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NEWS
Marketing 101
Expert tells university summit good brands are built on authenticity.
Universities seeking to build or consolidate their international brand must do so on a foundation of authenticity while diversifying the delivery style of their message, a major higher-education forum has been told.
Speaking at THE summit, World 100 Reputation Network chair Mark Sudbury told delegates that without a bedrock of authenticity, any“ frothy marketing” campaigns were likely to be quickly sniffed out and dismissed.
Sudbury urged universities to ensure brand building campaigns leverage what their individual institution is doing well.
In addition, Sudbury said, universities need to tread carefully when seeking to differentiate themselves in the global higher-education sector. Too often, he noted, universities seeking to highlight their own unique characteristics ended up achieving the opposite by using clichéd language or focusing on highly common or popular themes such as being a global university or purporting to be solving the world’ s problems.
One attribute that universities regularly overlooked when spruiking uniqueness, he said, was their location. Sudbury said even London-based universities failed to capitalise on the value of the city’ s location and global standing as a magnet for many of the world’ s best minds and profession leaders.
Another top priority, he added, was to ensure the university’ s message was segregated in its approach. Message differentiating was important, he explained, because the same message and style would not necessarily work for local and international markets, just as there needed to be tailored approaches depending on the medium used.
Speaking in the same session, THE vice-chancellor of academic affairs at the United Arab Emirates University, Mohamed Albaili, highlighted the speed at which reputations could be altered, often in ways difficult to reverse.
Citing the recent shooting at Umpqua Community College in the US state of Oregon, Albaili said one of the sad realities in the aftermath of such tragic events was that the reputation of the institution involved would be heavily – perhaps irreversibly – affected. ■
Value systems
IT upgrades will be essential for many institutions to maximise their opportunities to grow and excel.
Universities must bring management systems into the current century to achieve future growth and long-term success, one of Australia’ s most prominent vice-chancellors has said.
Speaking at the recent THE summit, the university’ s vicechancellor, Glyn Davis, said an overhaul of the institution’ s management and administration systems had reaped annual savings of about $ 80 million. The university was able to reinvest that savings into research, he said.
Davis said that while administration and managerial changes did not feel as natural to academics as updating a curriculum, such strategy and planning was equally vital and could not be ignored.
He said the challenge faced by university leaders seeking such changes was overcoming the often deeply entrenched views of academics that consolidation of services was the“ Kremlinisation of organisations that are inherently decentralised”, adding that it was vital that universities acknowledged and talked about how scholarly communities could govern themselves.
“ I suggest reforming service delivery on campus is the next great intellectual challenge for a scholarly community,” he told delegates.“ As institutions, we each have grappled with this question for many years, and we have done so in many different areas, from the core academic activities of teaching and research, to the many challenges of administration.
“ And in none of these areas have we found the answers to be simple or clear-cut.”
Following his address, Davis said he could envisage a future in which university services were further consolidated, to be shared or pooled across institutions. He said some examples of pooling resources were already taking place and suggested that further improvements to service delivery might one day be possible if such efforts were broadened with the assistance of external organisations. ■
See“ Masters in admin”, p18.
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