Sam Houston State, your posters suck.

Sam Houston State University is my alma mater. I loved my time there and got a good education. And I still talk it up every chance I get. Today I'm judging a student art scholarship event at Brenham high school and saw this poster as I was walking down the hall.

My problem is with the very first word, "see." There seems to be an implied "we'll" in front of the word "see" when used at the beginning of the sentence. Any promotional poster that seems to say "we'll see (if) success unfold(s)" is a poor poster. That's how I read the poster before I even saw who the poster was for.

I know you seem to be trying to own the word "success" lately, but even that seems like a mistake to me. Your billboards with a grad cap and the word "success" aren't inspiring and don't evoke any emotion or make people want to learn more about the school. Success is relative. Is graduation success? No, it's not. But that's what your billboards seem to be saying. Never mind the fact that it's not even clear if you mean high school graduation or college graduation. And if graduation is success, then most high school seniors are already this close to success.

Besides, it just seems so generic. Any college can throw a graduation cap on a billboard with the word success. What makes SHSU special? Where's the differentiation? That's why you spend money on a billboard - to tell people why you're different.

You need a real advertising campaign. You need someone who understands the Sam Houston brand and how to make it stand out from the hundreds of other colleges in Texas. You need energy. You need to expect better. You need to cultivate your image better. Cheap crap like this only hurts the image of the school in the long run.

Tell us why you're different. Don't promise success because success means different things to different people, and there a lot of levels of success. Promise excellence. Inspire. That's what kids want from the college they choose.

As it is, you might as well come out and promise mediocrity. Because that's what your advertising implies.