Keith Paul joined Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill, Massachusetts, U.S., in 2002 as its Chief Marketing Officer. Since then, he and his team have launched a new website, built an intranet on which employees are encouraged to blog, established a monthly campus communicators meetup, revamped the overall brand architecture, made brand-aligned templates accessible to colleagues across the college, and shifted work management to Asana. Here, he talks about the importance of community college branding and how small shops can make big progress.

What major challenges are community college marketers currently facing?

Community colleges are slower to adopt and adapt to trends in communications and higher education, often because we’re smaller and not as well-funded as R1 [larger research] universities. Also, our employees tend to stick around for a long time; change is hard, and many people avoid it. One of the things we’re trying to do at our college is to build a new culture around transparency, collaboration, and insight into what every team is doing. It’s not that those things haven’t existed before, but we’re really trying to leverage marketing’s relationships across the college to bring groups together. 

Why is it imperative for community colleges to focus on building cohesive brand identities? 

Many community college students work, some have kids, and many have multiple jobs. How do we give them the best learning experience while also reducing barriers? Do students feel seen, supported, and like they belong? Are there things they can do here outside the classroom? And how do we communicate this? It’s vital to show that community colleges are vibrant places. It signals to a prospective student or even a current student, “there’s probably something for me here.” It’s not about replicating everything four-year colleges do but instead asking, “How can we borrow from institutions that do these things well, and how can we do it at our scale?”