Where each week, one marketer answers one question about storytelling on campus.
Happy Fall! I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from me. My plan was to be publishing this newsletter all summer, but while working as a volunteer photographer at my kids’ summer camp in Michigan (yeah, it was amazing!), I decided to take a break. But I’m back now, and let me tell you, I’ve got some exciting content lined up for you.
In the coming weeks, you’ll discover how storytelling can help prospects see themselves at your school as you hear from:
The executive director of the #1 university startup incubator in the country
The creator of an AI-powered tool that audits how bland college websites are
An MIT professor who teaches persuasion through the lens of digital transformation in the sports, media, and entertainment industries
The VP for marketing and communications who spearheaded one of last year’s most talked about brand activations
The leader who is transforming a school’s reputation away from a football powerhouse thanks to unique partnerships with NASCAR, Dude Perfect, and Buc-ee’s
And many more :)
Right now, though, let’s check in with Megan Silvey, the assistant vice chancellor for university communications and marketing at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.
Q: How do you develop storytelling with a similar tone while allowing individual programs to still have their own voice?
If your brand is defined by the collection of experiences an audience has with you, your storytelling has to be able to accommodate all those different kinds of experiences.
As marketers, we influence that “brand” by defining parts of our identity, including our brand voice, but we have to acknowledge that others are contributing to it every day — both internally and externally. So we create a branded storytelling framework that serves our institutional narrative and goals, but we have to rely on programs to contribute their voice and connect with audiences more personally than we can as an institution.
Empower programs to focus on bits of their identity, their story, that are truly unique to them — a faculty member, a grant, a student group, a study abroad experience — something that no one else can deliver.
If we can embrace that across all units, the tone of our collective storytelling is consistent not because we defined a “branded tone” but because of the collection of unique experiences that make our “brand” what it is to each person who engages with our stories.
What I love about this answer:
It would be easy for a school to develop brand messaging and insist individual programs adopt the same messaging as a way to be unified across campus, but that would be a miss, and Megan does a great job of explaining why.
Forcing one message across all college or university entities eliminates the uniqueness of the individual programs. It creates one voice at the expense of one community.
It’s like saying all of the U.S. National Parks are the same — one look at photos from Death Valley National Park and Dry Tortugas National Park makes it clear how different they are.
Death Valley National Park
Dry Tortugas National Park
Despite their differences, Death Valley and Dry Tortugas are still supported by the larger National Park Service. Park Rangers and volunteers at each help safeguard them (along with the 61 other national parks) and share their stories with millions of visitors each year.
The parks have their own stories that support a larger mission — a mission to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein.
I thought about the parks when Megan mentioned empowering programs to focus on the bits of their identity that are truly unique.
I love this idea Megan outlined, because by developing a storytelling framework or vision that encompasses what a school stands for, it allows for programs to highlight their own distinctiveness. That differentiation can then be used to support the larger school story.
How do you highlight your unique stories while supporting a larger school message? I’d love to hear from you. Plus, if you have suggestions of who you want to hear from (or you want to know what it’s like being a summer camp photographer), let me know!
