved MySpace. I actually miss it. I think it was one of the most pure social platforms.

Gjergj Dollani: It's making a comeback.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, and it is. And you're seeing it back in the news right now. And I would love to see it.

Gjergj Dollani: It's making a comeback.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: The the only thing with me, like at my age now, I'm like, do I do I even have eight friends that I can even put in my top eight? Like, do I even have eight friends? Like, I don't so yeah. Yes,

Gjergj Dollani: W listen, Tom will always be your friend,

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: yes. So so that's yeah, I loved MySpace, but here's a cool thing, a story. that I've shared with some people. So it's around 2009. And I had just started, I had just made that transition from teaching to Indiana State University.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: And again, like I love this stuff. And you were starting to see this shift over to Facebook being kind of this new thing. And and and Facebook just looked so boring and stale and just like it the complete opposite of MySpace. But it seemed like It's it was becoming a college thing and college students, were using it. I was lucky. I got invited. I'm this entry level admission counselor and I got invited to a big meeting on campus with the, VP of marketing and communications and like really important people in the meeting. And, they were talking about just strategies, things we could do, new new things to kind of reach prospective students. and I was like, Why don't I kind of raise my hand and everybody's like, Okay, who is he? Like, what what I'm like, hey, why don't we consider, setting up a Facebook page and leveraging, maybe a Facebook page. So like it's I'm starting to see more of these young people gravitating to it. And I kid you not, one of the leaders, one of the high, leaders in that room looked at me and said, We will never get on the Facebook to do that.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: And you think about just how. How much the world changed. Like, I mean, I mean, we everybody got on Facebook and started using that. Every college and university had a Facebook page. And, we were one of the first ones making those class of pages on on Facebook that had so much impact. And so it just, it's crazy to look at that back then to think that was so new. And like from a marketing standpoint, like, no, we don't, that's not how we do marketing in higher ed. We'll never do this weird new social media thing and you just look at where we are now. but yeah, just a funny story from back then. But yeah, I just was always like, I love to tinker. I love to if a platform, if I could adapt or modify or do very cool kind of design stuff with platforms. And so yeah, I just kind of made a name for myself of doing some innovative work in those early days of of social media. And it was a lot of fun. And I always tell people this, those that didn't get to experience those social platforms in the early days. Cause early on they're they're very pure. They really are social platforms. The problem is, really the only route to monetization is is through advertising. And so ultimately most of these platforms become ad platforms. And that's when it really that's when it really changes and and it goes a different way. But but those platforms in their infancy in the early days were so pure. And I thought MySpace was definitely one of those just super pure kind of social platforms.

Gjergj Dollani: yeah, it's and just kind of thinking back now and just hearing you talk about your experience, it just seems like a natural transition for you to go from being, in in higher education and working directly with students to now being in ed tech and providing services to to universities, specifically with some of these new technologies, right? Zimi was I would say new. Next grad is making what's old new again, I don't know, but you can

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yep. Yep,

Gjergj Dollani: and but but in a different space, right? In in just basically bringing universities directly into the space where most 15 to 18 year olds spend most of their day at starting from from the morning, right, in in in schools, in and high schools. W what do you think? Kind of looking at your background, what do you think sets you apart, like your experience, right? From a traditional ed tech exec, right? In in a sense, right? Because and and again, you've been you you've been in the administration side, I've been in the administration administration side, and I'm sure you have similar stories where some guys from an ed tech company come in, they talk to you for about an hour, they leave and you go, they don't even understand what we do. I mean,

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: th they they they have something, but they don't understand what we do.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that really defines me through all of these years, everywhere I've been, is that I I have always been student first.

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: I I always try to see things through the lens of the student and their experience, whatever whether what we're building, what products, what services, how I'm teaching in the classroom, like all of these things, like they are the most important thing. And I don't know that. Everyone, shares that. Everyone has different motivations. Companies have different motivations. but I've never wavered from just solely being focused on students. And then the other thing with me is I care deeply about higher ed.

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: college changed my life. College gave me opportunities that and opened doors and has and continues to open doors for me. that I don't believe would ever have been opened were it not for that experience for me just to change and grow during those years when I was in college. And so I care deeply about higher ed. And I know higher ed's at threat right now. We have so many challenges. And so, no matter what company I work for or what I'm doing, like I'm always going to be advocating for for higher ed and and wanting to be with people that also share that mindset of. wanting to team together, like what does the future of higher ed look like? How are we gonna make sure that higher ed still exists, 20 years from now with all the changes. And so, those are some of the things that I think just maybe separate me from others that are in the space. And that just is what kind of my my North Star that kind of always guides me in decision making. I think, and I'm probably really rare, right? Like I think about so many companies in the higher ed space. And I don't know many that have someone in an executive level leadership role for that company that really comes from that college or university side.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: I think probably very few. And so that's one of the things I've always looked at, does a company have folks from our side? Cause listen, we all know if you've worked in higher ed, we are a small industry. We all know each other. we know who's faking it. We know who's for real. and we we talk. and so like it's we've always had this skepticism of vendors, we've always had this kind of like we don't trust them because, they're they don't they've never sat in this seat, they don't know who we are, they don't know our language. and so I think I'm also pretty rare that I've somehow been fortunate to work my way into a position at a company where I have sat in that seat and I do understand what that's like and the challenges. And I think That helps with just that trust and that relationship building. And higher ed probably more than any industry is all based on just, those those relationships and that trust that you build with folks.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. Yeah. I I think you you hit the nail in the head by saying how small this industry is, and I don't think people realize how small it is, because you kind of think, okay, well there's five thousand hired institutions, there's, a hundred and fifty people on average that work for one. So but then you kind of realize doing all these circles that you run into the same people over and over and

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: over. and and I and I agree with you that A lot of these new companies that are trying to solve higher ed problems are also, I think, realizing that they need somebody from the inside who really understands what the problem is, right? Because to me, they almost feel like a solution in search of a problem, right? So they need that person to kind of made that

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. Yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: make that connection. Now that kind of leads me to talk a little bit about next grad. So how long has next grad

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: been around?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. So Nextgrad has been around now for seven years.

Gjergj Dollani: Okay.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: And it is a company in higher ed that was the innovator company, right? It was the one to bring something brand new to higher ed. Michael brought something to higher ed that had never existed in higher ed. And some people are familiar with the term, OOH, out-of-home marketing. And the one product that you typically think of, or that people that don't even understand what that is, they'll they'll know billboards. Traditional billboards are one of the primary out-of-home, kind of infrastructure where brands and companies can advertise. And so, Michael had this vision of why don't we have infrastructure like that within high schools all across the country? Why can't there be infrastructure in the high schools? And allow colleges and universities to be able to get their branding, their messaging directly to students within high schools, that very sacred space. And so for seven years, Nextgrad's been slowly building that infrastructure across all across North America, the US and Canada. And now we just have this massive, just the largest in school media network really in the world. And so and it's and it's It's incredible because to your point earlier, we're coming into this world now where, for so long we did just traditional digital advertising. It was always, it was just pay for clicks. Like that's the game we were paying, playing. We were, it's pay for clicks. That's that's the measure. That's how we're kind of measuring success here. And unfortunately, we are now in a scenario where the clicks are no longer all coming from human beings. And so there's been so much research done here recently where one research report I was looking at just estimated across all industries in 2026 alone, if you look at ad fraud, there's over 150 billion dollars in loss through ad fraud because messaging and advertisements were served and received clicks from non-humans. They were either bots or sophisticated AI that can really replicate a human. And so you're seeing this pendulum now swing back, like, look, if I'm gonna spend money for advertising, I at least want to know what I'm spending is getting in front of real human eyeballs. And so, yeah, next grad is so well positioned right now to have this in-school media network, give colleges and universities the direct line of access to these students students. And where where else? Where else can you advertise to prospective students for up to eight hours a day? Nine,

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: nine months out of the year. Many of these high schools today and states now have banned cell phones within the school. So you've got a complete distraction-free environment. and so yeah, so that's where we are today, and we continue to expand and and build out our network. And, we work with hundreds of colleges and universities. We have, thousands of of high schools, thousands and tens of thousands of screens within high schools. And it's just a it's a great way to to be able to to influence students very early in the process, long before they ever get to the point where they're even gonna make a decision to apply to a school form.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. Now I'm I'm very sure that probably the biggest pushback you get when you get on on on these calls with new prospective clients is traceability, right? So attribution

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yep.

Gjergj Dollani: like how can I attribute an enrollment coming directly from you or you having a touch point in in there? And I think part of that is because we've become so enamored as an industry with data. Like I want to know from the moment they saw it till when they said in class every single touch point and I want to I want to be as efficient as possible with my advertising dollars so that I can do one to one. every dollar has has a has an outcome. Which I think is terrible because it's a it's a a zero sum game and it's almost like you're you're now focusing on Just the 20% that would have come to your school anyway. you're spending that money because you're you're now trying to identify that exact type of person and you're leaving out all of this awareness that I think out of home generates, right? So what's what's your pitch to what's the what's the response to somebody coming in and saying, I can't attribute this?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, and you're right. I think, traditional out-of-home marketing is based on impressions. that that's the real, it's, length of time of the placement, location of the placement, how many eyeballs are going to see it. that's that's typically, what you measure. Now at next grad, we're able to to be able to go a little bit more sophisticated than that. For example, we might look, we work with a college or university, they've got some top high schools or a new high school. That they really want to tap into. Well, we can look back over the last three, five years and look at the number of students that matriculated from that high school to the college, and then we can compare that. Okay, let's start launching campaigns and let's look in year one. Did it

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: stay the same? Or all of a sudden, wow, now we got seven more students from this school. So I mean, there's ways like that that we work with all of our college partners to help them see efficacy and ROI. But really to your point, A lot of this is just hard to measure. that there there is research. Like we just did a a neat research study with Encora and looked at like thousands of high school seniors. Over 70% indicated we've seen college messaging within our high school. And then of those, a little over 50% said, like, we took action. Like after we saw it, we took action,

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: either either going to our phone or either getting on our laptop and looking something up. So like We do have data and research to back up the impact that this can have. But I tell all of my friends who who are leaders on the higher ed enrollment or marketing side, look, at the end of the day, some of this measuring of this stuff is kind of smoke and mirrors. We we when social media in those early days of social media, here's another story. I got pulled into a cabinet meeting at one of the schools where I was Dean of Admissions. And I I had been doing really cool innovative things with Snapchat, with Instagram. And I got pulled into a meeting and they started like drilling me on some of these questions, like, well, that's great. Like we know it seems like what you're doing on Snapchat's really cool, but like can you tell us a a number of how that impacted Summer Melt? Or can you tell us of all these new Instagram followers who are the high school junior? Like, and and what those platforms gave you were just vanity metrics.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: So, like you can you can fall into that trap of like, well, engagement's gone up this month. Well, well, yeah. Well, what does that mean though? That's gotta translate to something. So it is hard to measure a lot of these things. And then a lot of companies always too in our space like want to take credit. Like they're the only variable at play. Next cred isn't the only variable. Like we would never say just because a student saw you on a screen, like that's why they decided to apply or attend. There's all of these factors that have to work together. So for us, the biggest impact is that early saturation, that early brand awareness. So that a student, has been seeing you since they were a freshman in high school. By the time they are a junior or senior and getting ready to make those decisions, they've known about you for years. And so they are going to click on one of your ads. They are going to respond to an email because you're not an unknown.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: They've been no the they've been known to the student for years. And so that's the real impact that that early kind of brand saturation has when you when you try to reach them within their schools on these screens with next grad. And and not just screens. I mean, we do poster placements, we can do crazy innovative campaigns. a a college might say, like, could could we do something with that high school work with us and we do like some branding on the lunchroom trays or could we do a wrap on a wall or things like? I think a lot of people think of us just with those vertical kiosks, but we can do all kinds of innovative, unique kind of messaging to students within those schools, those high schools that we work with.

Gjergj Dollani: I'm curious, are there situations or do you foresee a situation where somebody comes in, an institution comes in for a partnership and you and you say, I'm sorry, I don't think we're the right fit to be a part?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, yeah. Well, we do that on a couple different fronts all the time, right? So obviously, people out there know we have this massive in school media network. So other brands and companies approach us all the time, and

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: and matter of fact, There was a situation where Mr. Beast actually wanted to do something. And which I mean, for us as a company, you can imagine, my gosh, this monetarily could be huge to do this partnership with Mr. Beast and all of a sudden let him be on all these screens in the high schools. And we we didn't do that. We didn't turn that down because we've built trust with all of our high school partners. They know the only thing, the only content that will ever be on those screens from through us. are colleges and universities, trade schools. So like maybe we work with an aviation program, things like that. And we work closely with the military. We're happy to have them be able to be on screens. And then on the occasion we'll do some like national campaigns, like maybe it's like an anti-vaping campaign, something that we know is

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, no.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: truly beneficial to young people. But no, we we are very, very selective. and we have a protected, this is a sacred space in those high schools and this is a protected network. and so unlike billboards and billboard companies where any comp they're not gonna turn down any company probably to advertise for us, it's pretty selective on on who gets to be on those advertisements and those placements.

Gjergj Dollani: And is that is that part of regulation or is it just your mission and kind of vision of the organization?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, I think it's just yeah, it's just it's just our mission. Yeah. I mean, it's just our mission. I mean, we our mission is to to show high school prospective students opportunities. Opportun future opportunities for education, future opportunities for trade school, future opportunities, should it be military? Like that's we're just trying that is our mission. That's what we do. We're not trying to put Red Bull advertisements and things. And that's just not what we do. It's just not our mission. I mean, we are solely focused on educational outcomes for students and and helping them see opportunities that they could have post high school. and again, I don't think we would be where we are today had we not, had that built that trust that our high school partners know that's exactly who we are, what we're going to do. So yeah, there's you you don't want to break that trust when you've built a company. And we're just we're a very mission focused company. every high school that we work with, we give back to them monetarily for them to provide a scholarship every single year to one of their graduating seniors. And we we usually we don't we we fully put it in their hands to decide the student that'll get it, but we encourage, first gen, traditionally underrepresented students. So we're we we want to give back and we really wanna help students see a future beyond high school and know that they have many options. and so that's what we're doing with the network.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, I have w one last question on on Nextgred and then we're gonna move on to other topics. How do two schools that are in very close proximity, two universities in very close proximity, obviously targeting within fifty mile radius of their area, their a regional kind of community school, how do they participate in next grad in a way that makes sense for both of them?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. So one of the things is with our network is that it's first come, first serve. Okay. And so for example, if you just looked at our vertical kiosk, our vertical digital screens, we only place 10 placements on those screens. So you can only be one of 10. and so,

Gjergj Dollani: Interesting. Okay.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: obviously that's gonna make sure, I mean, in in in close geographic proximity, there's typically not more than 10 schools that would want to kind of be there. So they probably have the ability to all have a presence, have their messaging looping on that screen. But we've got some other cool things. Like we've got, tens of thousands of horizontal, more TV style screens

Gjergj Dollani: Mm-hmm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: in high schools. And those are the screens that the high schools are using for their own internal communications, announcements, today is this day, here's the sporting events going on. And on those screens, we do real exclusivity and we only allow one college or university to kind of have a spot within all of the content that the high schools are running there. So some of these markets they they sell out pretty quick. And so if you're not one of those first 10 or you don't jump on that exclusivity to be on that horizontal screen, you could kind of be on the outside looking in. But typically that's how it works. And the the schools that come to us first are the schools that are gonna have the opportunity to to snatch and grab those high schools that they want. We call it, owning these high schools, yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: sense. Makes sense. I wanna go back a little bit to one of the things that you said about high schools being sacred ground. Right. And to me, when I hear that word, I always think everybody's coming for this. Everybody's gonna try to innovate and get in there. So I'm pretty sure part of what you do individually but also as an organization is keep an eye out for new technologies, new ways people can come into the space that you currently own, right? Are there are there technologies or what are some of the things that you think could be coming down the pike in the future from a way to reach students in high school? Because right now everybody does geo targeting, right? Like that's the easiest thing

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. Yes.

Gjergj Dollani: you just

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yes. Yep.

Gjergj Dollani: everybody's got cell phones, so

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Absolutely. I I think for me, I think, at least for us at next grad, where this could continue to evolve is just beyond like what traditional digital display technology is right now, right? So for example, I saw a company here that's that's got a cool product that on glass. So on glass now you can you can put this kind of innovative paneling. You can still see through the glass. So imagine like the big office space in the high school, or maybe the big common commons area has has some, a lot of glass separating kind of maybe some offices. Well, now you can do some really cool digital displays where the glass still looks transparent, but it's actually this big screen that, can can have any type of digital imaging or messaging. So I think for us at next grad, we're going to start looking at, more emerging technologies like that and work with high schools individually

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, it is.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: that are like, man, we would love in our gymnasium, we would love

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: an area to do some type of more fully immersive type of digital display. Like I think that's where I could see us moving just as the technology of displays evolve. And again, all of our high school partners, they love this. Like they want, they want their students to be able to see these things and what's out there. And one of the things we've learned too, I work closely with a lot of our high school friends and our high school counselors, many of them have are assigned to 500 students and like they they they individually

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: don't have the bandwidth.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: To really try to advocate, for every single student, make sure every single student knows the opportunities. And so they're desperate to have more of this kind of within their schools. And the beautiful thing about it is like we don't charge the high schools anything to do, to do this. and so it's it's just a win-win all the way around. But for I I see some of that new technology emerging where we could do some some cool new things beyond just the traditional digital displays that we commonly see right now.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. Let's jump a little bit on the content side of reaching high school students. 'cause I'm sure you get to see a lot of the content that your partners provide. and and I'm sure you've seen everything from amazing to I

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: should go back to the drawing board with this one. What are some of the things that schools get wrong in terms of content, like out of home content, specifically

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: in high schools? Right, 'cause I 'cause

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yep.

Gjergj Dollani: my thinking is they're they're used to doing digital ads and they're like, well, this is another digital ad but at a s school, so what are some of

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yes. Yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: the things that they're doing wrong in the way they're executing their out of home advertising?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, I think it's still easy to fall into that. Like, we should show the campus and we should show the quad. And like, let's

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: make sure, the five students represent five different ethnicities and they're sitting under the tree. And like, I, I still see a lot of that. And high school students have just told us in these past few years, like, we're we that's not what we're looking for. Like, that's not what we want. We know you have a quad. We know you've got the different ethnicities. the biggest shift is students are demanding to see outcome-based results. Like

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: I want to see, like the value of higher ed is that question right now with students and parents. And so they really want to see if I end up at this school, does it translate will I even have a job? will I be able

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: to get a job, a career after this? And so I think you want to be very transparent about showing kind of like outcomes. And again, I think we've we've all known this over the past few years. The more user-generated style content that you can do, I mean, there's a reason why these students absolutely love TikTok and seeing a current college student doing takeovers and things, or on the

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Instagram accounts doing the student takeovers, because they want to truly see through a real student's perspective, what that experience is like there and try to see themselves through that student. And so I always encourage my higher ed marketing friends to think about that. And again, within the high schools, you don't have to, it doesn't have to be super polished. let's

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: say, let's say specifically there's this high school that had their rock star valedictorian last year that every student in the high school knows and that the student was an athlete involved in theater,

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: like did all the things. And now they're a first year student at a college that's right down the road.

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: and that college is partnering with us at NextGrat. I am telling them, look, get that first year student. They're gonna be the ones in that video. Do something creative where maybe they're like waving everybody in and then have your messaging. Like everybody in that high school knows that student. They were just there last year. So, like

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, yeah. Smart.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: creative things like that. I think a big thing that I've noticed with some of our college universities, they still think we should slap QR codes on all of these, and we're like, no, no, no. No, like first off, again, think about it. Most many of these high schools now are cell phone free. So they they don't even have a device to get out to scan

Gjergj Dollani: Maybe.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: a QR code. And a lot of our high school friends have even given us feedback. Like we we don't really want too big of a distraction. So we don't want something where students are trying to interact with the screen or messing with the screen.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: We just want colleges and universities to be able to speak kind of to through the screens with the messaging. So We still have to kind of teach our colleges and universities that this isn't a QR code thing where you're trying to just get scans from a screen. Like that's not the purpose of of what we're doing there. So those are some of the things I've seen, but we work closely with all of our higher ed friends and marketers. And many of these colleges and universities are actually using big marketing agencies and they're experts on this stuff, so they're pretty good at it. but there's always areas for improvement.

Gjergj Dollani: While you were talking about this, I'm thinking from a of course from a university standpoint, you want to be in a high school. But I'm also thinking from a high school standpoint, you want certain universities to show up in in your displays, right? So do

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: you get do you get requests from high schools like, Hey, we actually want to partner with university X and Y because this is how we can promote to students and parents that this is where you end up when you come to our high school, right?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, that absolutely happens. And one of

Gjergj Dollani: Okay.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: the things, one of the things that's crazy where we also then have to work with our colleges and universities, okay, let's just I'll use an example, like Indiana University, flagship university here in Indiana.

Gjergj Dollani: Okay.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: So like Indiana University might say, well, like we don't really need to like, I mean, we are the flagship. Every like every student knows who we are. But then on the flip side, all of our high schools here in Indiana are like, well, wait a minute. Like, like we love it that we're seeing some of these other colleges, some of them are from outside the state. We want to see our flagship. We wanna see IU on here as well. Like, and some of those high school teachers, they're like, I'm an IU

Gjergj Dollani: yeah, next step. Next time. Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: grad, I wanna see IU. and and IU is one of our partners. So sometimes there's that we have to remind the college universities, like, hey, even though you may not feel like this market, like you already own your backyard or everybody knows

Gjergj Dollani: No.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: you, they still need to see you and they want to see you and they want to make sure you're there on those spots, as well as other colleges that maybe they're not as familiar with. So yeah, there's always back and forth. At next grad, we have a high school team, like we have members of our company that only solely focus on working with our high schools. Sometimes they will tell us like, hey, here's three colleges, reach out to them right now. We want to know why are they not on these screens? And so we'll go to the colleges. And then sometimes the colleges are doing the same thing. Hey, here's here's seven high schools. that kind of seems like we're not in there yet. Like we want those high schools working with you all at next grad because we want to communicate to the students. So there's always this which comes first, chicken or the egg, the back

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: and back and forth. But yeah, that's that's some of what I've seen since I've been here at next grad.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, I would assume probably the universities that are doing the best job with what you guys are working on are probably the ones that give you guys a lot of flexibility in terms of display, location, messaging, things like that, right? I mean, i it would make sense to me. You just wanna give it to the expert. it's a it's a new thing. They're already in the market, they know what they're doing, they know what works. Right? Is that you seeing that or who's what what

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: we see a lot of that.

Gjergj Dollani: what institutions, for example, you partner with you think do a great job at at leveraging, out of home? Yeah, I don't I we don't wanna get into like

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: gosh. I mean, it's now now you're you're putting me on the spot. You'll get me in trouble if I start. So I named IU because I'm an alum. I can I can use I l IU as an example since I'm an alum. But no, I mean, honestly, most of them do, most of them do really well.

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: and again, like the benefit that we have at Nextgrad is that we're seeing all of the digital assets. So we're seeing

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: the digital assets from hundreds and hundreds of colleges and universities. And then we also get all this feedback from the high schools. So like we'll know when, like, my gosh, that ad that IU just ran those the last three months, the one where they did this, all of our students couldn't stop talking about it. So like we're able to kind of pull together this knowledge base. And to be able to help schools that may be struggling. Like, there's some schools they don't have this massive internal marketing and communications department. I mean, they're they're strapped as it is. They don't have any bandwidth, extra time, energy. and so we can also really help a lot of colleges and universities that may feel like, well, we we're struggling in this area. We don't have the expertise. We can't go out and pay another vendor right now to to help us with marketing. And so we can do a lot of that for them too and make suggestions and and help them out. And so there's really no one that's doing a bad job with it. We're just always trying to see the trends of what's really hitting with students and then kind of helping more colleges, universities like, hey, maybe think about this. This is a type of message that's really resonating right now.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, and and again, I just to clarify, I wasn't trying to Yeah, I'm I'm not trying

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: I know. I know.

Gjergj Dollani: to figure out, what's the scale of who's a zero here and who's a ten, right? I mean

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Right. Right.

Gjergj Dollani: obviously everybody wants to wants to put in their best foot forward, but as as we know, there's going to be some that are going to do a a a better job whether whether because they know it or by luck, by sheer luck, yeah, it just seemed seems to be working better, right?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. Well, some schools some schools are really good. I mean, some schools have very, very talented marketers, right?

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: And so that's an advantage. If, schools that have very, very talented design experts,

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: experts on Gen Z, experts on that demographic obviously are going to be able to to to be stronger in that area. But it doesn't mean that that anyone out there can't have that same success, too. It's this at the end of the day, this isn't rocket science either. It's

Gjergj Dollani: yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: come on, we're we're smart enough to know what these young people, what grabs their attention. And what I mean, they're they're on t

Gjergj Dollani: Awareness.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: what's the stuff they're looking at on TikTok all day. like

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: we know what will grab their attention. It's just sometimes just kind of helping the college and university know that that that's that's what will resonate. That's what will work.

Gjergj Dollani: Mm. Now, so you have a lot of experience in in ed tech. You've you've been around, you you've experienced a lot of companies that have competed with the companies you worked at or just that you were interested in. Do you think there are innovations that everybody in the industry is focused on right now, but that you'd think are overhyped? I know it's a it's a trick question, right? But

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Well, I mean, you're yeah, you're you're set you're setting me up once again. I mean, so I d I think, the emergence of AI.

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: and there are, and listen, I am an early adopter of any kind of technology. I love it. That's why I've built my whole kind of career

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: on, being on the forefront of technology and leveraging technology. So, I love the potential of of really unique things we can do with AI. But I also think, because it's so new and it's still a little bit of the Wild West, and traditionally colleges and universities are known for just kind of throwing money at anything that they think might be a silver bullet. I do

Gjergj Dollani: Mm.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: think there's the potential for, some companies in the space to be creating products that that honestly. one of the computer science students at that college or university could could build the exact same AI agent to do to do that product. Like so, I do think there's some things in the space that again, I think you mentioned it, creating a solution maybe to a problem that does it, like there's something like that, or or a little bit of a little bit of fool

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, like a a a a solution in search of a problem.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, yeah. Or a little bit of fool's gold with some of these things. So I think that's where I've tried to just be real careful. on some of this technology. Again, our our colleges and universities are so vulnerable right now. And they the the budgets are tighter every day. And it's just every dollar they spend needs to be a very meaningful, impactful dollar. And so again, I I would never say anything negative about any company that's trying to bring something to the space, but but it's also you you can start to see companies that again that are in this for the right reason or feel like We can make a quick buck here off these colleges and universities. We've got something that they'll kind of they'll fall for this. We'll get some money from them. And so colleges and universities have to be careful with that and and be very discerning on who they choose to partner with. but yeah. But that I'd say that if

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: I had to pick, it would be some of the things around the AI stuff right now.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, it's it's interesting. We w I was talking to maybe a mutual friend of ours, Faton from from Manafera. I don't know if know those guys. Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: So we were we were kind of chatting on on AI and the innovation, the things that you can do with AI and how fast you can actually now even code if you have no idea what coding is.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: And he's like, Listen, I've I've spent a lot of time on this. I the only advice I can give you is It's gonna make you look like you know what you're doing, but at the end of the day, after spending five days and working on something you think it's cool, it's just garbage in, garbage out. right?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. And and that's not to say that there aren't companies also doing incredible work with AI and really building

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: products and services to truly leverage AI in a in a phenomenal way to make things more efficient, to take bandwidth off of higher ed teams. So there's there's great stuff out there too. The harp, the challenging part is when it's so new and we don't fully understand it.

Gjergj Dollani: Mm. Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: It's hard to decipher what's really the good stuff versus what's the stuff just trying to kind of make a quick buck off of us. That's sometimes the challenging part.

Gjergj Dollani: Are you guys just out of curiosity, is is AI part of the things that you guys want to incorporate or are looking to incorporate in and the future of whatever the next whatever next Gred's direction is taking?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah, I mean, not a lot. I mean, not a lot, really. I mean, I'm sure there's ways. I think there's ways as a company, like we could leverage AI just make more sense of our data, be more efficient and things like that. But from a product standpoint, I mean, again, we would even be encouraging. I I've seen, if we go back to what have you seen that's kind of been bad, okay, we've seen some digital assets where we I could tell right away, okay, they just They whip that up. And so, like, there's an area where we have to like look, you can't you can't do this. You you can't do an AI design and throw this on here. Like, students are going to eat you alive if they if they're seeing that stuff. So for us, any AI we would leverage would just be more back end things that just help our systems be smarter or more efficient. I don't really see that we would do anything forward facing like a a product, so to speak. It just doesn't really work with kind of how we're built and the way our products and services work.

Gjergj Dollani: Awesome. Alright, well we're coming to the end of of our recording here. There's one question that I that I I like to ask a lot is is there anything in higher ed that either we're not talking about or that we're not talking enough about?

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Ooh, well, I'll this I'll actually mention this. So I'm gonna put the spotlight on another company just for a second. there is a company in our space, they've been around for a few years now. They're called Meet Your Class. and yeah, I mean they Yeah, listen,

Gjergj Dollani: I'm very familiar with them.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: listen, these these young guys and gals at at Meet Your Class, I think when they first came on the scene. A lot of people were like, mean gosh, these kids literally like they're in their senior year of college. Like these kids don't what do they know? Like we take them serious. And my goodness, have they stuck around and they have done some really cool things. But yesterday, literally yesterday, they announced a new product. And it's it's one of the first products I've actually kind of been excited about in a long time. But their product is called Reach. And basically

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: it again, I use the example of back in those early days of social media, we tried to use like content management systems. So there were things like Tweet Deck and Hoot Suite and Buffer. Like platforms were made, but they were never made by higher ed for higher ed with really cool insights and innovation. Well, I mean, that's the product that they have built. and it looks absolutely fascinating. So I think For all of my higher ed marketing and specifically social media managers, I think finally to have a real tool and platform built specifically for them to manage all this content and make sense of the content and understand what's resonating with students. I just that was something I saw yesterday that I was really pleased to see. Some some pretty cool innovation that I think is gonna be a game changer for a lot of schools out there.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: So yeah, I would just put the spotlight on them. I'm always looking. at what companies

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: are doing. And I get excited when I see something that's like actually a real innovative product that that fits a need that that folks have on the higher ed side.

Gjergj Dollani: it's so funny 'cause yesterday I was actually talking to Joel from Meet Your Class.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: he's awesome.

Gjergj Dollani: yeah. We're we're both X E E B. so

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Yeah. Yep.

Gjergj Dollani: so we we have that kind of thing and we're talking about Reach specifically and and some of the things they're doing over there. So so you're gonna see him pop up here as well, at at some point and but yeah, it's it's it's great to kinda have that triangulator.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Well there's the there's the teaser. There's y Yeah, there there's the teaser for an upcoming episode and we didn't even plan that, but but no, they're they're doing great things and I'm now man, well that's that'll that'll be that'll be

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, that's was like, man, he's he's just spilling the beans without without getting there. Yeah. No, that's it's it's actually

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: a good episode.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, it's it's it's pretty cool. And I I can see why you're a big fan of of Meet Your Class, 'cause it's it's almost like your sweet spot of you

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: know, social media where students are and and just taking their content and making it university's

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: And and the reason

Gjergj Dollani: content.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: and the reason why I love them so much is because I'm a fifty year old old man at this point. And now I've become the last one that would be able to know what these young people are into or what they want. So like, I've aged out of it. And so that's why I so respect them. and really defer to them. Like I, if I if I wanted to really

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah. Really? Okay.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: understand what I would, I would go to them because, It is their demograph they're in the demographic. They are the generation. and so I have a lot of respect for them, despite, them being younger than many of us that would say we've got

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: all these years of experience. I think I think it's fantastic what what they're doing.

Gjergj Dollani: Yeah, yeah, and and again, I mean it's it's it's obviously a product, a market that that generation would know very well, right? I I would be shocked if it came from us. Because if we came from

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Right.

Gjergj Dollani: us, it would be it would be more of a business idea. Like, listen, how can we

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: yeah.

Gjergj Dollani: squeeze the money out of this, Chen C and

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: Exactly. Yep.

Gjergj Dollani: and they're actually more about this is where they are, this is what the need is, let's meet that need, and then y the the other part is secondary, so so that's great. All right, well, thank you so much for for doing this. I think it was it was fantastic and and I'm sure that we'll get to do some some of this again.

Harrison "Soup" Campbell: This was awesome. Thanks for having me.