While initially aesthetic changes were limited by cultural inertia, there was a need for a significant paradigm shift in the functional presentation of how faculty and community members were presented in the promotion of the university. We had rockstars in our midst but we were speaking to the transactional nature of getting a degree. The messaging needed to speak to our focus on the university's core values of rigorous educational standards, service, community equity, and social justice. The engaged community bringing these ideas to life became central to the presentation of the university.   Faculty representation, as models of open leadership, and the subject matter experts they are, became core elements of the communication strategy. While the “When Did You Know” campaign was the first official marketing campaign to signal the start of this paradigm shift in marketing and communications it was not the first instance of this new representation of community members. This was kicked off by "Seventy,"  the award-winning (34th Annual Educational Advertising Awards) short film chronicling Dean Michael Graney-Mulholland's 70th birthday solo trek to self-discovery.

The promotion of the unique aspects of each program, with an emphasis on the people in the JFKU community, and the rigor of the curriculum, ran through my entire tenure with the university. Marketing headshots shifted from a traditional style to a dynamic and personal presentation inclusive of student and community interaction. Content marketing was released continually, featuring videos, almost 150 in total, blogs, podcasts, and social media content.  The Top Minds video series, Thursday Soapbox Speaker series with companion podcasts, student and alumni stories, the Celebration of Scholarly Works event, and the elevation of the Sanford Institute of Philanthropy, along with other community events served as the narrative core for this promotional arch. 

Top Minds 

View more selections from the Top Minds video series.

Top Minds was a video series where Faculty give short video lectures on topics of expertise. This series covered elements as wide as The Psychology of VR, food security, trauma, the opioid epidemic, addiction, and tenant rights.  These proved to be incredibly popular. From a production standpoint there were designed to be simple explainer videos similar to a Ted Talk but featuring our pool of in-house experts on a variety of topics. The assumption was that most of these videos would be viewed without the audio track playing, so it was important to to provide subtitles that are as engaging as the subject matter. We found a manually timed vertical scroll worked very well for this. The total of All Top Minds videos were shot over the course of 3 shoot days and released in 3, 6 to 8 week blocks over the course of one calendar year. This made the production of the series extremely economical with production cost well below $500 per unit.

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Thursday Soapbox 

Thursday Soapbox and companion podcast was a regular weekly event that showcased broader ideas that interested the JFKU community.  It often served as a deeper dive into concepts explored in a Top Minds video or an introduction of concepts being further explored within the program course work structure.  Most speakers were faculty experts but on occasion, the speaker list included external experts and grad students working on dissertations.    Additionally, the Thursday Soapbox served as an opportunity for potential students to come to campus and interact with faculty and students from the JFKU community and was used as a popular recruiting tool.

The Celebration of Scholarly Works 

The Celebration of Scholarly Works was a long-standing community event that celebrated the published work of the JFKU faculty and staff. Each year this small community is responsible for publishing over 300 pieces of academic work. This was an outstanding amount of work for a small graduate school.  In 2016 we began publishing a guide listing all of the contributions from the JFKU community.  All pieces of work were thoroughly vetted by the librarian and their staff for academic rigor.  

View the 2018 scholarly works catalog‍

View the JFKU Blog story about the Celebration of Scholarly Works

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Student and Alumni Stories

Student Stories

Student testimonials are a common tool in the higher education marketing kit but rarely do they encapsulate the students’ experience. Potential students need to see an unvarnished view on what the student experience is in order to feel invested in the program they intend to join. We utilized videos that focused on student experience and active work within the programs.

#IGetToWorkHere - JFK University Alumni Social campaign

JFK University Alumni engaged in a light-hearted Twitter contest between the alumni of two popular and competitive programs, Sport Psychology and Museum Studies. The intent was as much about building community and celebrating our rockstars as promotion of the university. This provided the university with organic exposure to new and potential students while exposing them to the variety of successful and engaging careers the JFKU alumni experienced. A bonus of providing these alumni with additional promotion for their organization strengthened the community relationship with the alumni body.  

The goal: Over the course of a week, see which program could get the most alumni photo posts with the title and tags, “I get to work here…” Tagging the University program and their current work location. 

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