Share these talks and lectures with your colleagues
Invite colleaguesPractice paper
Creating an in-house integrated marketing and communications strategy
Journal of Education Advancement & Marketing,
1
(3),
261-271
(2016)
Abstract
Most higher-education executives overseeing marketing and communications share the same challenge — an adequate balance between strategy and tactics. This equilibrium provides the foundation for sustaining an effective and efficient infrastructure founded on the tenets of an outcomes-focused reputation management strategy. The ability to provide counsel to top university administrators, oversee a dynamic and nimble team and simultaneously ensure a high level of quality rests within an institution-wide understanding and commitment to an integrated and collaborative approach. Creating and sustaining an effective integrated marketing and communications strategy is critical for effective institutional reputation management. Chief communication and marketing leaders must start with three areas of focus: vision, expertise and priorities. Efforts within the framework of an integrated marketing and communications model support a higher degree of reputation management supporting recruitment, fundraising, alumni engagement as well as retention. The ever-widening landscape of higher education — fundraising and recruitment of students, faculty and staff — requires a different approach to reputation management and supporting institutional goals. The process to establish and maintain an integrated culture is underpinned by a change management process and defined leadership roles to guide the institution towards a sustainable solution able to anticipate and respond to internal and external factors. Chief Communications and Marketing Officers must guide the organisation and its culture in adopting an integrated and collaborative approach embracing a new model of marketing, while founded in the four ‘Cs’ defines a new approach founded in three ‘Cs and one I’. This paper outlines the process needed to shift culture, garner university-wide support and establish a new infrastructure focused on effectiveness and university-wide acceptance.
Keywords: advisory group; strategy; integrated marketing; building IMC strategy; building IMC team; chief communications officer; IMC plan
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Jeanette De Diemar is an award-winning communications and creative strategist with international expertise in integrated marketing and communications, reputation management, brand development, crisis communications, and digital media. She currently serves as vice president of Communications and Marketing at the University of Indianapolis – leading the university through the creation of an integrated marketing and communications change process impacting admissions, advancement and institutional reputation. The American Marketing Association’s 2014 Higher Education Marketer of the Year, Jeanette is known for her creativity and innovation in building outcomes-focused higher education marketing and communications teams with a philosophy that ‘creativity takes courage.’ Previously, she served as associate vice president for integrated marketing and communications at Florida State University. Providing counsel for executive leadership and a network of 150 campus communicators, Jeanette led the university’s development and implementation of communication policies and strategy, integrated marketing, digital communications, social and media relations, brand development, issues management, and creative services. During her tenure, she led the successful navigation of several high-profile crisis management situations of national interest. Jeanette has extensive marketing and communications, media relations, and digital media experience in the private and public sectors in the US and the UK. She has led the process of establishing communications infrastructures, services, and brand development processes for several institutions. Jeanette is a frequent presenter at conferences, and as a consultant she has helped universities, including Fresno State, discover how to build and sustain effective marketing and communications strategies using internal resources, collaborative networks, and ROI. For her change management, alumni relations, and brand development strategies at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, she and her staff earned the inaugural Best Marketing Team in Higher Education Award from the American Marketing Association, as well as the CASE Region V Teresa Du Bois Exline Award for ‘Best Practices in Communications and Marketing.’ She and her teams have received recognition and a number of national and regional honors from CASE and the American Marketing Association, and American Advertising Federation. Past roles include establishing Wales’ ‘first’ business incubator dedicated to accelerate the growth of the country’s digital media sector, supporting more than 500 startups providing business development support; military public affairs as a civilian contractor for the 1st Infantry Division during Operation Desert Storm; public relations for the Hoffman Agency’s cornerstone account with Hewlett-Packard; and several positions in journalism and public relations. Jeanette holds a PhD in Education and MS in mass communications from Kansas State University and a BS in journalism from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Both a spokesperson and a subject-matter expert, Jeanette provides strategic communications counsel, brand, change management and issues management expertise to executive and academic leadership.
