Office of University Communications
Five–Year Strategic Plan
July 1, 2006
UCI’s strategic plan, “A Focus on Excellence,” makes several references to enhancing communications and developing a marketing strategy at UCI that are broadly summed up in the statement: “The university must do a better job of explaining to the public who we are, what distinguishes us from other institutions of higher education and what we can contribute to the society, culture and economy of the region, state, nation and world.”
Prior to writing this plan – and to ensure our efforts were integrated with others – University Communications polled a range of campus communications, marketing and external relations staff, deans and administrators through a web-based survey and personal interviews.
The recommendations in this plan broadly support the goal stated above, as well as the current and anticipated communications and marketing needs of the units over the next five years. The plan focuses on necessary enhancements to the current communications infrastructure and the addition of new components, in particular, the development of an integrated campuswide marketing program and the formation of a public affairs council to ensure strategic and integrated communications, marketing and outreach efforts to our target audiences.
Enhancements to Current Program
Media Relations
Currently staffed with a director and four communications officers, the media relations department plays a lead role in communicating who we are and what we contribute to the region, state, nation and world. Since 2002, the department has increased coverage by more than 50% in major news outlets across the nation, including important outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, National Public Radio and Associated Press. This was achieved while sustaining or strengthening the university’s presence locally (and garnering awards for outstanding news writing in the process). We can greatly enhance this success by adding one communications officer per year over five years. This will allow us to work more closely and in a more customized fashion with deans, faculty and administrators to promote the university (68% of survey respondents view media relations as our most important service). It will also enable us to provide higher levels of support to certain areas that benefit most (if not all) units, such as alumni relations, community relations, government affairs and student affairs.
We also recommend, contingent on the approval of the new vice chancellor of health affairs, a director of health sciences communications that would oversee and integrate the communications activities of the School of Medicine and UCI Medical Center.
Constituency Communications
Through formal and informal research, the call for more substantial, diverse and frequent communications to UCI's key constituencies has been loud and clear. UCI's perceived value – both on- and off-campus – will be greatly influenced by our ability to compellingly communicate the campus’s achievements and opportunities. Content and delivery of University Communications print and online publications must be enhanced to effectively support UCI’s strategic objective to better explain who we are and what we contribute to society, and also to maintain contact with graduates more consistently and substantially, as stated in the strategic plan.
Proposed enhancements include increasing UCI Magazine's frequency to bimonthly and number of pages from 24 to 32 (UCI Magazine is currently our only means of communicating with our entire alumni base), developing a new “UCI in the Community” web channel and other engaging elements for the Today@UCI website, coordinating of content for the proposed student portal project, and creating a periodic e-mail newsletter (patterned after uci.brief) for external constituents.
The creation of these new communications channels and improvements to existing ones will involve the production and publication of literally hundreds of compelling stories in numerous print and web formats. To accomplish this, we propose the addition of two writers, two designers, one editor and an in-house photographer (in 2004-05 UCI spent more than $80k on freelance photography). These positions also will greatly increase our ability to provide content, design and production services to the academic and administrative units.
Web and Technology Services
University Communications manages the UCI home and upper-level web pages, the chancellor’s website, Today@UCI (the campus award-winning news and information website) and is overseeing the current redesign of UCI Medical Center’s website. Our recent highly successful redesign of the UCI home page has been widely praised and resulted in a significant increased demand for web template design to match the campus look-and-feel, as well as website development consulting services.
There also is a critical need for hardware, software and personnel to support the goals for growth and services to students, faculty and staff, and for the development of a secure, scaleable and stable website infrastructure to support the campus’s growing communications, marketing and branding initiatives.
Specific tools include a more powerful and focused campus web search tool, a centralized event calendar and a campus content management system (CMS), which would enable the integration of content for the diverse array of central and unit-based websites and be instrumental in enhancing the consistency of our messaging. University Communications is leading discussions with the Libraries, AdCom and UCI Medical Center about a possible cooperative CMS purchase; other units, including social sciences and research and graduate studies also have expressed interest. But without central support, the initiative is likely to languish.
Finally, there is increasing demand for interactive, multimedia web content as a tool to promote UCI’s research, scholarship and public service and to facilitate recruitment of faculty, students and staff. Providing this service to the campus would require an additional FTE, a server and storage.
Student Portal Project
Student Affairs and University Communications recently revived discussions of a centralized, single sign-on student portal that will help students overcome the challenges associated with UCI’s highly decentralized unit structure (students currently must use dozens of websites and applications owned and designed by individual units). A pilot portal project to determine the best approach and tools is currently under way, with recommendations expected by early 2007. Senior leadership and central financial support will be essential for the success of this project.
Broadcast Services
UCI’s broadcast initiative was launched in 2004 with a one-time set-up allocation from Chancellor Cicerone. It is currently staffed with two FTE (director and associate director). The unit enables the campus to broadcast live to media outlets around the world and offer video production services and on-camera media training. It is a key component in raising UCI’s visibility across all sectors and broadly serves the goals of the campus strategic plan. With the increasing use of web streaming, podcasting and other emerging technologies to communicate with internal and external audiences, requests for broadcast services and support from campus units are already outpacing our ability to provide them. To meet the demand, we will need two additional FTE and video editing/production equipment to support these positions.
Marketing & Branding
UCI’s current marketing efforts are unit-based and not well-integrated. Arts, athletics and extension, for example, all have marketing programs, but the campus has yet to embrace a broad and inclusive marketing effort that includes determining – through research – the needs and wants of our target audiences and delivering the desired services or information more effectively than our competitors. A successful integrated marketing effort can only take place when all units are working together to serve constituent interests.
What makes UCI unique? Our recent web survey of communications and marketing staff asked participants to list their units’ three key messages to target audiences. Not surprisingly, 53 different messages were submitted. While there were a few common themes, most varied widely, from “leading strategic growth in the global innovation economy” and “keeping the school at the vanguard of preparing 21st century artists through both traditional and new media,” to “expediting and igniting the technology transfer process” and “promoting academic rigor while serving the community.”
While these are all positive statements, there is no clear focus or overriding theme. We need to develop messages that are emotionally compelling, intriguing and interesting to a broad range of constituents. And we need to communicate how UCI profoundly impacts peoples’ lives in a powerful, personal and unified manner.
A well-planned and executed data-driven marketing plan will be key to attracting outstanding faculty, students and staff; increasing private and extramural support and better engaging alumni and community members. In addition, it will expand our national and international profile, increase our visibility and recognition, and generate a broader and diversified group of stakeholders and supporters.
Process & Costs
The marketing/branding process encompasses these steps: Obtaining leadership commitment; establishing working committee; hiring research/branding consultant; creating research plan, conducting polls and focus groups; developing/testing/refining messages based on research findings; obtaining campuswide buy-in; creating a full marketing plan; launching the initiative and recruiting a marketing director to oversee marketing plan implementation (including advertising, media partnerships/sponsorship opportunities, targeted communications to key audiences, and segmented e-mail and web communications); ongoing research and benchmarking and unit-based message development.
Public Affairs Council
Over the last several years, many campus units have added full- or part-time communications, marketing and external relations staff because central resources were not adequate to meet their needs. As a result, there is not only a proliferation of disparate themes, messages and visual representations of UCI being transmitted to target audiences, there is an overall lack of prioritization, focus and coordination of our external outreach efforts.
The formation of a campuswide public affairs council will facilitate the integration of our external outreach and coalition-building efforts in the region. We propose retaining a public affairs firm or consultant to advise on council composition, goal-setting, messaging and benchmarking tactics, and to work with us for the first year (and on a limited basis in subsequent years) to ensure institutionalization of the process
