Back to The Future: Part Two
More lessons learned in my first year as Communications and Marketing Manager for a college.
Anyone that has watched the Back to the Future Trilogy will quickly realize that the story line is essentially the same, but the setting is changed in each movie. In Part One Marty and Doc Brown go to the 1950s. In Part Two they go to the future to the year 2015 (that was ten years ago… Where are my self-drying clothes, hoverboard, and flying cars, btw? You can keep the dehydrated pizza. Yuck…).
Part Two is probably my favorite movie in the series because of the futurist view on how the world has progressed. Who wouldn’t want a hoverboard and a flying car?
In this second post in this series, I want to share more of what I wish I knew in my first year of higher education marketing.
Save Everything
In your first year of working in higher education marketing, or heck, any field for that matter I recommend that you act like a packrat, hoarder, or to put a finer term to it, curator of everything you’ve done in the first year of your work.
Photos you’ve taken? That’s a no-brainer. Save them because when you need stock photos of things on campus, you will have marketing material at the ready.
Content or copy you’ve written? Put that into a file so you can refer to it later. Or, heck, even reuse when the time comes. This is especially important and vital because sooner or later, your boss is going to ask you to work on an annual report or magazine for the college or some big publication. You’d better have all that stuff saved to pull out for content to get that big project done. Now, you might be thinking that I, your writer of Marketing Higher Education didn’t do this and was caught flat-footed on the aforementioned assignment from his boss. O contrare mon-frere. I was prepared and had many of the pieces of content ready to use for the annual report. You, dear reader, heeding this piece of advice will also be prepared and have things at the ready to use, making your job faster, easier, and less complicated down the road.
You can use your inbox as an archive, a file on your computer, or even one of the many apps out there for saving things, Dropbox for example. Personally, I use Evernote to capture and save things as an archive, ideas file, things to use in the future, and more.
Build Your Network Inside and Outside Your College
In my first year I had some interesting projects come my way. Probably the first was working on a promotional campaign for one of our college’s most unique programs, our Master of Business Leadership & Innovation degree. It’s like an MBA but for the people person, who wants to lead their teams and themselves better, and effect change in their organizations for the better.
Well, this project required me to both build my network within my college and outside of it across many university departments. IT was involved as well as members of our MarComm office, and our Graduate Programs. Those were just the external pieces, I also had to build relationships with my own directors of our Graduate Programs within Haile College.
I’ll just say this that I am lucky to get to work with the people in these departments because they were all very responsive to what I wanted to do and how to do the work that needed doing. Tim and Christopher in IT were wizards with showing me how to use our website CMS to put forms and code in to track the ads I wanted to create. Blake was equally wizardly in helping with implementing and checking the code, and finally Kimberly in Graduate programs was the key to it all. She had complete control of our Slate forms that were used to collect information. Kari, in our graduate programs office helped guide me in messaging, copy, and creative.
Without a doubt, it takes a village university to get things done. Without a good network of people within your department and outside your college, you may not be able to do the level of work you can do.
Another piece of advice and learning here. Not only do you need to know people across campus, but you also should have an appreciation for how they work in their own departments. Respect their boundaries and know that they are serving more than just you and your college and department. Always be appreciative, show them respect, and be complimentary of their work. They have a lot going on that you aren’t remotely aware of, so show your gratitude often.
Gain an understanding of how other departments work, and how you can complement their efforts
I think this piece of advice is always in a work-in-progress mode. So far in my first year of work at NKU’s Haile College of Business, I’ve worked with MarComm (obviously), Alumni Relations, Development, Advancement, IT, Graduate Programs, Career Services, and more. Shew… that’s a lot just right there.
So far, I’ve been able to meet with the people inside a few of these departments to understand them and to just have a personal connection with them. I think I could take it a step further.
For instance, I should get a better grasp on the admissions department. I need to get to know more of the people in the department and gain an understanding of the whole comms flow of our prospective students, the “sales funnel” if you will. I’ve never been on a campus tour yet. I think I should join a few to get a sense of how they go and what they talk about.
Asking the people inside the departments what they are working on, what’s important to them, and how you can work together on projects would be a great way to network, gain appreciation, and generate more ideas for things you want to do in your own department. Collabing with them on social media posts, Instagram Reels, etc. would be an easy way to do work together and show that you work with people (a la Jaime Hunt “Let’s go bust some silos!”) within your university.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
You know, as I have been writing this, I realize that a central part in the story of Back to the Future: Part II, is that Marty happens to find in an antique store a book called The Sports Almanac. Inside it contained the winners of every game in sports. What an opportunity for him to make bank by placing a few sure-fire bets? He would know who won, who lost, and how to game the system. Sadly, the idea backfired. Doc Brown caught wind of Marty’s scheme and threw the book in the trash, saying, “He did not create the time machine for financial gain.” Biff, Marty’s nemesis, found the book, and secretly went back to 1955 to give the book to his younger self with instructions on how to use it. Thus, the book created an alternate reality in 1985 where Marty’s dad died, his mother married Biff, and the whole town of Hillsdale lie in ruins as the casino Biff built laid waste to the town.
Philosophically speaking, would we ever want to know the future in the past? Should I have known these things before I started my career at Haile College? We will never know. Regardless, I think it’s important to share what I’ve learned in hopes that it helps others in their work as they begin their careers.
There will be another post next week to wrap up this series. Please consider subscribing. I’m curious, reader, what are some of the things you wish you knew when you started your marketing career?