University Communications Offices - How Will They Look in 2012?
The days of communications offices measuring successes by counting positive media hits will continue to go the way of the dinosaur. Colleges are learning the absolute value of market research, audience segmentation, and the return on the investment of good branding and marketing.
If there is an unequivocal given in higher education, often it is this: change comes at glacial speed.
Faculty is renown to "wait it out until the next president," while staff may question "why change," and part-time board members advocate for the status-quo in hopes that "everything will be fine."
Communications offices in higher education are increasingly more open and progressive, but too few have aggressive innovation squarely in the cross hairs, based on a review of more than 40 college and university organization charts. But interviews with leading higher education leaders nationwide suggest strongly that times are changing.
The days of communications offices measuring successes by counting positive media hits will continue to go the way of the dinosaur, for several obvious reasons: First, the readership of newspapers and viewership of local and national TV news, often our outreach staple, is plummeting across all demographics, particularly under age 35. Second, boards, presidents and senior staff members increasingly are assigning the communications team with the responsibility of building and maintaining the image, reputation and brand of the institution - and then holding them accountable for success. This shift places a premium on marketing, database management and self-publishing while downplaying - or at least better focusing - on local newspapers and TV news coverage. And third, we are fast learning the absolute value of market research, audience segmentation, and the return on the investment of good branding and marketing. Colleges and universities realize it can be fatal to ignore this trend.
Geoff Gamble, president of Montana State University, is exploring how to revamp internal and external communications to make that institution as effective, efficient and successful as possible in its strategic brand building designs.
"With increasingly tight budgets and growing demands on building our image and, reputation, we can no longer do business as we once did," said Gamble, who during his tenure has pushed the progressive communications envelope. "We must rethink all of our internal and external communications, ensure we are on the cutting-edge and - most importantly - getting the best return on our investment. Montana State will be a leader in this effort."
Nike, Volvo, McDonald's, Nordstrom, Ben and Jerry's, Harley Davidson and Starbucks have built global reputations and brands through simple, strategic business practices. Lesser known competitors have failed with shallow and muddied images and brands. Historically, such an analogy to a college campus was an anathema. But with constricting budgets, skyrocketing competition, increased pressure for private support and instant communications worldwide, the marketing and branding world has scaled our ivy covered walls.
"I remember when I first started in higher education communications," said Susan Chilcott, vice president of communications for the Washington, DC-based American Association of State Colleges & Universities, which represents 430 public higher education institutions. "Then, all we had was a media relations person and a publications person. In the future, the smart institutions will have a significant amount of coordination throughout the campus and it will become absolutely imperative to manage the brand. You have to become the brand czar. There will be more account managers, not people from media. And there there will be more outsourcing, particularly among the smaller institutions."
"And this business of mass mailings to high school students, those will go by the wayside," said Chilcott, who routinely advises member institution on strategic communications. "It will all be based on SATs, gender, ethnicity and technology - things we couldn't image 20 years ago."
Our firm's analysis of current higher education organizational charts, work with more than 1,000 colleges and universities and interviews with higher education leaders shows that change is in the communications winds - perhaps more so than at any point in two decades. And much of this will center on revamping the staid media relations office into a high powered, technologically-centered entity that revolves around integrated marketing and branding with strong collaboration and increased centralization. The hardened administrative silos of the past will be wrestled down at the most progressive institutions, and "brand managers" - though that term will become dominant slowly - will have increasing control over all internal and external communications and report directly to the president. And the rapidly growing movement from hard copy to electronic communications will continue to accelerate.
