Leading questions
Photo by Reuben Juarez on Unsplash
Over the last few months we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing several leaders from across marketing and communications in HE and FE.
Some of whom we’ve worked with for years, and others we were meeting for the first time. As we talked over Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet we chatted about how they and their teams had managed since spring 2020 changed everything for everyone.
Conducting the interviews was a real pleasure for us and we really appreciated the time everyone gave, especially during a year for HE that has been nothing if not unrelenting.
If you’ve missed the series so far here’s what we covered:
Online open days:
Virtually perfect? What's the future for university open days?
The switch to entirely digital open days, for some with almost no notice was a challenge for recruitment teams, academics and students alike. Our interviewees shared some of their lessons and views on how a hybrid model could work in the future.
Motivating teams:
Keeping your marketing team motivated this winter - top tips for remote team building
Keeping motivation levels of colleagues and teams high through lockdowns has proven a challenge, but the sector’s marketing and comms teams have taken to it with their usual creativity. From virtual kitchens, not away days, and even old school handwritten thank you cards.
As Rachel Sandison, vice principal, external relations at the University of Glasgow put it “if you really want to make a personal connection with an impact, I think print can be really powerful.”
Prospecting
Dead wood - should Covid-19 lead to the end of the printed prospectus?
The death of the print prospectus has been predicted for years, but could the pandemic have finally killed it off? Yes and no, was the answer from our interviewees.
Lizzie Burrows of the University of Surrey told us they’d reduced their prospectus to a slimmer guide and saved 42 tonnes of paper in the process.
Adapt and thrive
'You're on mute' - 5 ways marketing & communications teams adapted in 2020
We outlined 5 ways in which HE teams adapted to the new way of working. Including managing wellbeing, replacing the ‘watercooler’, and how to respect the boundaries between work and home life.
Clearing 2020
Clearing 2020 - how university marketing teams responded
In what could almost have been a group therapy session we went back over with our panel how their institutions coped with clearing and the results debacle in 2020.
The key for some was practice, practice, practice. Francesca Carey of the University of Sunderland put her events background to work and ran a full dress rehearsal: “We did a whole technical run with all of the call handlers involved. They had to transfer calls on Skype and go through the motions of handling the calls in a real scenario. That worked really well.”
Creative solutions
5 ways to manage creative lulls in virtual marketing teams
Managing the creative process and missing opportunities to get inspiration from the outside world has been something that came up in many of our conversations. In this piece we looked at ways to do that during lockdowns and home working. The one universal solution for those that can is, if in doubt get outside for a walk.
COVID communications
Communicating during a pandemic - the best university COVID comms
We look at communications campaigns and messages from across the UK and the world to bring together some of the best examples we’ve seen into one place.
Tell me you are a university marketeer on TikTok, without telling me you are a university marketeer on TikTok
Dad at a Disco - should universities being using TikTok?
Use of social media platform TikTok exploded during the pandemic, particularly amongst HE’s main demographics. We asked our marketeers how they were approaching the platform and what the pitfalls to avoid were.
And as Angelina Bingley, director of admissions, recruitment and marketing at the University of East Anglia explained, “it's about appearing on the right channels for the right reasons’.
Future of work
Has how we work changed forever?
It is probably fair to say that universities haven’t always been at the forefront of progressive working patterns and processes. But the pandemic has likely changed the way we all work forever.
As Mark Garratt, at Swansea University told us, permanent working from home isn’t for everyone “ some people were kind of leaping up the wall and wanted to get into the office. And there are others who’ve just become very comfortable working from home.” He predicts that in future work will be split, ” two or three days a week in the office and the rest, working from home, as standard.”
Parent trap
Have parents become even more important to HE decision making?
Parents and guardians have always been among the most important influencers for prospective students, the pandemic has made them even more central. We asked our panel their views on how important they are as an audience and why they can sometimes be overlooked by marketeers.
It’s a challenge that Staffordshire University faces, marketing manager Richard Shepherd says, “There are a lot of first time university-goers in our local area, people with no family history of university. Where there is that family history, there's a very strong intent to go to university.”
“Where there isn't, there’s a strong desire from parents for young people to go straight into work. We know that when we can get parents onto our campus, they very much see the benefits of university, the switch to virtual events has made this message harder to convey.”
Seat at the table
Has the pandemic changed the way universities think about communications and marketing?
It is clear that there have always been challenges in marketing having the right seat at the education leadership table and being perceived as somehow different to our academic colleagues.
The pandemic might be presenting us with an opportunity to change that as exec teams, academics and other colleagues see the value of timely, innovative and authentic communications (and the damage that can be done when that doesn’t happen).
Director of marketing and communications at Nottingham Trent University, Emma Leech says, “it has been a really good opportunity for us to really showcase what they can deliver strategically and operationally for the institution.
“It’s allowed comms and marketing professionals to shine. And to highlight the role we play in terms of business continuity, keeping things moving, and for inter-employee engagement.”
What’s next?
Throughout the conversations what struck us was the passion that everyone had for the sector, the institutions they work for and, perhaps most importantly, the people they work with.
We hope this content captures the spirit of the conversations and the people involved and that it leaves you informed, educated and entertained.
Thank you
And finally a big thank you to the people we spoke to for this series:
Angelina Bingley, The University of East Anglia,
Elizabeth Burrows, University of Surrey,
Francesca Carey, The University of Sunderland,
Mark Garratt, Chair of CASE Europe Universities Marketing Forum,
Emma Leech, Nottingham Trent University,
Priti Patel, Queen Mary University of London,
Rachel Sandison, University of Glasgow,
Angela Sexton, University of London,
Richard Shepherd, Staffordshire University and
Sally Steadman, RNN Group.
If you’d like to take part in our next series or just have a chat about how content can help your institution drop us a line, we’d love to talk.
