SPEAKER_03
You're listening to the Higher Ed Marketer, a podcast geared towards marketing professionals in higher education. This show will tackle all sorts of questions related to student recruitment, donor relations, marketing trends, new technologies, and so much more. If you're looking for conversations centered around where the industry is going, this podcast is for you.
Let's get into the show.
SPEAKER_01
Welcome to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast, where we encourage higher ed marketers that we admire to share ideas and insights that other higher ed marketers can benefit from. I'm Troy Singer, and I'm here with my partner in creation, Bart Kaler. This conversation we have today is very dynamic, and it stemmed from a $100 million donation to a school, but as we got into it, it is so much more.
Can you tell us a little bit about our conversation we're having today?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, Troy. I'm very excited about this. This is a $100 million campaign, or $100 million gift, is fascinating in and of itself.
Just to see what they're doing at Kenyon College of Ohio, just is fascinating to me with everything, with their brand. It was a great pleasure to talk with Janet Marsden. She's the vice president of communications, and then Colleen Garland.
She's the VP for advancement. Just to hear them both talk about the way that they have addressed this large gift, as well as just the way that they're crafting the brand, they do have such a good job of being articulate and being so thoughtful. That's one of the things that I would really encourage everyone to listen for during this conversation.
SPEAKER_01
Well said, Bart. Without further ado, let's go into our conversation with Colleen and Janet. Our conversation today is with Janet Marsden, vice president for communications at Kenyon College, and Colleen Garland, vice president for advancement at Kenyon College.
Again, today the topic is how Kenyon initially doubled down on their campus experience marketing campaign to prospective students and alumni during the pandemic. Before diving in, Janet, could you give us a brief description of your role at Kenyon?
SPEAKER_00
Hi. Yes. I'm Janet Marsden. I'm the vice president for communications at Kenyon, and I'm responsible for the strategic positioning of Kenyon College.
That means I oversee the communications to all of our constituencies, whether they're people who are just getting to know us, like prospective students and families, or people who know us very well, like our alumni and our current students, faculty and staff. I'm also thinking about communications to the people who may only know us a name, so the broader public. Overseeing, website, publications, social media, alumni magazine, and all of our media relations and crisis communications.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Janet.
SPEAKER_04
Colleen? Yes. So I lead the advancement division at Kenyon. We make up just close to 40 professionals who work in development, alumni and parent engagement, all of our advancement services, bio records, anything relating to once you graduate and leave Kenyon falls in our labs.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Colleen. And to get into our conversation, the reason why I first reached out to Colleen because of an announcement of a $100 million gift, which was the initial reason I said, hey, I would love to have you on the podcast. And then that conversation led to how this gift was part of a bigger initiative and we should get Janet involved.
So again, with the help of Janet Colleen, could you kind of tell us the story about this amazing gift?
SPEAKER_04
Absolutely. It's an honor to get to tell the story. Anyone who works for a nonprofit of any kind dreams of an opportunity like this.
So and when a gift of this magnitude comes about, it's never about the solicitor or the ask, it's about a partnership. And that was definitely true in this case. This is a donor who has cared about Kenyon for a very long time and really helped craft and understand our strategic priorities.
So while this gift ultimately is to fund new student construction, new student housing, it really is to a key strategic priority of the college to help us enhance our student housing experience. And as Janet will get to a little bit later, this is central to who Kenyon is. The experience all four years on our campus, living and working together on the hill is an essential part.
It's not just about what happens in the classroom. It's about what happens 24 seven when you're part of the Kenyon community. So we were just thrilled to see the gift come to fruition.
And the communication of the gift was a little bit tricky because it gave us an opportunity not only to tell the story of this amazing gift, but also to help our other donors see that their gifts still mattered, that while 100 million is a phenomenal gift, it doesn't solve every single problem that any college or university has. And we still were going to rely on other donors to help us support our students through student scholarships. So it was a win-win really for us to both tell the story of the donor, but then also to continue to make the case of why gifts at every level are important.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. I imagine that, you know, both for you, Colleen and Janet, the challenge of being able to tell the story about the donor when they want to remain anonymous was probably a little bit of a challenge as well. Tell us about that.
SPEAKER_04
No question about that. We always try to convince donors to share their story, but we respect their wishes. And in this case, this is a donor who does not want to be known.
And we have quite a few donors who are that way. And in many ways, I really respect that because they're putting the college first and they're putting the purpose of the gift first. And they're not caring so much about attention to them or even in many cases, you know, the gratitude that we all feel to them.
They don't necessarily want that kind of attention.
SPEAKER_02
I think that's great. And Janet, what would you say about that?
SPEAKER_00
Well, I would add that to Colleen's point about, you know, the challenge of having, and I don't like to talk about the challenge of having a gift of this magnitude to have to celebrate, but that you want to be able to acknowledge the role that other donors play in this. And so in our communications, we had the opportunity to bring in other voices. So alumni who could reflect on their own experience on campus.
And this gift was going toward something that every alum could speak to, what their experience was on Kenyon's campus. And we were able to bring in student voices as well. And so I think that that in some ways made it easier to show how expansive the reach and the role of this community plays in Kenyon's future while we were able to celebrate this singular gift.
SPEAKER_02
That's great because I've worked with a lot of schools on capital campaigns and have served on the National Campaign Cabinet for My Alma Mater. And, you know, that particular campaign was a $125 million campaign over the course of, you know, six years. I mean, you pretty much took care of a college campus campaign, you know, with one gift.
And I know it didn't just happen overnight. I know that these types of things take years and years and years and years in the making. But congratulations on that.
And I do think that I want to kind of point out to our listeners that the strategy that you took is to make sure that the other voices of the other donors were heard. Because I think that I think that's so important that I want everybody to understand is that just because you have a singular gift of great magnitude does not mean that, you know, you're taking care of for life that anything else. I mean, you've got to engage everyone else to make sure that they feel as equally a part with their, you know, $100 gift, their, you know, $10,000 yearly gift or whatever it might be because it is a part of a community.
And I think that's, I think that's, you know, kudos to you all for doing that. So congratulations.
SPEAKER_04
Bart, I might say one more thing about that. In addition to just knowing that intuitively, we had under taken a study with a group called the art and science group to really understand our, our constituency donor motivations, what was working. And so we knew that there was a risk in when associating a gift of this magnitude that somehow your other donors would sit on the sidelines and applaud, but not necessarily see how it was impacting them.
So that definitely informed our strategy. And fortunately, we had a group that met, including Janet, every other week for about nine months, trying to think through carefully if this gift were to come to fruition the way we were hoping, how would we be prepared to roll it out? So it's definitely a team effort to be prepared for the messaging.
SPEAKER_02
I think that's great because I think that, you know, that gift puts Kenyon College in a very elite club of very large singular gifts to institutions. And you're right. I think that, you know, you do run the risk of your donor base thinking, oh, well, they're like Harvard now.
They don't need my money. And that's not at all the case. That's not at all, you know, associating you with that type of other institutions is not fair.
And so I think that the way that you did that with counsel and with very strategic thinking, I think, is very well done. And again, it's one of those things that rather than just jumping around and high-fiving everybody to say, hey, look at this gift we got, you really thought it through and I think that's well done.
SPEAKER_01
So thank you. Yes. And thank you for sharing the stories and the learnings that come with it. Wanted to change gears and ask Janet about the brand campaign here on purpose that you had during the COVID year.
And I don't suppose the COVID post any problems to that campaign, did it?
SPEAKER_00
No, none whatsoever, Troy. It was just like, you know, walking the park. COVID, as we all know in this moment, has introduced some new things to think about.
And for us, yes, we were rolling out a new brand strategy and really building on some tenants that had always been true. That's what a good brand strategy is. And here on purpose is our sort of central theme and this came out of a set of market research that we did a couple of years ago, speaking both with prospective students and families, current audience and alumni.
So really a very comprehensive view on perceptions of Kenyan. And we were rolling out a new visual identity, including an updated logo mark, which in itself has no complications. And we were also launching a new website, so an entire new site, and developing a whole new suite of admissions materials.
And boom, a pandemic lands in our lap. So putting aside the challenges of the work when you're managing a whole new flow of communications, the idea of being able to focus on place, the idea of being able to focus on connection and the relationships that happen here, which are two of our three pillars of our brand strategy became quite a challenge when you couldn't actually have people here on campus, on purpose. We were doing that purposefully.
And you couldn't have people in a room talking with one another to be able to show that. So when we were thinking about how do we show the place, how do we celebrate the place, and how do we start to make real and make visible these kinds of relationships, the attention that people give one another. We really had to get creative.
And we can go into, you know, I can go into a lot of detail about what we did, but that was the setup. I should add, though, that this gift that we started with was a huge opportunity for us when we think about place and we think about the important role of the residential experience at Canyon. We were able, from a messaging perspective with that gift, to have a very, to make a very bold statement about the value of the residential experience at Canyon and the investment in that experience.
You know, if you think about January of 2021, there were lots of conversations about the future of working in place, studying in place, would we forever be remote? We didn't even know when the pandemic was going to end. So to be able to make a statement at that moment that, yes, we are doubling down on this, we are investing in this, we have support in this, we celebrate this was a huge opportunity for us. I think the only challenge was tone, right? So the country was divided.
The country, you know, people were dying, people were tired. It was very, very hard to think about, like, how do you strike the right tone? Where do you celebrate this good fortune? And yet you recognize the context in which people are living. So lots of ways that COVID played into a complicated messaging year.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that's great. And I can even tell just in the way of your articulation of that new brand, the here on purpose, just how purposeful, I mean, just in this conversation, how purposeful you're all doing everything that you're doing, how thoughtful and articulate you are with those types of things. I find it interesting because I've got a lot of, a lot of our clients are similar, small to medium sized, privates, you know, many of them are rural.
And I think that, you know, you've got to do some things, especially with the residential experience to really be purposeful in that strategy. And I'm sure that's part of why the brand went to where it was. Maybe tell us a little bit about that because I mean, Kenyans is kind of in the middle of
SPEAKER_00
it's in the middle of everywhere. Okay. Absolutely. Absolutely.
I think you're exactly right. In fact, you know, when we think about Kenyans distinctions, and this came through in the data, right? I mean, in the market research, one of the things that we're, that most stands out about us is where we are when we look at ourselves compared to our peers. So many of our peers are coastal.
So they're on the East Coast or on the West Coast. Many of our students come from those parts of the country. So when they're making a choice to come to Kenyon, it's almost like a badge of honor.
It's like, oh, all of my friends are going to these sets of schools that are familiar, that are sort of in my backyard. I'm taking a step out, right? I'm going to go a little off the beaten path. And the reason I'm doing that is because everyone who lands at Kenyon has made that choice.
So it's very intentional. It's very purposeful. And it comes through in the kinds of interactions that people have.
So that was really what was leading us to take this thing, which for some people, yes, is a negative. It's certainly the thing that is most notable, right, when you're just looking on paper. And let's turn that and show how it is a plus.
The other thing that was true for us is that we had really, really strong marks from our faculty in terms of how they thought about the place and how they thought about their students and how they thought about their colleagues and the work that they do here. It was quite remarkable when you compare it to other institutions. And how do we turn that, this question of kind of faculty satisfaction, faculty, the meaning that they have.
How do you turn that into something that speaks to the student experience? It's actually fairly easy to do that. And then the third was writing, right? And Kenyan has long been known as a writer's college. And for us, we didn't want to pull away from that, but we needed to make that umbrella bigger to be able to show how the way that you think about the craft of expressing your ideas, right, is actually what makes you a good thinker, right? So good writing is good thinking.
So that's where we landed when we were thinking about brand strategy.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. I also kind of want to point out to some of the listeners too that you're using a lot of the institutional data, you know, the faculty surveys, the alumni surveys, you know, maybe even, you know, other surveys with students and, you know, graduates using that data to inform your brand decisions. And I think that's so, so critical.
I think a lot of schools fail to realize that, you know, their institutional, you know, data and assessment office probably has some data that can be utilized by marketers that can be utilized for communications. And, and again, doing that on purpose, being purposeful in that, I think is, is, is, is very good and deserves some kudos in that. So great.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_01
To both of you, I know that in terms of marketing, the campus to both prospective students and to alumni where customarily you have promoted and relied on people to come on campus, please share some of the learnings or the mindset changes that you had to go through over the past year and how you've accomplished though them.
SPEAKER_00
Colleen, do you want to start because that the, the impact on alumni programming was really, really powerful?
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, I'm happy to share what we did. So first I'd say, you know, we've always had a very strong peer network. And so we were able to tap the peer to peer volunteer network pretty powerfully.
We shifted as almost every organization did to a lot of virtual programming. The piece I would say that became very apparent though was just the importance of video and the increased use of video and photography because as we've been talking about, like the place is so powerful. And when alumni see photos and images, it immediately brings them back.
It tugs at an emotional connection to the place and worried that in ways that words alone can't. So we did indeed increase our use of video for things like this big gift announcement, which of course we couldn't do in person, but other things that we did as well in terms of we renamed our big athletic center for a very beloved and well-known alumnus. That was all done through the use of video.
And so we tried to really, as Janet said in the beginning, appropriately share good news but in the context of what was going on in the world. And that required just what felt like a near constant pivoting and adjusting and waiting till the last minute to make sure everything was just right to that moment when it was going to be released. But we certainly have not let go of the fact that the place is important.
But the virtual programming allowed us to expand some opportunities. So the relationships that Kenyon students form with their faculty is really something special. And we've had for 20 years something called Learning in the Company of Friends, where one or two faculty members may go out on the road for events with alumni.
Well, suddenly we could do those virtually and they were available to a much broader audience. So we've actually been connecting with people in brand new ways that would not have been able to make it because we didn't come to their city. But now suddenly they could tune in virtually and hear from a beloved professor talk about a topic that they care about.
So there have been many bright spots in what in my division we keep calling the pandemic potential, trying to look at the upside of what is possible instead of just what was taken away.
SPEAKER_00
I would echo Haleen's in terms of video. Certainly as we're thinking about sort of our other main audience, which is prospective students, one of our strategies has always been to get them to campus, right? To get them to visit campus. And this is true of most institutions that the campus visit is a high conversion moment and it's certainly true for Kenyon.
So last spring when that option became not an option, we had to quickly sort of double up on our video collections. And we had always had a sort of a respectable virtual tour, but it was photo driven. And so the first thing we did was to mine our B-roll and our video collection and put together a series of what we were calling in a minute.
So middle path in a minute, places on campus in a minute and to edit that footage so that you could get a sense of the beauty of this place. And then the second thing we did was to invest in some 360 videos and worked very closely to develop a version of that that people could sort of watch on their own. But another version that our admissions counselors and our tour guides could do in real time with prospective students.
So thinking about repurposing that investment so that it would work for multiple purposes and to do that in close collaboration with the people who would be using them. And then the third, which is the most delightful and fun, is we had been planning to do this series that had students and faculty in conversation that would be this way to show the kind of attention and the kind of relationships. We couldn't get them in obviously in a room together, right? So we had to pivot and maybe I'm going to call it the pandemic pivot is my coin of term that we started working in animation for us that was for the first time.
And we had interviews via Zoom and then we had an animator using our new visual identity do a set of animations that kind of brought them to life. And they really captured the diversity, the kind of very unique human quality of Kenyan students. And they were just delicious.
And we're able to launch those on our admitted student website. So we wouldn't we probably wouldn't have gone down the road of animation if we could have gotten people in a room and and had a different kind of video.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I caught a little bit of the animation on the homepage of your website. And I don't know if the other ones are similar to that. But I was just really blown away by that.
I think that, you know, and I would encourage listeners to go to Kenyan dot edu to just kind of take a look at that. Because I often talk about, you know, different ways to get attention, especially of Generation Z. And you've got to be really creative.
You know, they spend eight hours a day on YouTube. They're used to a lot of, you know, authentic and, you know, kind of different types of video. They've got a very discerning eye toward things.
And I think to do something like these animations that are unique and different and classy, but yet still kind of quirky. I really think that's a nice way to do that. And one of the questions I wanted to ask you as a follow up on all this video that you've been doing.
A lot of schools will ask me and they'll say, well, I encourage them to do video, you know, as part of their content marketing strategy. We'll talk about let's make sure we do video. Let's, you know, talk about different ways to do video.
And they're like, well, we really don't have the budget to hire a big video firm. I'm guessing that you looked at some different ways to do video. I mean, you weren't bringing in, you know, crews from Columbus and Cleveland to do your videos.
I mean, tell us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00
Well, that is an interesting question because we were in the middle of a search for a videographer and a video producer when the pandemic hit. And we actually were not able to fill that position. So if there are any great video producers who want to do amazing work, please, please come apply to Canyon.
We're looking for talented people. But we had the benefit of having one, a really great collection on hand. So we could mine some of that.
And we had relationships with a couple of independent video producers who we burned working with for many years. And so the fruits of that collaboration, that would be the thing that I would say is that you don't necessarily have to have it all in house. You don't necessarily have to hire a kind of fancy big firm.
It wasn't part of a package that we put together as part of a brand strategy or a big brand rollout. We really found the partners who were best in class at what they did. So whether it was video or whether it was print publications or whether it was magazine, and we were the glue.
We were the seam. And I think that actually helps, right? Like that helps us have it's more generative in terms of creative work. You get the benefit of outside perspective, but you also have a kind of responsibility to be the glue.
And so then when we're working with Colleen's team and we're working with our admissions team, that there's it's embedded. It's not it's not a kind of added distance kinds of collaboration. So so that I would recommend that.
SPEAKER_02
I like that. It's kind of like an internal agency type of feel where you're pulling in the different resources to put that together for your vision. And I think that's a really good approach to that.
And I think even, you know, I'm going to make a little bit of a note here because a lot of our listeners have listened to some of my presentations. And I have a presentation about marketing on a shoestring budget and this 360 degree cameras that you talked about that maybe your admissions team has used for live. And I'm not sure which ones you're using.
But those are those are not beyond reach for most colleges and most departments. I mean, you know, under under three or four hundred dollars on Amazon, you can get a nice Rico 360 degree camera that put it on a selfie stick and be able to do some nice videos that you know, 4k quality you can post to YouTube. And I'm sure that those are some of the things that you did in addition to, you know, some of the additional things.
But again, I'm just trying to let everybody know that this strategy that Kenyon has done with video, it's it's accessible. And, and, you know, just like most people will understand that I can find a freelance graphic designer, you can find freelance videographers to that can do a lot of the same types of things that you need to do. So great.
Thank you for letting me kind of encourage everyone with that, Janet.
SPEAKER_01
Of course. Usually at this time when we're winding down, I ask for something additional that people can take away, but kind of feel guilty because both of you have shared so much. But I'm still going to do it.
So Janet, we'll start with you and then follow with Colleen. Is there an idea, maybe something that you're thinking of doing something that you recently read or a secret that you don't mind sharing that's worked for you that a marketer or someone listening could apply right away or within the next few days, few weeks. You have anything, any tidbit secrets you can share?
SPEAKER_00
Sure. I will maybe point to one of the things that we did in our web redesign. We just have a terrific web strategist on staff and a great partner that we worked with.
And so she looked very carefully at all the analytics, making decisions about what content stays, what, you know, how do we think about our architecture. And she was noticing the about section, right? And she so beautifully put it. She's like, it's the junk drawer of Kenyon, right? So everything that you didn't know where else to put that, you know, is a new initiative that that kind of didn't yet have a home got put into the about section.
And she's she's like, and it gets traffic, right? So that's where people go when they're sort of starting out. So she reimagined. We don't, we no longer have an about section on the Kenyon website.
We have a new section that is very pointedly to prospective students that poor can explore Kenyon. And it really allows us to put forward our sort of brand messages in a way that it comes out of place where people are looking for that kind of top level view. It allows us for people to browse, you know, via looking at photos or looking at if you just want the numbers.
And what we found is in doing that. So the cleaning out of the junk drawer. We increase the clicks from our homepage to that section of the website, 37%.
So so my tip is open the junk drawers, keep them because they're important. They're their place that people want to go when they don't quite know where to go to look for something. But just make sure when they open that drawer that they find something that is what they're looking for and that it tells the story that you want to tell.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. I really like that. And I'm just looking at the site while we're talking.
And it's a great solution. Colleen.
SPEAKER_04
So I do have to say it's hard to choose one thing because our team has worked so hard to really just tap into incredible amounts of creativity and resourcefulness. And that's happened all across campus. So I think we all have a lot to be proud of.
So the one I'll talk about perhaps we'll speak more to the fundraisers in the audience than the marketers. So I apologize for that. But what we've learned is that when you have an existing relationship with a person, it is quite possible to maintain and move forward in that relationship through virtual means.
I mean, we've had some very meaningful conversations on that have not inhibited in any way. But trying to cultivate a new relationship through virtual environment is much more difficult. And one of the things that we started very early on, I think our first session was maybe in April of 20, was something we called the Kenyan Insider Series, where we've continued these quarterly, but we invited our major gift donors and prospective donors to these insider events where it was a special invitation.
They got a follow up phone call from a development officer personally inviting them. And we've done everything from, you know, sort of an insider look at the brand new library that's under construction to having a couple of faculty members on a panel and hearing about how are they teaching a lab course in a virtual environment? Like, you know, how in the world is this even working to how are our students being affected, and particularly with the George Floyd murder and what was happening with the tension on campus and the heartbreak on campus? And we were able to sort of open up a window to some key insiders that were important to us. And we found that we had major donors and prospects who, one, live an out of the way areas, so not in the typical cities that we travel to all the time, who we didn't know at all, who were tuning in regularly and staying on for the whole hour and really engaging in the content.
So that was probably our most effective way of being able to cultivate a relationship with a new person who could get intrigued by what they heard in that hour long presentation and then be open to a one-on-one conversation with a gift officer. That is something that has worked well and is just one example of something that we will continue post-pandemic, because while we certainly will do things in person, there are audiences that we've been able to reach through virtual means that we would never have been able to reach only in an in-person event.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Colleen. So impactful, both the last two secrets that you gave us and then everything that you've shared over our time together today. And for those who would like to reach you, especially if there's a great videographer out there, how would they get in touch with the both of you? Colleen, if you would start.
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, my email is the best way. It's just Garland 1, the number one. So I'm lucky to be one of the first Garlands, I guess, at Kenyon, and I get the number one, but Garland1atKenyon.
edu.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Janet.
SPEAKER_00
And I'm very, very similar. I'm Marsden 1, so that's M-A-R-S-D-E-N-1 at Kenyon.edu.
SPEAKER_01
Thank you both again for your wisdom and your time that you've generously given us. Bart, any parting thoughts?
SPEAKER_02
I just want to, again, echo and thank you both for your graciousness and sharing. And again, congratulations on not only the gift, but also just the success that you've been doing with your communications and your marketing and just living out that here on purpose. I can tell that even in our conversation here of how apropos that brand is.
So thank you again both for being here and looking forward to kind of following Kenyon going forward.
SPEAKER_04
Thank you for having us.
SPEAKER_01
Our pleasure. And now for our commercial. The Higher Ed Marketer podcast is sponsored by Kailer Solutions, an education marketing and branding agency.
And by ThinkPattended, a marketing execution printing, mailing, and provider of higher ed solutions. On behalf of my co-host Bart Kailer, I'm Troy Singer. Thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_03
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