SPEAKER_02
You're listening to the Higher Ed Marketer, the podcast for marketing professionals in higher education. Join us every week as we talk to the industry's greatest minds in student recruitment, donor relations, marketing trends, new technologies, and much more. If you're looking for conversations centered around where marketing in higher ed is going, this podcast is for you.
Let's get into the show.
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast. I am Troy Singer here with my friend and co-host Bart Koehler. Each week, we set out to interview higher ed marketers that we admire for the benefit and the betterment of the entire higher ed community.
Today, we get to talk to Jenny Petty, the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the University of Montana. And if you don't already know Jenny, get to know her. She is a higher ed influencer.
The wisdom that she shares on a regular basis, I think, is a benefit to our community. And today, she's going to kind of pull back the curtain and give us some of what she faced as she took over the leadership of marketing at the University of Montana while she was in the trenches of higher ed branding. And Jenny is so authentic and
SPEAKER_01
transparent about everything. And I love the way that she kind of shares a lot of the challenges that it had and kind of where we've all been, where you have those decisions that you have to make that you're kind of like, gulp, I'm not sure if that's what I want to do, but that's what my gut is telling me, but that's going to be hard. She kind of walks through some of that with their campaign where she puts up branding renaissance, which I love that term.
And so the idea of just having her kind of go through some of those challenges that she went through, being in the trenches, but yet to see what the benefit was on the other side and how she did some things that really, I think, contributed to that benefit and contributed to the success that are intentional things that I think everybody can do. So really great conversation. Here is our conversation with
SPEAKER_00
Jenny Petty. Well, Jenny, I must admit, I'm a little bit intimidated because you've been in this podcast game a lot longer or longer than I have. So you should be asking me the questions.
But since it's our podcast, I get to ask you the questions. And our first one is, if there's something fun or exciting that you have learned recently that you think our audience would love to hear, what would
SPEAKER_03
that be? Yeah. So recently, I started subscribing to Steve Magnus's Science Digest newsletter. And I'm finding it really, really interesting.
And he did a little piece last month about competition and the way competition shows up in our workplaces and the idea of zero sum and zero sum is for me to win, you have to lose. And so I've really been digging into that idea of how that shows up on our campuses and learning more and going back to some of my readings from when I was in graduate school and looking at Parker Polar's work. And it's been really interesting to think about the way that that idea that somebody has to lose for you to win shows up.
SPEAKER_00
Thank you, Jenny. And in all seriousness, Jenny Petty, the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the University of Montana, is seen by some, including me as a higher ed market influencer. And we're so happy to have her.
Before we get into the conversation, can you give us a little glimpse into the University of Montana and the work that you do there?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, you bet. So the University of Montana is in beautiful Missoula, Montana, which is in western Montana. They call it the banana belt of Montana.
They use that when they were recruiting me here. I can tell you, no bananas grow here. And comparatively to the rest of Montana, it is warm.
That doesn't mean we don't have a very long cold winter. The University of Montana has about 12,000 full time students. We are an R1 research institution.
So we have a very deep and large breadth of research that's happening on this campus. We are known for our work in the arts, but also in the sciences. We have some really fascinating neuroscience work that's being done here, including research that's being done to find a vaccine for the opioid epidemic.
And we have a mountain and a river on our campus. Oh, and right on the mountain has the most faked
SPEAKER_00
trail in Montana. So literally a river runs through exactly. Yeah. Oh, we are dad jokes are plenty full on the higher end marketer podcast. Thank you for that introduction.
And Jenny also just set up a couple of our subjects. I think it would be appropriate for you to give us a brief background of your journey because you haven't always been in higher ed marketing.
SPEAKER_03
I spent over a decade in the private sector. I worked in healthcare for a green energy startup. And right before I came to higher ed, I worked for a Fortune 1000 gaming company.
So it was called International Game Technology that serviced the casino world, which was quite the leap to come from casinos and gaming to higher ed. But I am glad I made the leap. That's been a really interesting perspective to bring to higher ed.
I know we've talked with a lot of different guests on the
SPEAKER_01
podcast to have a similar corporate or more B2B background or B2C, then find their way to higher ed. I often joke with a lot of administrators I work with that no one is eight years old and is asking, what do you want to be when you grow up and they say a higher ed administrator? I mean, that just doesn't happen. You typically find a road there either through admissions office and kind of grow up in the way or through professorship or whatever it is.
But I think that sometimes having that perspective does bring a unique skill set and maybe a different true perspective when you come on to campus that I think is refreshing a lot of times, but it also creates a little bit of challenges sometimes because you're bringing in new thoughts.
SPEAKER_03
What was your experience like? So I came from a global marketing team. I was on the global brand team. So we're talking a marketing team that had 150 plus members around the world.
It was extremely competitive. And so when I came to higher ed, I think there were a couple of things that shocked me. The pace for one, I was used to doing go to market campaigns within six months of a new product being developed of just moving really quickly and coordinating very quickly among the organization.
I don't think I was prepared for how complex higher ed organizations are. Even coming from a Fortune 1000 company, I often tell people it was like the Google at the gaming world that took a half an hour to walk from one side of the campus to the other. It was massive and it doesn't even compare to how complex our higher ed orgs are.
I think there's a couple of things that helped shape my experience. One is being part of that global team where people truly do have expertise, like T-shaped expertise in certain areas, which gives you the chance to really have a deep dive. But it gave me exposure to corporate marketing budgets.
So I managed social media when I was at IGT and my Facebook budget was a million dollars a year. And so there are institutions where our entire operating budget in higher ed is not a million dollars a year. So it gave me that exposure to what you can really do with big budgets and how out of whack our expectations on campuses often are when we're not funding in that way.
And then I think another thing that it really gave me great exposure to was agency management. So that's something that just having the ability to ride along with my boss there, his name was Martin Lopkirk at IGT. And Martin let me ride along with him as he made decisions and as we worked with the agency.
And so I really come at agency relationships from this partnership mentality. And I've seen groups that maybe have never been exposed to working with an agency, not really understanding what the dynamic should be. So either thinking that you're turning everything over for the agency to make all the decisions or that the agency is there to be like your taco stand where you're like, okay, well, we're going to order this from you.
So I think it gave me really great exposure into marketing management and leadership and big strategic planning.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that's great. And I think that that's so important. And we had a conversation with, I had a pre interview with another guest recently that'll be an upcoming podcast.
But her background was she's in higher ed, but then she went to one of the agencies for a little bit. And then she went back to higher ed and we kind of always joke around about the evil agencies out there. And I can say that because I am one of the evil agencies, I suppose.
But I do appreciate when it is that partnership where it is a collaboration. And I think that that's what you're saying is that bringing that to the University of Montana or any school, it does go a lot better when it is that partnership rather than the taco stand or just turning it all over.
SPEAKER_03
It's a collaborative. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, something that was modeled for me at IGC was sitting in creative tension, you know, there were meetings where we were in where the agency had pitched something and I watched as people reacted to it.
And I got to see that that just because a pitch didn't go well or it didn't make client expectations, it didn't mean that the relationship was over, the partnership was over. So that gave me just a really great insight into how to operate with working with agency partners. Well, and I know that one of one of the key people
SPEAKER_01
that you recruited to your team kind of came from the from the agency background. So tell us a
SPEAKER_03
little bit about bringing Stephanie. Yeah, so I'm really lucky to have just an amazing team here. Stephanie Geyer was at R&L for a really, really long time.
And honestly, I had always dreamed of working for her. And so when the opportunity presented itself for her to come work with me, it kind of blew me away that she said yes. And, you know, a couple years later, she's still here doing just absolutely amazing things with our digital strategy, and really just leapfrogging.
We're not playing catch up anymore at the University of Montana. We are leapfrogging ahead to the latest and greatest in tech and web. And she's just she's one big pillar of our team.
But I'm so lucky the rest of my leadership team is just phenomenal. Like I've got Dave Koons, who was Senator, Testors, Director of Communications, just fantastic on the media relations side. Lucky enough to work with a woman named Jenny Levy, who is the single best copywriter I've ever worked with.
And she leads our content and creative strategy. Andy Chapman worked for me at Wyoming. There's nothing better of a compliment than when somebody wants to keep working with you.
So he joined, you know, I just have just an amazing, amazing leadership team that has made moved mountains in a really short amount of time. Yeah, that makes such a difference when you can
SPEAKER_01
get a team that's kind of fully functioning together. There's no drama. And everybody just kind of does what they need to do.
And it just lifts everything up. And definitely we can see that. I mean, we had such a great conversation with Stephanie when she was on the episode and don't quiz me.
I don't remember the number, but it's a good conversation to listen to. And I just think that having a team like that and being able to, you know, bring your career journey into the University of Montana and be able to be surrounded with such a team like that is just such a wonderful blessing. And I appreciate you sharing that with us.
One of the reasons we wanted
SPEAKER_00
to have you on the podcast is for you to take us through the journey of one of your large projects of rebranding the University of Montana, a large flagship school. And in order to set the stage, though, I'd like to know to the comfort that you can, if you could highlight maybe some of the challenges that the university faced, that then you had to take on through the rebranding process.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, absolutely. So I joined in the spring of 2021. The University of Montana from 2011 to, I think, 2017 had seen a 40% decrease in the freshman class.
They were experiencing a steep enrollment decline, right? I mean, a decade before, we're all talking about the enrollment cliff. Now, this place was experiencing that very early on. On top of that, there was a very, very public sexual assault scandal that was documented in John Crackauer's book, Missoula, main hall of our university is on the cover of that book.
It was a very public, involved athletics, so very, very prominent. And then on top of that, there was also budgetary with the enrollment decline. There was big budgetary issues.
And so the marketing department in 2016 went from 15 members to three members because the university offered buyouts. And so, you know, when you think about what really successful teams in higher ed and marketing and universities were doing in 2015, this place literally went back to almost zero. And so, when I started, the team had grown to about 10 members, and it was a total rebuild.
You know, there was people process and technology. And so we've doubled the team in size, more than doubled in size in two years. And one of our major first initiatives was what I don't call it a rebranding, I call it a brand renaissance.
Because I didn't want anyone to think that, you know, there was anything wrong. It's just that we needed to start a new chapter and turn over a new leaf. And so we did this brand project, we did it in about nine months.
We partnered with Simpson Scarborough was the fastest in my entire career I have ever done a brand check. But I think that that urgency actually really serves the campus well. The result of that was a campaign that we call Montana made Montana making.
One of the most challenging parts that we found during the research for the campaign was in every audience segment that we did focus groups with we heard this term glory days. And so even our current students would say to us, gosh, I just feel like I missed the glory days. And I thought, gosh, what a tragedy to have a school you've chosen to come to a school where you think the best days of it are behind it, like we've got to reverse that, we've got to reverse that mental attitude about what's happening here.
And so what you'll see in the Montana made Montana making, and there's a great case study that Simpson Scarborough has put together on their website about the work is that it's got almost it's got almost what some people think of as a retro color palette. So we are still paying heed to the nostalgia and the history of this place. But it's very fresh in the approach.
The language and the tone that we're using is not your standard higher ed. You know, we've got a funny post like funny postcard that we're sending out right now, it's got a tree cutting on it and says, you know, we love trees so much, we put a ring on them. There's just really fun.
We're just having fun with it. You know, you can see we have a microsite, it's meat.u montana.
edu. And what we did was we just infused joy and vibrancy back into the brand.
SPEAKER_01
I think that authenticity is what attracts Generation Z to that type of thing. And I'd be curious just to mean we didn't talk about this earlier, but just to kind of unpack that a little bit, because I think that Generation Z, there's a lot of you can go and do all the research, but you know, they like to do things together. There is a retro aspect that they are kind of drawn to.
How's all that been kind of playing out? Because obviously enrollment's up. And a lot of that is going to be based on that feeling that people have. I mean, we can throw out numbers and program data and all that's important.
But at the end of the day, how does somebody feel about the brand is what really starts to attract them. Yeah. And I'm glad that you brought up the student
SPEAKER_03
perspective because previous branding work here hadn't really included student feedback. And we made it a really core center part of what we did here. And so when we were working with Simpson Scarborough, there were three different concepts that they came to and they were all beautiful, but this one was the bold kind of wild concept.
And the first time I saw it, I was like, I'm getting fired. This has been a great, been a great like six month run here, like this I'm done, you know, it's too far out there. I'm this is the end of my career.
And then I had to sit with that uncomfortable feeling and realize it's because there was something really there. There was something different that was making me feel differently than what you would typically experience. And so we took the concepts and we did creative testing among different audiences and among our current and prospective student audiences, that was above and beyond the favorite concept.
And so making that argument, you know, you don't always win that argument on on campuses. Often we create marketing that is, you know, internal, like we are all essentially marketing to ourselves. But we I was lucky enough to have the support of the president here and said, yeah, let's do this, let's go bold.
Let's if this is what the students are reacting to, then let's do it. And we have seen just adoption and excitement around this brand in a way that this campus hadn't seen before. And I do think that's because it feels like them, they see themselves in it.
They know that their feedback was used. It's fun. It doesn't speak to you or as a consumer, the way that most higher ed brands do, we, we really didn't want it like, you know, Stephanie has been working on new Montana.
edu, which is a website property based on prospective student experiences. And it's very personalized. And the tone of that site, we call it playful yet formidable.
We one of our brand personality characteristics, but we don't talk to our audience like they are just there to listen to everything we say, we try to engage in a way
SPEAKER_01
that's having a conversation. That's great. And I, it reminds me of, and I've used this word a couple of times, I don't know if you're anybody's familiar with Joanne Solid, she's one of the co founders of the credo agency.
And she wrote a couple of books. And one of the things that she really leads with is this idea of courageous leadership and higher education. And I love the fact that you just kind of demonstrated that that sometimes, you know, you got to, you got to gulp and say, actually, this is the best thing, even though, you know, the rest of the administration might not understand it, the board might not understand it, but the students do.
And this is what we need to do. That's a hard thing to do. So it's really hard.
And I think also as leaders,
SPEAKER_03
we have to understand that like, it's not our jobs to make everybody feel comfortable all the time. And so for me, you know, I had that really strong reaction. I watched everyone have the same reaction.
The first time you see it, you're like, you know, I don't know. And then the second time you see it, you're like, I, there, I think I love this. I'm not sure.
Like, I think I want a t-shirt. I don't know, you know, and everybody kind of took that same thing until now. They're like, I love it.
Like, I want stickers. I want a mug. I want everything, you know, and we had a student show up to one of our prospective student events a couple weeks ago, and she had gotten a manicure done with one of our brand elements.
It was, you know, just like, yeah, so cool. So cool. Like, they're, and they're using, like, we've had other students like use the graphics and the brand package from the website and like make their own, uh, signing days graphics.
That's been super cool.
SPEAKER_01
So, so you've arrived when somebody gets a tat. So that's, I know, I know. I was like, I'll take the manicures pretty dang close.
It is pretty close. I really like the ideas of being able to just kind of lean into that. Another, Tim Fuller has been on the, on the podcast with us and he and I do a lot of work together.
And one of the stories he likes to tell is that, you know, he was sitting with a president and they rolled out the, the new view book and said, well, what do you think, Tim? And Tim said, well, I'm a 63 year old man and if I like it, that's probably not a good thing since you're focused on, you know, a women's college and whatever. And so I think it's sometimes good for us to remember that we're not the target audience and it's definitely
SPEAKER_00
worth talking to that target audience. So we've talked about internally and leadership might have felt a little uncomfortable at the beginning or when this was rolled out, but would like to know fast forward months later, if you could describe the impact that it's had and maybe some of the work that you've had around it, can you go into that a little bit for us? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know,
SPEAKER_03
it was really important to have transparency in this process. So we created a brand advisory group that was brought in at certain points of the process. I did a roadshow that entire nine months when we were working on this.
And the culmination was what we called brand camp, which is just I just really wanted to say brand camp. So that's why we named it that. And yeah, I just really wanted to do that.
So we called it brand camp and it was a day long event that was really focused on introducing campus to this new platform and position, but also providing education. So there were four separate tracks that went loops all day long, you know, it was like writing for the brand, designing for the brand brand experience and then branding 101. Because, you know, like a lot of people in my position, when I first started, someone said to me, I don't like the word branding in higher ed.
That's so icky. And I was like, okay, so let's take this opportunity to teach campus about marketing and branding. And we did some symbolic stuff that day, right? Like, UM had been through a lot and people here when I first started were so incredibly skeptical and cynical, because they just they had seen people like me come in before stick around for a short amount of time and bounce right out, right? With no measurable difference.
And so we designed brand camp, we had these great teaching moments, but we started the day with we had planters on every single table and the planters had dirt in them. And then everyone was handed a piece of seed paper. And I asked them, I challenged them, I said, before we get started today, I want you to write down one thing that is keeping UM stuck, like what is the story you're telling yourself about this place that is keeping us stuck in the past.
And when people were done with that, they then buried in the they buried their seed paper in the planter. And then we had those planters around campus during the spring and they bloomed and they were beautiful. And and we followed that up by then saying, I want you to go to the back of the room, there's post-it notes and I want you to tell me your greatest hope for this place.
And so we set the tone right away, like this is not about a new color palette, this is not about new fonts, like this is truly a moment in time that we are we're stopping, we're reflecting and now we're moving forward. And so, you know, you mentioned our enrollment impact, we are seeing growth and enrollment, which is so great, we've had four straight semesters of growth. Very excited about that.
That's the tangible benefit of all the hard work that's happening between our department, the enrollment management group financially, like just that's a team effort. But internally, what I'm probably the most proud of is like this work had such an impact on the entire organization. It really was that visible proof that things were changing and that there was something to be excited and hopeful and joyful about.
If there's ever leadership that claims that branding can't drive organizational change,
SPEAKER_01
I would love to speak with them. You know our producer, Rob Conlon, he helped you with your podcast, I think at one point. And as you were talking about it, one of the things that he reminded me of, and you're going to think this is a plant, but it actually literally did come to my mind, is Ted Lasso and just that believe poster.
And just how that and Robin mentioned to me that oh, Jenny loves Ted Lasso, so I didn't set it up. I just thought about that and then I remembered, oh, he said that. But just that whole idea, I mean, that's what that whole premise that show is about is how just some very small authenticity can change a whole organization.
And I think that that's what you just communicated is that you basically have been living out the Ted Lasso show.
SPEAKER_03
Bart, you're calling me Ted Lasso and I'm here for it. Fair enough. I like that show.
I love that show. I've watched it so many times now. But yeah, I think it is right.
It's just it's not so much a leader coming in and setting a vision, it's a leader coming in and helping people reframe for themselves what's happening and have belief in change and that it can happen. And you know, I want it, I'll tell you a funny story. I actually wanted to have like a bonfire.
I didn't want to do the flowerpot thing. I wanted to do something really spectacular, but risk management said no. So we had to settle on the flowerpot.
SPEAKER_01
That's really funny. Very good. Very good.
What a fun story. I hate that we have come to the end
SPEAKER_00
of this episode with you because not only have I looked forward to this discussion with you, I know that there's so much that you have to share. If you would though, if you have a piece of advice that could be quickly implemented by a listener upon hearing it, what would that be, Jenny?
SPEAKER_03
So I think we can all get better at listening. And I think it's worth studying how to become a better listener. I think when I think about the leadership characteristic that I think is maybe one of the most important, listening is really high on that list.
And so I don't have like a pithy article someone should read or anything like that. I think it's just as simple as just getting more self-awareness around how we listen to others. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00
Jenny Petty, the University of Montana. Jenny, if someone would like to either follow you, contact you, what are the best ways for them to do so? You can find me on LinkedIn or on
SPEAKER_03
Twitter at IAMjennyPetty. Like you mentioned, I do have a podcast, The Servant Marketer, that I started when I was in grad school. It was my gradstone capstone project.
So there are 32 episodes of that out there for people to listen to. Or they could find more information about servant leadership and servant marketing at ServantMarketer.co. Bart, what are your final thoughts?
SPEAKER_01
Just a few things that I wanted to point out here. What a great conversation, Jenny. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
And I wanted to just kind of, a few things to encourage those listeners that are out there that maybe you feel like, boy, what a great story, but I'm living where the school was in 2015. Stay there. Be bold in that.
Because I think that a lot of things that Jenny talked about today can be applied to that. There's a lot of empathy in that. I mean, we've had a lot of guests on the show and every one of them gave their email that you can reach out to them, reach out to somebody and just kind of be able to talk that through.
And I would also encourage you to be courageous in the way that you present how important marketing is with your team and with cabinet and with faculty. I really applaud what Jenny talked about with the brand camp. And that's not just unique to Jenny.
I'm sure that she would be fine if you duplicated some of those efforts. Because at the end of the day, another guest recently said that, you know what? We're all in the business of educating students. We're all in the same team.
And in a lot of ways we are. And so I think that the idea of really using some of those ideas of really helping your campus understand that brand is not a bad word. Marketing is not a bad word.
Customers are actually who your prospective students are and their students. I'm 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I remember being on a campus and I thought I would, you know, I had been doing business as well as education and I came in not knowing any better and I started talking about customers and boy, I got some stairs from faculty, but that's changing and that's been changing a lot. So I think educating your campus on those things and really being bold in the way and having students look at the material that you're putting out is a really good way to go.
So again, thanks
SPEAKER_00
so much Jenny. It was a great conversation. Thank you.
Thank you both. Also Rob, who was mentioned earlier, our wonderful producer at Westport Studio. Thank you.
And I will say to everyone, I like Ted Lasso and any biscuits send them my way. I'm here for it. The higher end marketer podcast is sponsored by Kailer Solutions, an education marketing and brand and agency and by Ring Digital, accurately and precisely connecting universities directly to the devices of their prospects, inquiries and alumni on their most valued mailing list.
On behalf of Bart Kailer and our guest Jenny Petty and myself Troy Singer, thank you so much for
SPEAKER_02
joining us. You've been listening to the higher ed marketer. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player.
The higher ed marketer is a production of Kailer Solutions and Ring Digital in partnership with Westport Studios. Views and opinions expressed by guests on the higher ed marketer are their own and may not reflect the views and opinions of their organization. Know someone who is a mover and a shaker in higher ed marketing? Visit www.
higheredmarketerpodcast.com and click on our contact us page. We'd love to have you tell us about them.
Until next time.