Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

Jo,
I've been teaching at universities for the last 10 years, while still working as a full time practitioner at my agency.
What I've learned about marketing a marketing dept. of a university is that the academic world does not understand marketing...
Its a bit of an absurd, but many marketing professionals who join the academic world are being shut down when they arrive on campus.
Find out how many active practitioners you have teaching with you, then check if you have enough political power to use them as the "in house agency"
If not, there are some experts in your area who have done previously ad campaigns for universities.
I have helped the universities I teach at to promote their programs, but at the end of the day everything comes down to budget.
Learn what your new place can afford...universities have no marketing budgets to speak of, and are very reluctant to do "glamour" advertising or marketing. It also depends on how famous and well known is the brand of the university you will teach for.
I teach at the University of Chicago,and that name alone goes a long way.
Best of luck! you'll enjoy it.

Dear Jo

Some rules I’ve picked up en route!

Rules one to five: From my mother who used to be The Secretary to the Institute for English Language Education at the University of Lancaster (That was after 5 years as admissions officer)

Rule one: Academics are murder to work with in a commercial role because they already know everything that there is to know and any mere non-academic isn’t worth listening to.

Rule two: Due to rule one, don’t discuss anything with them until it is a fait-accompli!

Rule three: Ensure that you protect your ass by ensuring that you have the passwords and the source-code for everything that you enact. She computerised the institute in the 1980’s with the active assistance of the Faculty of Computing. Only she knew how the new-fangled PC networks actually worked. She needed this on the 39 times they tried to sack her for doing her job.

Rule four: When it comes to marketing programmes, ensure that the results are flowing before you try to explain to the beneficiaries what the hell you’ve been up to.

Rule five: Establish strong and mutually beneficial links with client organisations which in the end pay the academic’s salaries. This was done in her case with the British Council and the Minister of Education for every country where there was a demand for English as a Foreign Language. When the academics complained about being administered to, she got the Sultan of this or the Emir of that to give them a bollocking.

Now for some of my experiences and observations! I’m a BSc from St Andrews and I’m now a member of the General Council. We elect the University Court.

Be prepared to annotate marketing plans with citations and references. The use of Reference Manager or EndNote will gain you be slightly more credibility than knowing what you are talking about.

Work out ways of avoiding engaging in endless arguments which are the modus operandi in University life, usually for the sake of having an argument. We learned from our Rector, John Cleese, whose job amongst other things was to represent student issues on the Court and to chair that governing body of the University. When two professors descended into petty bickering at a Court Meeting he asked them to move on. One of them told him in no uncertain terms that he was, “Just a comedian” and knew nothing about the point they were wittering over. He drew himself up to his magnificent 6foot 7 inches in the Rectorial Throne and shouted, “Bloody Shut-UP” He went on to found video arts, the business training organisation. His first course was “Meetings, bloody meetings”

Discover the key commercial strengths of each academic you represent and then offer to market them if they will coordinate. Lecturers are relatively badly paid and the opportunity to earn money will be jumped at – most of them have incredibly valuable things to sell, they just don’t realise it nor do they have any idea of how to go about it.

Look at the ways go-ahead institutions are franchising themselves to foreign governments. It is a relatively novel way of marketing the resources of the University.

Have a close look at the e-learning companies and their websites. The University community virtually invented the modern website and almost without exception they are amongst the best constructed and largest you will find anywhere. The main problem as far as marketing is concerned is that they are informational, not sales orientated. Make big, big pals with the department which controls their web presence.

Try to persuade the top administrative authorities that as they need fee income, then if the lecturers and researchers are going to help them earn it, that they should at least be able to supplement their poxy salaries from commissions.

I was asked to apply for the position of Marketing Director for a local University with the rank of Vice Principal. I know that I’d have loved it, but the role was so restricted, I would have lasted about 3 months before dynamiting the place. I hope that your role offers you more freedoms or that you can develop them because it is truly one of the most rewarding jobs in marketing – if the sods will let you do it!

Best wishes


Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions

A long-time friend (from Procter & Gamble) recently took a job as chief marketing officer for a large university in the midwest. I'm going to ask him to comment on this question.

I do know that one of the first things he did was interview a range of people -- including recently-accepted students (to see WHY they applied to and selected that university), recent graduates (to see what they found most valuable), teaching and administrative staff (to see why THEY thought students selected that university), parents of students (to see what they thought the key selling points are), etc.

He actually spent a lot of time and effort on this process, and he came up with some very interesting and actionable conclusions that he then put into a new marketing plan for the university.

Anyway, I'll see what he's willing to share, and whether he has any other suggestions. His situation isn't exactly like yours, but I'll bet there are enough areas in common that his experience will be relevant.

Heard back from my friend. He suggests that you check out CASE (www.case.org). CASE stands for "Council for the Advancement and Support of Education." They apparently have a lot of good information on marketing for educational institutions.

He also said they've recently hired a consulting firm that specializes in this sort of thing (for a specific need in a niche area within the university). I have the name of the firm, if you want it.

Hope this helps.