Day 1, Wednesday, April 24

NOON-1:00 PM
Registration

1:00-2:15 PM
Explaining Our Jobs to a Confused World
Your 80-year old father thinks you make movies for a living. Your brother tells everyone you are a "spin doctor." Your reporter neighbor loves to tell you what a cushy job you have. Does anyone really know what we do for a living? Are we clear about what we want to tell them? Let's start the institute by sharing some war stories of what we hear every day from faculty, staff, students, alumni, board and community members. Then let's create a collective job description reflecting what we want them to know! Along the way we'll surface key themes to explore during our time together.

2:30-3:45
How a Little Strategy Can Go a Long Way
Marketing and communications functions now have a place at the senior leadership table. But the most effective among us sit there with a plan that ties to the institution's strategic plan, fundraising objectives, alumni strategies and serves as a foundation for helping all external relations advance their goals. A brand is grounded in the institution's authentic reality and plans. It is only distinctive if it captures the unique essence of the institution and clearly ties responsibly to the president's vision. Learn how to create an effective communications strategy that maximizes relationships and catapults the institution in the direction the president and boards envision.

4:00-5:15
Name it and Tame it: Taking Control of Your Brand
A school's first foray into strategic marketing can be tough. As chief marketing officer, you're expected to be a theoretician, educator and practitioner-simultaneously. With the president and board watching impatiently, you're supposed to explain to the whole campus what a brand is, why it's important, and how using it wisely is worth the trouble. You are to articulate your brand; build and manage a plan around it; get people to use it; and convince doubters that you are not from the same gene pool as a used car salesman. Take heart! Every institution already has a brand, even if no one has called it that. How to discover your brand, put words and ideas to it, and teach it some discipline is what this session is all about.

5:15-6:15
Networking Reception
Join conference faculty and colleagues to network and kick off the conference. Enjoy complimentary hors d'oeuvres and cash bar. Don't forget to bring your business cards!

6:15
Conference Adjourns for the Day
Dinner on your own

[Back to top]

Day 2, Thursday, April 25

8:00-9:00 AM
Continental Breakfast

9:00-10:15
How Research Helps Close the Gap in Reputation Building
Who doesn't work for the "best kept secret?" A solid market research approach is key to planning and demonstrating the success of a branding initiative. To effect change in audience opinions and market awareness, we need a research-informed understanding of our starting baseline—what we're up against. With limited resources, how can we best establish that baseline? What should our evaluation and monitoring approach consist of? How should we sort through and select from the variety of tools and resources out there? This session will demystify research and help us know how to start to use research as the foundation for all our branding efforts.

10:30-11:45
Bridges to Change: Creating Internal Buy-in for Your Marketing Plan
When it comes to getting people to embrace integrated strategic marketing, different institutions often have different sets of hurdles. Maybe it's the silos and independent-minded professional schools at your large university. Or the overly influential donors to your mid-sized college. Or the iconoclastic faculty on your small campus. How do you create excitement for a shared approach to communications? What helps presidents, deans, professors, alumni and students understand that a disciplined approach to branding advances the goals of the institution? We will explore some of the best—and worst—practices in educational internal communications and offer ideas on how to persevere.

11:45 AM-1:00 PM
Lunch on your own

1:00-2:15
Finding Your Voice: Developing a Strategic Sub-brand to Bring Your Academic Experience to Life
Is your campus tongue-tied when it comes to talking about the student experience? Discover how a strategic sub-brand can give your program its voice. This session will include tips on how to communicate your school's learning experiences in a meaningful way, how to develop a content strategy that gives your marketing messages impact, and how to evaluate whether a sub-brand is the right move for you. We'll examine sub-brand campaigns with varying strategies and walk you through the key considerations—from audience segmentation to necessary budgets.

2:30-3:45
Understanding the Tools and Change the Conversation Through Social Media
Just because they built it, doesn't mean you have to come! It seems a social tool is developed and introduced every day, and we are so overwhelmed with social options that it can lead to paralysis. Which tools are most effective for meeting our individual audiences and which ones will fade away? How do you balance mass social tools with micro/focused ones? How do you measure the success of your social campaigns? There are so many decisions to be made in developing strategies. This session will give us some best practices in using the tools that are out there, and in piecing them together into a cohesive strategy.

4:00-5:00
Advice from the Trenches: Panel Discussion
Bring your toughest problems—from strategy to staffing; money to measurement; social media tools to magazines; to career coaching and coping.

5:00
Conference Adjourns for the Day
Dinner on your own

[Back to top]

Day 3, Friday, April 26

8:00-9:00 AM
Continental Breakfast

9:00-10:00 
Off-the-charts Creative in a Controlled (or Somewhat Controlled) Environment
Sometimes it feels like we have too many tasks and too few people. So, we can end up in a production environment where it is easier to check the box and get a publication or a website out than it is to be strategic and highly creative. How do you restore brainstorming and a little play into your planning activities without finding yourself surrounded by out-of-control romping? Explore best practices and maybe even try a few interesting exercises designed to jolt us out of the mundane and spur excellent thinking.

10:15-11:15
The Main Event: New Best Practices in Online Marketing and Integration
Websites remain the top first-contact information tool in our portfolios, yet many of us spend more time focusing on developing cool new apps than in enhancing our own sites. Or we fixate on a splashy ad campaign that drives people to a ho-hum website. What are the new best practices in web marketing? How have others integrated their web strategy with their traditional and social media plans? What is the sweet spot for a web site and a magazine? What admissions campaigns have an online wow factor? What lessons should higher ed learn from the corporate world? Case studies on those who are excelling will help inspire all of us to tweak our sites and align our resources.

11:15 AM-12:30 PM
Evaluating Success: It's Both Personal and Professional
At the end of the day, how do we know we have made progress? How has our work made a difference? What needles were moved because we contributed to a project? A series of small successes is not as glamorous as a big, publicized win, but our careers are built on small progress. In this closing session we will talk through how to evaluate your personal successes by attaching professional goals to the work you do. Life is a series of successes... and failures. It's the wisdom gained in each case that makes us all outstanding communications professionals.

12:30
Conference Adjourns

[Back to top]