Integrated Communications

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Integrated Communications Marketing
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• I dont know the key to success, but the key to
  failure is trying to please everybody.
  
• -- Bill Cosby

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Focus, focus, focus

• Three key messages
• Access
• Affordability
• Academic Excellence

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The Challenge

• "It's not necessarily that campuses don't have
  anything good to sayit's that they're reluctant
  to talk about controversial things. So they try
  the same old approaches, and those approaches
  aren't working.
• -- Scott Jaschik, Chronicle of Higher
  Education, 1998
  

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Keys to successful communications

• Show dont Tell
• Know your audience
• The press release is dead (R.I.P.)
• -- Scott Jaschik, Chronicle
  of Higher Education, 1998
  
• Keep everyone informed
• Ask the tough questions
• Be a voice of reason

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Higher Ed. Reporters want

• Media relations professionals who understand
  national trends and what each specific reporter
  is writing about.
  
• Us to know and identify trends.
• Package stories from other schools and use
  examples from our own institutions to
  substantiate the trend.
  
• Good writing, trust, and personal relationships
  with their sources.
  
• A willingness to engage in open, honest dialogue
  with editorial boards and reporters.
  
• --from conversations with Mary Beth Marklein
  (USA Today), Russ Douthat (The Atlantic) and Alex
  Kingsbury (US News World Report)
  

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Communications Goals

• Make pervasive and clear that SUNY is a valued
  educational product and brand
  
• Assist enrollment marketing in breaking into new
  geo-demographic areas for recruitment.
  
• Focus our messaging on academic excellence and
  prestige, in addition to emphasizing the
  accessibility and affordability of education.
  
• Broaden SUNYs media visibility and engagement
  with regional and national media.
  
• Position the SUNY Chancellor (when named) and
  other SUNY senior staff as national thought
  leaders regarding access to education and on
  issues of affordability and educational
  excellence.

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How?

• To make such a paradigm shift we need everyone to
  own, understand, and be able to speak clearly
  about SUNYs issues and messages.

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Be proactive.

• "You can't address key issues correctly if you
  only react to the moment. Always focus on
  strategy, not reactive tasks.
  
• -- Barry Munitz, president of the J. Paul Getty
  Trust and former CEO of the California State
  University system.

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Be connected with our campuses understand their
needs.

• Cultivate and maintain an ongoing dialogue with
  our campus communications officers
  
• Treat them like professionals
• Ask them what their needs are

• Provide them with tools to better do their job
• Keep them informed so they can react themselves
  and localize a story
  
• Treat them as ambassadors of the SUNY brand.

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Know how to talk to the media.

• "The best communicators can separate the parts of
  a complex issue and reassemble them in ways that
  help explain them to others."
  
• David P. Gardner, CEO of the William and Flora
  Hewlett Foundation.

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Be a good listener.

• Here is what Ive heard so far from people here
  and on our campuses.
  
• SUNY thinks of itself as the red-headed
  stepchild of higher education.
  
• We are so complex that you just cant boil it
  down.

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Craft our key messages.

• Access
• Affordability
• Academic Excellence

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Craft our key messages.

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Know your CEO.

• What do we know about the interim Chancellor?
• What communications challenges does this
  present?
  
• How do we turn those challenges into
  opportunities?

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See the big picture.

• What is the big picture for SUNY?
• What is SUNYs role on the Commission on Higher
  Education?
  
• How do we inform the Commission about SUNY?

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Rome wasnt built in a day.

• Translation . . .
• Valuable projects take time