UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman’s latest foray into the social media sphere has gained local, regional and national media attention this week.
On April 2, the university launched new episodes of “Harvey’s Perls of Knowledge,” a series of comedic videos starring Perlman.
The latest videos put the chancellor – who has faced questions in the past about whether his offbeat and humorous tweets are really his own – at the center of “Social Squadron Team Alpha+,” a cadre of UNL-related social-media advisers to help the chancellor craft his tweets. The campaign was conceived and executed as a recruitment tool by UNL’s Office of Admissions.
A video featuring one of the “team members,” billionaire Berkshire Hathaway CEO (and 1951 NU grad) Warren Buffett, generated numerous headlines in the business media, including CNBC and the Wall Street Journal. The Buffett-Perlman video also landed coverage by The Associated Press, Mashable, the Omaha World-Herald, the Lincoln Journal Star and a number of local broadcast outlets.
The “team”– which includes Twitter co-founder and former UNL student Evan Williams, the Chicago Tribune’s Jane Hirt, law school dean Susan Poser, Husker basketball coach Tim Miles and renowned professor and poet Kwame Dawes – continued to be revealed throughout the week and gained continued coverage from local media outlets, as well.
“Perls” first appeared in 2013, when the chancellor appeared in a number of videos to ruminate about such things as the phrase YOLO!, Crocs, the UNL Dairy Store, and the secret behind why UNL is such a great place to be.
