Alumni & Development: Thinking Audiences
Transcript
Robert Hornsby:
Two o'clock.
So Julie, can you stop the screen share for a moment?
Welcome, everyone. My name is Robert Hornsby; I'm the Associate Vice President of Internal Communications, and we welcome you to the next program of the Virtual Comms Lab. Your moderator and host today is Associate Director of Internal Communications Cassandra Nathan. Cassandra will take you through the process in the program, and we'll get going right now.
Cassandra Nathan:
Hi, everyone. Thank you, guys for coming on and joining. I just want to—before we get started—I want to keep in mind that this is available for all communicators to attend, so if you have a colleague that you think would benefit from this discussion, please go ahead and share the link that you received to the session.
I'm really excited for this. This particular session is inspired by you guys; I want you to know that. We are hearing you, we are listening to you, and what we are understanding for our colleagues is that we're curious about how do we get engagement to boost up. A lot of people say things like, “We want to increase our awareness.” But really want to engage, you want to understand your audience and understand how your audience thinks, and what they're thinking about, how they're thinking, as that directly impacts your next step and your invitation to them.
I can't think of a better office that can take the lead on this outside of Alumni and Development since they do ask for some, you know, offerings or some people say coins. They do ask for money and, you know, a lot of people don't want to open up their purse strings but they do are able to engage with their audience, they're able to make an impact, they're able to increase a response, which is what we're looking for.
So, I'm going to pass it along to Jerry. Before I do, just one more action I'm gonna ask of you guys. Could you please drop your name and your title in the chat box? We like to know who's with us. Please remember, we'll have Q&A in about 30 minutes—20 to 30 minutes—so you'll be able to interact with everybody on the panel.
Jerry, take it away.
Jerry Kisslinger:
Alright, thanks so much, and it's really a pleasure to be with everybody.
[First slide: Title slide]
When I heard that there are going to be over 25 people on the call, I thought let’s just raise the ticket prices and give all the money to the Student Support Initiative, but Cassandra and Robert didn't agree to that. So, here we are. I'm delighted to have this just be a colleague to colleague.
Just a couple words: We are here from the Office of Alumni and Development, and if we go to the next slide–
[Second slide: Presenter introductions]
–I'm really grateful to be joined here by three terrific colleagues: Sally Lee, the editor of Columbia Magazine; Gibson Knott, who your directory may list as Robert Gibson Knott if you want to find him; and Tracy Quinn. And they will all be talking—you know, Sally about the magazine, Gibson about CAA Marketing and Tracy on some of how we help make the news and how we help manage the news with alumni. I also want to thank some people who've helped with this. Julie Muller is helping to drive the deck and Colleen who I saw on the Zoom helped to produce this along with Elizabeth Oakley.
So, basically I'm gonna just set a framework and then turn it over to them. We'll come back to Alma sliding in a surprising way down a snowy bank on a hot June day–
[Third slide: Thinking Audience—Starting with Goals and Insights]
–because the theme of surprise is going to be very important and how we reach out to our audiences.
So, the framework that we talk about—and I say this knowing that many of you ask the same questions in the work that you do—is, you know, who are we trying to reach, but really starting first with why? What are our goals? What are we about? Then who are we trying to reach to meet those goals? What do we want them to know as a result? What do we want them to feel as a result?
As Cassandra said, there are actually things in our case that we really want them to do including give. Obviously, that's one of our big goals as a development office, but there are other measures of engagement or participation that affect the invitations that we extend to people. So, that's what we mean by thinking–
[Fourth slide: Our Audience Focus]
No, if you can stay on that slide for a minute please, Julie, I'll cue you.
[Third slide: Thinking Audience]
So, you know, if we want to think about those three things, then obviously if we're gonna– That's what we call thinking audience, before we get into what do we make, or what do we throw as an event: who are we trying to reach for what reasons, how does it align to our big goals. And in order to answer that, of course, we also have to answer, who are they, what do we know about them? And there's some people on this call in our office—we're not going to really get into that today in terms of how we track data on people's behavior, how we survey, how we do market research. That could be a whole other conversation and that's a big part of what our office does and Linda Ury Greenberg, who's on the Zoom here, has worked with many of you on really trying to understand insights into who we're trying to reach.
So, I mean all communicators think about these questions, but because of the goals of our particular office we have a sharpened edge on that as do many of the schools that we work with—all the schools we work with. So, the question I always like to ask is, what is the invitation to our audience? That can mean, literally, what is the call to action, like in an email is there an invitation? But more broadly, are we reaching out to them to just be an audience, to be consumers? How do we issue other kinds of invitations?
That comes to Alma sliding down the steps.
Actually, I'd add one more point here: And then how do we evaluate our success? How do we go beyond brittle metrics like open rates or clicks to really look at how we move relation? Because I should start by saying we have a central goal. Our central goal is to build relationships that move Columbia forward. Okay, we build those relationships, and so everything is measured. And so, how do we actually look at how we're measuring those relationships beyond just giving for any given activity?
So if we look at now at slide four–
[Fourth slide: Our Audience Focus]
You know, in building those relationships, this is where Alma comes in. How do we surprise people? How do we delight them? How do we, in a way, how do we complement what the schools are doing? Of course, many of you work at schools and some of you in Alumni Relations and in Development, how do we expand their horizons or a sense of belonging? And that is how do we build off of whatever experiences they had as students for the alumni audience?
We kind of sell them a new identity for them, as people for whom Columbia has meaning whatever their life stage. There's an enormous range of things they can connect to, enormous range of people around the world that they can connect to, and that's what that graphic there is showing. But on the left side, you know, there's a connection to the entire university community. There are the windows and drawers they never could open when they were students here because they didn't have time, but there's also, you know, a sense of they belong to something big and powerful and intriguing and surprising and fun, and the meaning of that will change over time.
So, that's really a big goal. And that's where we're, you know, getting Alma Mater a little off kilter and helping her slide down the stairs. And I should say the illustration for that was produced at Columbia Magazine, but an example of collaboration, I think we had some help on that—Sally from our friends of Columbia Creative, as well—and actually animating it.
No, if you look at the next slide–
[Fifth slide: Strategic Audiences at Every Scale]
[Laughs]
This is meant to illustrate that we do address audiences at every scale. One of the things that's kind of unique about us, we may be reaching out to 350,000 people, or a lot of the most important work that I've done is for an audience of one or five. You know, it may be a proposal or a stewardship video or a touch, and so there's a lot of things that people do in our office—writing proposals or stewardship projects or other things—that we're not going to really talk about today because I’m thinking audience, about who's on this call, and really focusing on the broad base, on the broad communications end of this.
So, the examples we're mostly going to be talking about here have to do with how we're reaching the 350,000. And even a lot of the broad-based communication, whether it's social media, annual funds, creative, or giving day, and so on, they're very important to our work, they're very important to our collaboration with all the schools, but we're not going to really touch on that today. There's just too much to talk about.
So very quickly, the only thing I'm going to add to this is one of the ways in which as the central office we set a messaging tone for every audience is with campaign communication.
So, Julie if you go to the next slide.
[Sixth slide: Campaign Messaging]
Some of you this may be very familiar to, but many of you may not; I'm just gonna show how we launched the Columbia Commitment Campaign.
Before you hit that, though, you know, we're about to be in the last six months of a five-year campaign that we launched in 2016. And we launched it, as you'll see, with an idea of really ideas and impact. And in doing that, our audience was every alum, every potential donor who saw Columbia as a place to make a difference in areas they care about.
[Recorded voice speaks a foreign language]
Jerry:
Sorry. Yeah, thank you.
But, what I want to say here is take a look at how we did this because like Alma going down the stairs, sometimes you really get ahead by what you don't do. And so going into this campaign video, we really wanted to make sure we struck a different note and really struck a note of people with a deep commitment and advanced ideas wrestling with how to make the world better. So, take a look at the style, and it's one minute and 30 seconds.
Julie, if you could play that and expand it.
[Video starts playing. Music starts playing.]
Voiceover (woman):
We had a shared passion for global health, and we were really interested in coming up with a technology that has a real impact and improves people's lives.
Voiceover (man):
What's it going to mean for people and ecosystems, not just coastal real estate values, but impacts on vulnerable populations?
Voiceover (older woman):
I've been writing op-eds and spending time with my formerly incarcerated students in order to get their voices, especially the voices of women, heard.
Voiceover (woman):
We're basically trying to understand human behavior and its biological mechanisms.
[The music changes]
Voiceover (man):
People count on the arts whether they know it or not, and the more times people of different cultures, different races, different religions, get together working out what their project is going to be, that is world changing, that's obviously world changing.
[The music changes]
[The video ends]
Jerry:
So, you know, that's where we started, and a number of those faculty then were featured in short vignette videos talking about their own commitments. We're now just about to complete the campaign, and if we take a look at the next slide–
[The video starts playing again before it is paused.]
[Seventh slide: Why We Give: The Donor Lens]
–we can see a little bit how we're shifting focus. So, what we've really been emphasizing over the past year is what we call the donor lens, you know, peer-to-peer, person-to-person, not so much the great big audacious ideas but how we as people, as Columbians, are choosing to make a difference for other people.
And so that's what these Why We Give stories are about. We started working with colleagues across the university on them, and what you're watching here is an example of social media that our team—and specifically Colleen and Julie worked on this, but Colleen especially—worked on with Engineering to promote a story on their page that we drive to, so that with the hope that people will be inspired to follow a link there and help give to support students.
So this is a direction that we're taking as we close out the Columbia Commitment. It's a little bit less at the institutional level and more on the personal donor level to really build out stories of why people would make that commitment now and to pivot toward the Student Support Initiative, which is where we're heading post-campaign. So, the campaign ends on December 31st and we're looking forward to really then focusing more exclusively on Student Support.
For the Student Support Campaign, a lot of our work is how to support schools. It's a perfect example of one of the complexities of our role in the central office, which is so much of what goes on, should and needs to go on at the school level, and we want to be able to help amplify it and support it. And so for Student Support, that's especially true, but we continue to find ways to build the momentum and the messaging energy around that.
And with that, I'm going to turn to Sally and Gibson and Tracy and introduce Sally Lee, editor-in-chief of Columbia Magazine. Thank you very much.
Sally Lee:
Yes, Jerry. I'm sorry if I’m sitting in the dark; there's a huge storm coming in. Just have to click my screen here. So, I know that most of you work at schools and you have really specific audiences. At the magazine, of course, we have a huge audience in that we send to everyone who ever went to any school at Columbia plus faculty, staff, and donors, and we send globally, and then we also reach through our website. So we have a really general audience, but I think that the principles by which we choose our stories for the magazine and the principles upon which we operate are going to be the same for you too in that we ask ourselves all the time, what does this audience really want from us, what does this audience really need from us, and what do we want this audience to feel and to do?
So we're really looking very much at an audience-centric model, and that's the only way that we can really survive because to be frank, we have more than enough amazing story ideas coming out of Columbia, so many out of all your schools. There are too many to choose from, and so we start with audience. And we start with what is our audience going to want and what is the Business School graduate going to want to read, that the Columbia College graduate is going to want to read, that the Law School graduate is going to want to read, that the SIPA graduate? Can we find some commonality in those stories so that we get the most bang for our buck out of every 65 pages?
If you can go to the next show, sorry, the next slide.
[Ninth slide: Be consumer-centric]
So, as Jerry says all the time and reminds us, we must be consumer-centric because it's not required reading. They do get sent the magazine, but they can cancel the magazine at any time. They don't need to read it. It arrives at home. They can check us out online if they choose to, but it's not required; there's no course subjects here.
So, we must always think about being engaging and appealing. We have to be timely. We have to be relevant, and we have to have service in every story. And so when we think about all those great stories coming out of schools, and our alumni are proposing stories all the time too—they want us to cover certain stories, we're always thinking about relevance and timeliness and what is the right story for this time.
We also have to create stories that go beyond the academic context because when people send story ideas to us, they often send ideas that are very much through the funnel of promoting a school or promoting an individual at that school or promoting a donor. And what we need to do is we need to take that subject matter and really think around it in terms of, ”Yes, this is a great story, but what does the consumer really need to know right now?”
This is actually a story that is in the latest issue; it's the education of Siddhartha Mukherjee who's a cancer researcher, of course. And one of the ways that we did this story, we did the story as a very deep profile. Sid Mukherjee has a new drug coming out; he has a new IPO, so he has a certain initiative for doing this story. The medical school has a certain initiative for promoting this story. The lab—the researchers—have needs for us behind this story. But we're looking at the whole audience here when we approach this story.
And this story opens with Sid Mukherjee and his wife Sarah Z on an island on vacation, and they're both thinking about negative space. And, you know, they're having a conversation about negative space and about art, and that kind of revelation is cutting out also stencils for these kids. And that family time promotes this whole sort of eureka moment for him when it comes to his cancer research. And we really get into that family relationship with him: how he divides his time, how he spends time with his kids. And we really really approach this as if this could have been in the New Yorker or New York Magazine. So we take everybody's needs into consideration, but what we're really trying to do here is create a consumer-centric story.
So, if we can go to the next slide.
[Tenth slide: You Can Survive Without Clickbait]
I'm going to talk about some of the stories that have done really well for us, because I think that might be useful to the other people on the call to suggest, you know, the types of subject matter are very wide ranging. These are the stories that have done well online, and this is measurable, obviously, so that's why I’ve pulled these, but I don't think this would be very different if we looked at what was doing well in the magazine, too.
So, one of the things that does really well online is the story “Columbia in the Movies.” So, 21 films that were shot on campus. And just to give you an idea about the numbers, we're probably talking about 20,000 page views for each of these stories in the last 12 months. So, this is a story that speaks to the fact that people want to be proud they went to Columbia. They want to see little images of campus. It's the part of builds the badge quality of Columbia. It builds the fact that Columbia is in New York City. It builds the fact that Columbia is a cultural relevance. It builds the fact that Columbia's history—some of these movies go back, you know, 60 years.
Another popular story was “Old Friends.” It was a very inspirational story about a relationship between Sanford Greenberg and Art Garfunkel. Obviously, you had the celebrity angle there, and of course if you have a celebrity angle at your school you're going to exploit it, but what really did here is it really focused on the other side of that celebrity. It focused on the relationship with this quite extraordinary man, Sanford Greenberg, and that story was picked up in People magazine and in Reader’s Digest.
So again, we're creating stories for a consumer audience, and we know we're doing that well when it's being picked up by consumer magazines. So again, the story was picked up in two consumer magazines.
“29 Movie and TV Stars who Graduated from Columbia.” Again, the badge quality. Did you know that this person went to Columbia, that person?
But we're also looking at stories that have service and have import, and that really push forward research, and one of our very successful stories that was only published last month was “The Best Way to Stop a Negative-Thought Spiral.” This was very relevant in the time of COVID. It was a very simple Q&A with a psychologist on that subject. Very direct headline, and again, introducing that, we had a lot of material we could have chosen at that time in terms of coverage, but we really wanted something that we know would speak to every type of reader.
As did “The Lost Art of Dying Well.” Again, perfectly timed, one might say morbidly, in terms of the COVID epidemic, but also perfectly timed in people thinking about mortality and thinking about, you know, even at a younger age, what is a life well-lived.
Stories that do well for us—always health stories, always, always, always. And whether you're at a business school and you've got a story on a health startup, or a law school and you have some story on a new health policy, health stories always do amazingly well. And, you know, hot button issues: baldness, weight loss, Lyme disease, anything to do with parenting, anything to do with cancer, always will do well within the magazine.
We get a lot of engagement, and within the online audience, and we get a lot of pickup. And this story here on hair regeneration, that article goes back to 2014. We did another article on baldness that also is probably in the top 15.
Again, speaking to the issue of relevance and timing, “Healing the Red-Blue Divide” about polarization. “An Incomplete History of Columbia's Connections to the Highest Office in the Land,” which is Columbia's connections to U.S. presidents. Again, that was at the time of the election. Again, it's the badge quality—I went to a school, whatever school I went to, but I went to a school that had all these presidents that went through it or all these connections to presidents.
“A New Way of Looking at Cancer.” Again, speaking to the issue that health always does well.
And “15 Bingeable TV Shows Made by Columbia Graduates.” [indiscernible] always do well, by alumni stories that do well, but again, very audience-centric. I'm really focusing on history of Columbia, a sense that Columbia is an important and relevant and topical and useful institution that you'll get a lot of useful information after reading this story.
You can go to the next slide.
[Eleventh slide: Invest in Arresting Visuals]
Online, of course, we always try to create stories that have beautiful visuals, especially for our print magazine. It's always important to have arresting visuals. Some of these visuals are inexpensive. This story on the right, which is about a biomedical engineer and his work in cultivating bacteria—those are just slides; he happens to be an artist too. And he pulls those slides and he makes these beautiful collages.
We have illustration, of course we have portraiture, but you know, the arresting visuals are so important, and you can find so many examples of great visuals online. I was at a speech yesterday on field photography, and some of the field photography that's coming out of Columbia is absolutely incredible, really worth a photo essay for us. And you can find these visuals. They can be produced by your readers; they can be produced right here at Columbia.
Next slide, please.
[Twelfth slide: Experimenting with Formats]
We're experimenting with formats all the time. We're proud to say we're the only magazine that's ever won an Eisner award at comic con for our best short story. And again, we use different formats to explain complex subjects. So this is, of course, a comic that was in a recent issue on dark matter, and I finally understand dark matter because I read this comic.
But again, playing with formats, one of the magazines that I read is New York Magazine. It has amazing formats in it. And again, if you're inspired by consumer magazines in your work, you will always win with the reader because you're creating something that is a must-read. It's an entertaining read. You don't feel like you're being lectured to or that it's required reading. It's something that's fun.
We could go to the next slide.
[Thirteenth slide: Information Wanted]
We know that this information is wanted by Columbians. Every year we email the new grads. It says, you know, free gift, Columbia, free gift for new grads, and it's your magazine and basically it's an incentive to update your address so that this magazine doesn't go to their parents’ address for the rest of their lives. And they do open the email and they do update their addresses. The magazine is seen as a gift. There's a certain badge quality. And the also very important thing for us is this print magazine cuts through the digital clutter and is wanted.
I think that's the end of my slides. Can we just take one more look?
[Fourteenth slide: Building Community]
Oh no. Sorry, I'm taking far too much time, but I just wanted to point out how much we try and build community in the magazine through our network section. This Alumni Goes to Washington section, which is about the new appointees to the Biden administration, which was in the last issue, has a life of its own online with people emailing us every day to add updates. I got another update today. I probably got two yesterday. And so people are really invested in making sure this list is current and is building. It's like a little Wikipedia moment we're having with this.
So again, inviting the audience to participate in your content creation is something that's very important, as is, in-network, one of the things we emphasize is our global reach, our global audience.
Is that the end of my slides?
[Fifteenth slide: CAA Newsletter]
Yes, so I'm going to hand it over to Gibson, and I'm sorry if I talked quickly and talked over.
Gibson Knott:
Thanks, Sally.
So I’m Gibson Knott. I’m the Director of Marketing for the Columbia Alumni Association. And for those of you who don't know the CAA, we are the overarching all-school alumni association at the university. So, our communications are really focused on a couple of different things: obviously, keeping alums connected to the university, but also, and maybe more importantly, connecting alums to each other. And since they're from all schools, we're thinking about that not only across class years but across schools. We want alums to connect with each other.
So, what you're seeing here is our monthly newsletter, or at least the top of it. This is kind of the grab bag that sums up, on a monthly basis, everything that we do and want our alumni constituency to know about, and that includes opportunities for them to connect to each other, to learn about what other alums are doing, and to take advantage of new initiatives or learn about what's happening on campus.
So there's several different sections to it. The spotlight, which you're seeing an example of here at the top, is where we roll out the big thing for the month, and it's usually an opportunity to connect or to participate in some way. In this most recent one, it was an opportunity to let them know that they could watch the virtual Commencement. This one actually is afterward; it's to follow-up and check out the recording, and congratulate new grads, and things like that.
But below that, we list all the upcoming events that we're aware of—these are ones that are produced both by the CAA and also other schools or units across the university—that are doing things that are open to all alums. So they may be virtual cocktail hours, they may be webinars, they may be meetings, all kinds of things that they can do.
We try to get them to participate, these days, with a poll, where we share results back every month. We give them news from around Columbia. This is kind of campus news, and announcements from the president's office, new initiatives on campus, things like that are announced there. Columbians Around the World is an opportunity to showcase what alums are doing. Sometimes we use magazine content, sometimes it's from other news sources, but they're usually news updates about what alums are contributing to the world. And then a section on some of the benefits that they can take advantage of.
[Sixteenth slide: Targeted Emails (New Grads)]
So if we head to the next slide, we can take a look at what this means in a more targeted way. We also run, obviously very specific, segmented campaigns toward portions of our alumni audience to try and get them to participate in things that we think are of interest to them and would be opportunities for them to connect with each other, and I've pulled these examples out of our new grad campaigns. These are not the latest; these are from the last couple of years. We're just launching the newest campaign now, but we try to find things that we think the graduating classes that are now alums are going to want to know about and participate in.
So you'll see these include things like joining our LinkedIn group so that they can network with other alumni, learning about the Shared Interest Groups—more on those in a minute, but those are sort of official clubs that that they can participate in; joining the Arts Access program for information about arts and entertainment. These are often events where they can get to know other alums that are interested in the same things they are.
And over on the right hand side, you'll see an example of an email we did to walk them through our online alumni community where they can use a directory to look up other alums from across schools, and they can participate in message boards and sharing information. In the center, of course, is something we did to promote some social media. They can follow us on a variety of channels; we're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
If we head to the next one.
[Seventeenth slide: Opportunities to Connect]
These are just some of the kinds of opportunities to connect that we often offer them. Alumni clubs—these are the actual in-person clubs that we have, although they've been mostly virtual the last year for obvious reasons. There are 30 of these in the U.S., so wherever people are, we can connect them with their alumni community right there in the neighborhood they live in. There's 65 international locations for alums that are living internationally where they can meet and talk to others. There are also those shared interest groups that I mentioned before, and these are groups that are themed by interests and affiliations. So these include things like the Black Alumni Council, the Asian Columbia Alumni Association, the Alumni Singers, the Columbia Venture Community. It's a lot of different things where people might want to participate with others with similar interests or affiliations.
Then we have a lot of virtual, online opportunities where they can connect with each other. Just a few are the online book club where they can discuss, on message boards, a book that they're all reading together; career networking events—we have a number of these, both with our career coaches who do things in webinar format and Zoom meetings, sometimes in-person events when we're in that period of time as well as opportunities to connect on a platform called Brazen Networking, which I'll show you a little bit more about in a second; the online alumni community that I've mentioned; and the social media channels.
So if we go to the next slide.
[Eighteenth slide: Brazen Networking]
You can see, just as a sample, an idea of what Brazen Networking is like. This is not unusual for online platforms. It's an opportunity for alums to register for an event, to log in. And this event that you're seeing a screenshot of here is from an Arts Access themed event where alums in the arts could get together and talk to other alumni who are doing similar things. So, alums can enter these different virtual chat rooms based on the theme, the topic that they want to discuss, and they're paired automatically for one-on-one chats with a fellow alum that they get to know for just a few minutes and can continue that relationship beyond the session if they choose. So far, this platform has been just chatting by text, although this year we're going to be upgrading and start using video chat in this form as well.
So those are just a few of the things that we do to support alums and connecting with each other. And so all our communications are designed to try and get them to participate in some of these programs.
So, I will turn it over to Tracy Quinn.
[Nineteenth slide: Making the News]
Tracy Quinn:
Thanks very much, Gibson. Well, it's great to see so many old friends here today. Thanks for coming. And Jerry started this presentation saying that what we do is build relationships that move Columbia forward.
Well, one critical aspect of our work involves telling the story of giving at Columbia. We focus on announcements about impact, what kind of impact will a gift make at Columbia. On the screen, you'll see one recent example is the establishment of the Dr. Ken and Kareitha Forde Professorship of African American and African Diaspora Studies. Columbia trustees created this professorship to recognize the amazing leadership of the beloved Dr. Ken Forde and his wife of 60 years Kay Forde. Renowned anthropology professor Steven Gregory is the inaugural incumbent.
But, what we do with an announcement like that is work with partners. Wilson and Kelly and Acacia help us share the story on the university homepage, in Columbia News, and on social channels. At CAA, Gibson and Bronwyn and Andrea publicize the gifts through the newsletters, in social media, and we rely on relevant schools and departments to do the same as appropriate.
Next slide, please.
[Twentieth slide: Managing the News]
Another example of what we do is around hot button issues. Our frontline Alumni and Development staff get phone calls, emails, everything you can imagine about challenging issues in the press. I work very closely with Caroline Adelman in particular in Public Affairs, an amazing partner, to make sure our frontline staff has the relevant talking points, university statements, etc. to share with alumni donors and friends. Whether the topic is about divestment or unionization, we want to make sure that our messaging is aligned as appropriate with the university and share that with our frontline fundraisers and Alumni Relations staff.
So, that completes my report. Jerry?
Jerry:
Well, I agree with everything everybody said. Thank you, all, very much.
[Twenty-first slide: Thanks! Questions?]
I'm gonna actually turn it over to Cassandra, I think, who's gonna help moderate the second half of the program. Thank you, all, for sharing those different perspectives and to the audience for going along on this ride with us.
Cassandra:
Yes, absolutely. Thank you, guys, so much. Guys, were amazing. This is a very dynamic presentation; really appreciate it.
And of course, this is the part where many are waiting, which is Q&A. Feel free to put your questions in the chat. I will begin with asking some of the panelists their questions. And if you would like to ask your question personally, I'm happy to do so in case there's some follow-up that you guys have.
So, Jerry, thank you so much for bringing your team together. I really appreciate it. There's so much that goes, obviously goes, into, you know, just being able to speak to your audience, and so one of the things that a lot of people get hemmed up when they're working is creating sort of, like, their workflow and their schedule. So how do you guys decide, or like, what is your day-to-day in order for a campaign to actually make it to the public view? Like, what does that take?
Jerry:
Wow. As you got a sense from as we were talking that there are many, many different dimensions to the work that's being done, so I can't really answer that on a general basis. I think, you know, so much of our work involves importance and collaboration that you really have to take that case by case. A big part of the day-by-day effort is figuring out how we're going to work across our own organization and across our university. I'm going to punt on the general question except to say that a big part of our energy and a big part of our leadership, actually, is in figuring out how to be good partners, and how to be good partners and still put forward, you know, a framework that people can be part of and see themselves in.
I know that was a very vague answer, but I think it's the only real answer I can give for all the different aspects that we were talking about. And I will say I think that the biggest—no, one—thread through Sally's remarks, through mine, is really about balance, and the need to balance.
Those stories that Sally shared were about content, some of which is very sort of poppy and, you know, people you might have seen in the movies or on Netflix, and some of which goes to the heart of the most serious research mission. Well, in finding that balance, I think one of our big challenges, and I just want to hit this note because I think you had a question in there about big challenges, I think there are two big challenges. One is making sure that we help Columbia professors, deans, leadership who are known for being articulate, intelligent, opinionated, strong, brilliant people but may not always know how to communicate to the broadest audience, right? How to help them meet their goals.
And so when, you know, when we talk about the time frame, some of this is how do we listen to people about what they're really aiming for, and how do we get to a place where we take a creative approach and not just sort of fill an order to put out what a professor might think is the only reputable way to present that material. And so that requires a lot of approvals, and a lot of back and forth, and a lot of, sort of, balancing.
Does that make sense? That, you know, you definitely want to have integrity, and be accurate, and reflect the impact in a true way. You don't want to oversell. But at the same time, if you don't do it in a different cadence than that person might at a professional conference, then we're not doing our jobs as communicators. So that can be a very complicating factor in our timelines because we have to spend a lot of time sort of checking in and reassuring people.
My favorite story on that was when I first started at Columbia a long time ago, I wrote a press release for a wonderful art history professor, and he read it and he said, “Does it have to be so press releasey?” And I said, “It's a press release. I mean, that's why I'm here.” [Laughs] So, we got to the right point on that.
Cassandra:
I love that. You hit on something really hot, right? And I think this is also another area where some people can get stuck is just the awareness of what it takes, and in this regard, the time frame, the planning time frame that it takes to have something come out so that we're not feeling rushed, right? Because I think sometimes people will acquiesce to whatever they're being told to do because of a time crunch and not having the time to really brainstorm. So, how much time do you guys kind of allot to planning so that there is room for that back and forth? Is it six months out? Is it quarterly? What's that time frame look like?
Jerry:
You know what, let me turn to my colleagues to answer that in a more particular level. I will say one thing. There's what we would like to say to that; in an ideal way, what I would like to put out as a “best practices” on that. And then there's the realities of what actually, when you're in the fray, and sometimes you just got to turn it around. So I'm not going to pretend that we're always meeting our own models of best practices.
I will say that part of our work involves working with events, and Gibson in particular on this call is very involved in a wonderful series at home. I've worked a lot on event strategy around the question of thinking audience, and in that context I have said to people, you know, this old, like, Einstein quote that if I had a problem to solve, I would spend, you know, 55 minutes thinking about it and five minutes solving it. Like, I think the hardest thing to do, and I used to teach high school students to write: just said the same thing; don't write for the first 15 minutes. Stop and think before you start writing, and then let it go. The hardest thing to do is to really say, “Am I even doing the right thing?” “Am I really meaningful?” And so that involves, sometimes, a sense of pushback to people who don't expect you to push back, and really asking those questions.
How long you lead for that time, Gibson, Sally, Tracy, if you have examples of that, I welcome it as an answer to the question.
Sally:
Well, we find we try to plan six months out, but we're planning every single week something else is happening, something falls out. [Coughs] Excuse me. Something comes in. The Mukherjee story was six months in the making, but that was partly because we had to work around his IPO and that dark period around his IPO. And then also we kicked out the Mukherjee story because of COVID, and then we had to reframe the whole magazine around COVID.
So, we're continually evolving. Some stories become more important and supplant other stories, and then there are big events like the Business School, the new Business School next year. We're thinking about Mailman and Public Health centennial. So, we want to hit the big numbers too, the big event.
So six months, but we are continually refreshing based on– even day-to-day, we're refreshing, obviously, in terms of online, but you just have to be flexible.
Cassandra:
Tracy.
Tracy:
I think what struck me was a lot of the work that we do with gift announcements is so dependent on other people. We have to deal with prospects, we have to deal with, you know, approval of quotes, which in itself is a challenge. So, I think what we try to do is have the strategy set up so it can work according to our plan, and then we make adjustments as we go along, similar to what Sally said. But, we do the best we can, and I think in the structures in place, at least we have something to fall back on of, you know, following that roadmap.
Gibson:
So much of what we do—on my side of things, of course—is tied very directly to direct digital marketing, and so there's always a test and learn factor going on, so best practices are continually being updated. We take the best things we've learned so far and apply them to some of these quick reaction kind of situations that we often find ourselves in and use whatever we take from each campaign as a new learning that we can apply.
And then we have, sort of, the broader, more strategic programs that are not as tied to the moment and the different things that are popping up, that we really are able to spend a good portion of time, months sometimes, planning before we roll them out that are really kind of our most thoughtful and considered campaigns. And those are usually things that we're thinking about supporting through, you know, through a long period of time, usually annually or something like that.
Cassandra:
Thank you guys for that. Jerry, did you want–? I think, Jerry, that you’re on mute. Did you want to add something?
Jerry:
Just one thing. That, you know, I'm thinking about the end of campaign and the sort of pivot to the next phase on a university campaign level. So, I would say the time horizon on that is somewhere between six months and a year. You know, where we're really now consolidating our planning for a season between October and March, of wrapping up that campaign and figuring out how to coordinate that with people. It's super important to be that far in advance because we need to work with a lot of partners in order to make it stick.
Cassandra:
Absolutely. And I think that was something that really stood out too is talking about collaborating and also in terms of understanding the cycle that you're part of that, you're engaged in your audience, and what matters to them will absolutely take the reins on how you communicate buzzwords that you use, because those buzzwords will help you in your creativity—your creative process, as well—when you're thinking about how you're reaching your audience.
Which brings me to a question from our audience from Devin. Devin, would you like to chime in to ask your question to the panelists?
Devin:
Sure, I'm happy to. I was really excited to see the comic that you guys put together. I thought that was super cool because one thing we're trying to play with at the Zuckerman Institute is sort of a lot of forms of visual storytelling and other ways to tell stories that sort of move beyond the press release. So I'm just curious, as you guys have been kind of playing with these other ways of telling stories, are there any kind of new approaches on social media that you've been watching, new formats, things like slideshows on Instagram or kind of other things that offer you a different framework to work in?
Sally:
We are pretty– We have a very small team, and we have basically one person who works on the magazine and works on the digital site and there's, you know, and so we're pretty much– Our bandwidth is pretty much constricted. We just did—and if I say the word slideshows to her, her head will explode with “Oh my god”; she thinks that's so not of the moment; she won't let me do any slideshows—but having said that, we just did a little bit of a scroll down of views of vintage Columbia that's done very well and actually ended up on a lot of website neighbors—websites where you look at, you know, views of Columbia from postcards from wherever ago.
But obviously, there are lots of different formats and that we'd like to do more experimentation. We're looking at a lot of animations now for our comics. You know, I'd like to explore other formats. I think, you know, if I could master TikTok, I would. I mean, but obviously if you start with a format and you start a conversation with an audience in a format, you have to be able to sustain that conversation or it reflects badly on you. So if we started a channel on TikTok, we just have to be able to produce, and we can't do that right now.
So we're sort of, a little bit, constricted by a bandwidth but are trying to explore within the print budget and the online budget, just maximizing that for our social and creating as many different ways where we can get reader engagement within this. We're building tools for reader engagement more than anything else, so we'll have more, like, living lists of alumni that people can add to and that people can chime in on and people can feel invested in, if that makes any sense.
Cassandra:
Absolutely. And it makes me think in terms of, like, because bandwidth is something else that we often do with on campus. I'm sure everybody can feel like they would love to have more hands working on different projects.
How do you guys engage in collaborating? How do you identify people that you want to collaborate with? And second to that, if you wouldn't mind sharing with the audience, how can they approach you? How can they best approach you if they want to collaborate with you?
Jerry:
I'll answer the second question first. Just talk to us, anybody who's on this, you know, and you know Linda who's on the call here does market research. He's working with a number of schools for the Student Support Initiative. Every university-wide platform is eager for good content to share out, so I would just say don't hesitate to write. Now, whether that meets up with your need to publicize x by y is a different matter, and because it's a big university and there are lots of different dimensions to it.
In terms of who we choose to collaborate with, we for example have something called a development communicators network which some of the people on this call are on, and we'll be meeting later this month. That's somebody from, you know, one or two people, maybe even three in one case, from every school. And, you know, every time we meet we're talking about ways in which we can collaborate. We can especially amplify content and messages produced at schools through our platforms and through our programs, and we'll be doing that just in a few weeks, well next week, I guess. What's the date, the 17th? Tracy?
Tracy:
16th, yep.
Jerry:
16th, sorry. I'll be there, I promise. You know about the Student Support Initiative and how the kinds of stories people are telling about the meaningfulness of scholarships, financial aid, fellowships, internships, and other kinds of support.
There may be a perception sometimes that, you know, we have a machine to produce all this stuff. We have very thin benches in every one of the departments that's represented here today. So that's why it's so important for us to work with people and also to set priorities in any given time period and figure out what makes sense, both in terms of the audience needs and in terms of the most important messaging priority. So, I would say we've worked with every single school, and some of those have been development things, some of those have been alumni things. But, let's start with the conversation. Biggest obstacles to that collaboration are just not–
Unidentified Attendee:
[Indiscernible.] I don't know, I've been on meetings all morning.
Cassandra:
I think that we're gonna have to mute some folks.
Jerry:
[Laughs]
Cassandra:
Hold on one second. Yes, so you're saying– I’m so sorry, that caught me a little bit off guard.
So you're talking about collaborating and how important that is and how your guys have managed to collaborate and connect with just about every school. Would you say that collaborating is the most important aspect of your work, or is there anything second to that outside of collaborating?
Jerry:
Yeah, I'm gonna answer and then I welcome an answer from someone else. I think it's a combination of central leadership and collaboration. I mean, it's not all just a shingle out to see what comes along. When we have an initiative like the Columbia Commitment or we have a university-wide scope like what we have for our audience for the magazine, you know, we really do need to exercise some judgment and leadership. That leadership includes really listening to our colleagues, but we can't just sort of wait and be good just be good buddies. We have to also convene best practices, set some tone, set some frameworks sometimes. I'm sure Public Affairs has the same situation.
Cassandra:
I didn't know if anybody else wanted to touch upon that, if there are any other crucial aspects to having something compelling turn around in a timely manner. But we also have another really good question, so if no one else wants to champion this question, I'm happy to ask the next one. I don't know. Tracy, Gibson?
Tracy:
I would say priority. You know, you really have to be very careful about prioritization, and be flexible because sometimes what was a priority the day before could get shifted immediately if there's something else that comes up that's urgent, so I think balancing that is an everyday challenge.
Cassandra:
Definitely. And I think it's really good to hear that because sometimes we know many, especially the Columbia brand, we're looking to be perfect, and sometimes perfect just doesn't get done. And so having other hands or other eyes collaborating with other people helps the process to move along. And having that flexibility in that balance that certain initiatives may take precedence, and just having that balance, as you said, of being flexible, shooting for on-brand, an on-target message, and making sure that you're reaching your audience. All these things play a major part.
So, I think we're going to come up on one of our last questions, and if anybody else has any other questions, please feel free to put them in the chat room. We have just about three minutes left before our panelists will be leaving us. This final question is about stories that OAD can leverage. Are there any general prerequisites that people can consider in preparing stories or news? That is, what are the primary elements of a story that OED can leverage?
Jerry:
I'd like to divide this answer into what I would say and what Sally or Gibson might say. So from what I would say, I'm going to focus on some of our campaign messaging. And that is we really want to look at ways in which Columbia is making a better future possible. So whether that's a better future for an individual or a better future for the world through a Climate School, or an invention at the Engineering School, or better design, or more accurate journalism, whatever it might be, there's that sense of impact number one, and number two about really a personal connection to the meaning of being part of Columbia.
That's a little different from what Sally might say about stories. So, Sally, what might would you say about stories?
Sally:
We've just had an awful lot of luck recently with our partners that we just had a really nice submission in the last issue from the Law School where they talked to the Law-School Lexicon story, where they talked about Columbians who had coined phrases that are now in the lexicon like intersectionality and net neutrality, and that came directly from the Law School. They did all the research for us. It was just like a gift to us, and we could just package that up. And we put some images on it, we wrote it up, and we packaged it, and we sent it back to them, and then they pushed it out. So we pushed it out in print and they pushed it out too, so that was a perfect arrangement.
So, sometimes the most specific the better, to be honest. Sometimes people come and say we've got this big event and, you know, something's opening, but nothing really specific. And again with COVID, with Mailman we had some great luck that they found us, you know, a person who had been a hand washing expert for 40 years, and that's all she'd studied for 40 years was hand washing. And that story went up and went out and went somewhat viral. It did very well. And again them being able to talk through with us and dig through to the specifics stories, the human humanity of certain stories is great. So, we've had some really good luck. So, as specific as you can get, and the ability to be able to deliver a little bit of the work too, if possible.
Cassandra:
Excellent. You guys, we are up on time. Thank you, guys, so much for joining. Thank you, everyone who participated. [Indiscernible] there was a lot of information that has been shared today, so if there are any additional questions that you might have, feel free to send them to me or to any one of the panelists directly. If you send it to me, I'm happy to forward it directly to them. Thank you, guys, again. And also if you have any suggestions for future sessions like this and any ideas or topics, please let us know and we're happy to put those together, provided that there is an audience that is interested. Thank you Jerry, Tracy, Sally, Gibson, and Julie for joining us and giving us your time. Thank you, all, and that is all.
Jerry:
Thank you, all.
Two o'clock.
So Julie, can you stop the screen share for a moment?
Welcome, everyone. My name is Robert Hornsby; I'm the Associate Vice President of Internal Communications, and we welcome you to the next program of the Virtual Comms Lab. Your moderator and host today is Associate Director of Internal Communications Cassandra Nathan. Cassandra will take you through the process in the program, and we'll get going right now.
Cassandra Nathan:
Hi, everyone. Thank you, guys for coming on and joining. I just want to—before we get started—I want to keep in mind that this is available for all communicators to attend, so if you have a colleague that you think would benefit from this discussion, please go ahead and share the link that you received to the session.
I'm really excited for this. This particular session is inspired by you guys; I want you to know that. We are hearing you, we are listening to you, and what we are understanding for our colleagues is that we're curious about how do we get engagement to boost up. A lot of people say things like, “We want to increase our awareness.” But really want to engage, you want to understand your audience and understand how your audience thinks, and what they're thinking about, how they're thinking, as that directly impacts your next step and your invitation to them.
I can't think of a better office that can take the lead on this outside of Alumni and Development since they do ask for some, you know, offerings or some people say coins. They do ask for money and, you know, a lot of people don't want to open up their purse strings but they do are able to engage with their audience, they're able to make an impact, they're able to increase a response, which is what we're looking for.
So, I'm going to pass it along to Jerry. Before I do, just one more action I'm gonna ask of you guys. Could you please drop your name and your title in the chat box? We like to know who's with us. Please remember, we'll have Q&A in about 30 minutes—20 to 30 minutes—so you'll be able to interact with everybody on the panel.
Jerry, take it away.
Jerry Kisslinger:
Alright, thanks so much, and it's really a pleasure to be with everybody.
[First slide: Title slide]
When I heard that there are going to be over 25 people on the call, I thought let’s just raise the ticket prices and give all the money to the Student Support Initiative, but Cassandra and Robert didn't agree to that. So, here we are. I'm delighted to have this just be a colleague to colleague.
Just a couple words: We are here from the Office of Alumni and Development, and if we go to the next slide–
[Second slide: Presenter introductions]
–I'm really grateful to be joined here by three terrific colleagues: Sally Lee, the editor of Columbia Magazine; Gibson Knott, who your directory may list as Robert Gibson Knott if you want to find him; and Tracy Quinn. And they will all be talking—you know, Sally about the magazine, Gibson about CAA Marketing and Tracy on some of how we help make the news and how we help manage the news with alumni. I also want to thank some people who've helped with this. Julie Muller is helping to drive the deck and Colleen who I saw on the Zoom helped to produce this along with Elizabeth Oakley.
So, basically I'm gonna just set a framework and then turn it over to them. We'll come back to Alma sliding in a surprising way down a snowy bank on a hot June day–
[Third slide: Thinking Audience—Starting with Goals and Insights]
–because the theme of surprise is going to be very important and how we reach out to our audiences.
So, the framework that we talk about—and I say this knowing that many of you ask the same questions in the work that you do—is, you know, who are we trying to reach, but really starting first with why? What are our goals? What are we about? Then who are we trying to reach to meet those goals? What do we want them to know as a result? What do we want them to feel as a result?
As Cassandra said, there are actually things in our case that we really want them to do including give. Obviously, that's one of our big goals as a development office, but there are other measures of engagement or participation that affect the invitations that we extend to people. So, that's what we mean by thinking–
[Fourth slide: Our Audience Focus]
No, if you can stay on that slide for a minute please, Julie, I'll cue you.
[Third slide: Thinking Audience]
So, you know, if we want to think about those three things, then obviously if we're gonna– That's what we call thinking audience, before we get into what do we make, or what do we throw as an event: who are we trying to reach for what reasons, how does it align to our big goals. And in order to answer that, of course, we also have to answer, who are they, what do we know about them? And there's some people on this call in our office—we're not going to really get into that today in terms of how we track data on people's behavior, how we survey, how we do market research. That could be a whole other conversation and that's a big part of what our office does and Linda Ury Greenberg, who's on the Zoom here, has worked with many of you on really trying to understand insights into who we're trying to reach.
So, I mean all communicators think about these questions, but because of the goals of our particular office we have a sharpened edge on that as do many of the schools that we work with—all the schools we work with. So, the question I always like to ask is, what is the invitation to our audience? That can mean, literally, what is the call to action, like in an email is there an invitation? But more broadly, are we reaching out to them to just be an audience, to be consumers? How do we issue other kinds of invitations?
That comes to Alma sliding down the steps.
Actually, I'd add one more point here: And then how do we evaluate our success? How do we go beyond brittle metrics like open rates or clicks to really look at how we move relation? Because I should start by saying we have a central goal. Our central goal is to build relationships that move Columbia forward. Okay, we build those relationships, and so everything is measured. And so, how do we actually look at how we're measuring those relationships beyond just giving for any given activity?
So if we look at now at slide four–
[Fourth slide: Our Audience Focus]
You know, in building those relationships, this is where Alma comes in. How do we surprise people? How do we delight them? How do we, in a way, how do we complement what the schools are doing? Of course, many of you work at schools and some of you in Alumni Relations and in Development, how do we expand their horizons or a sense of belonging? And that is how do we build off of whatever experiences they had as students for the alumni audience?
We kind of sell them a new identity for them, as people for whom Columbia has meaning whatever their life stage. There's an enormous range of things they can connect to, enormous range of people around the world that they can connect to, and that's what that graphic there is showing. But on the left side, you know, there's a connection to the entire university community. There are the windows and drawers they never could open when they were students here because they didn't have time, but there's also, you know, a sense of they belong to something big and powerful and intriguing and surprising and fun, and the meaning of that will change over time.
So, that's really a big goal. And that's where we're, you know, getting Alma Mater a little off kilter and helping her slide down the stairs. And I should say the illustration for that was produced at Columbia Magazine, but an example of collaboration, I think we had some help on that—Sally from our friends of Columbia Creative, as well—and actually animating it.
No, if you look at the next slide–
[Fifth slide: Strategic Audiences at Every Scale]
[Laughs]
This is meant to illustrate that we do address audiences at every scale. One of the things that's kind of unique about us, we may be reaching out to 350,000 people, or a lot of the most important work that I've done is for an audience of one or five. You know, it may be a proposal or a stewardship video or a touch, and so there's a lot of things that people do in our office—writing proposals or stewardship projects or other things—that we're not going to really talk about today because I’m thinking audience, about who's on this call, and really focusing on the broad base, on the broad communications end of this.
So, the examples we're mostly going to be talking about here have to do with how we're reaching the 350,000. And even a lot of the broad-based communication, whether it's social media, annual funds, creative, or giving day, and so on, they're very important to our work, they're very important to our collaboration with all the schools, but we're not going to really touch on that today. There's just too much to talk about.
So very quickly, the only thing I'm going to add to this is one of the ways in which as the central office we set a messaging tone for every audience is with campaign communication.
So, Julie if you go to the next slide.
[Sixth slide: Campaign Messaging]
Some of you this may be very familiar to, but many of you may not; I'm just gonna show how we launched the Columbia Commitment Campaign.
Before you hit that, though, you know, we're about to be in the last six months of a five-year campaign that we launched in 2016. And we launched it, as you'll see, with an idea of really ideas and impact. And in doing that, our audience was every alum, every potential donor who saw Columbia as a place to make a difference in areas they care about.
[Recorded voice speaks a foreign language]
Jerry:
Sorry. Yeah, thank you.
But, what I want to say here is take a look at how we did this because like Alma going down the stairs, sometimes you really get ahead by what you don't do. And so going into this campaign video, we really wanted to make sure we struck a different note and really struck a note of people with a deep commitment and advanced ideas wrestling with how to make the world better. So, take a look at the style, and it's one minute and 30 seconds.
Julie, if you could play that and expand it.
[Video starts playing. Music starts playing.]
Voiceover (woman):
We had a shared passion for global health, and we were really interested in coming up with a technology that has a real impact and improves people's lives.
Voiceover (man):
What's it going to mean for people and ecosystems, not just coastal real estate values, but impacts on vulnerable populations?
Voiceover (older woman):
I've been writing op-eds and spending time with my formerly incarcerated students in order to get their voices, especially the voices of women, heard.
Voiceover (woman):
We're basically trying to understand human behavior and its biological mechanisms.
[The music changes]
Voiceover (man):
People count on the arts whether they know it or not, and the more times people of different cultures, different races, different religions, get together working out what their project is going to be, that is world changing, that's obviously world changing.
[The music changes]
[The video ends]
Jerry:
So, you know, that's where we started, and a number of those faculty then were featured in short vignette videos talking about their own commitments. We're now just about to complete the campaign, and if we take a look at the next slide–
[The video starts playing again before it is paused.]
[Seventh slide: Why We Give: The Donor Lens]
–we can see a little bit how we're shifting focus. So, what we've really been emphasizing over the past year is what we call the donor lens, you know, peer-to-peer, person-to-person, not so much the great big audacious ideas but how we as people, as Columbians, are choosing to make a difference for other people.
And so that's what these Why We Give stories are about. We started working with colleagues across the university on them, and what you're watching here is an example of social media that our team—and specifically Colleen and Julie worked on this, but Colleen especially—worked on with Engineering to promote a story on their page that we drive to, so that with the hope that people will be inspired to follow a link there and help give to support students.
So this is a direction that we're taking as we close out the Columbia Commitment. It's a little bit less at the institutional level and more on the personal donor level to really build out stories of why people would make that commitment now and to pivot toward the Student Support Initiative, which is where we're heading post-campaign. So, the campaign ends on December 31st and we're looking forward to really then focusing more exclusively on Student Support.
For the Student Support Campaign, a lot of our work is how to support schools. It's a perfect example of one of the complexities of our role in the central office, which is so much of what goes on, should and needs to go on at the school level, and we want to be able to help amplify it and support it. And so for Student Support, that's especially true, but we continue to find ways to build the momentum and the messaging energy around that.
And with that, I'm going to turn to Sally and Gibson and Tracy and introduce Sally Lee, editor-in-chief of Columbia Magazine. Thank you very much.
Sally Lee:
Yes, Jerry. I'm sorry if I’m sitting in the dark; there's a huge storm coming in. Just have to click my screen here. So, I know that most of you work at schools and you have really specific audiences. At the magazine, of course, we have a huge audience in that we send to everyone who ever went to any school at Columbia plus faculty, staff, and donors, and we send globally, and then we also reach through our website. So we have a really general audience, but I think that the principles by which we choose our stories for the magazine and the principles upon which we operate are going to be the same for you too in that we ask ourselves all the time, what does this audience really want from us, what does this audience really need from us, and what do we want this audience to feel and to do?
So we're really looking very much at an audience-centric model, and that's the only way that we can really survive because to be frank, we have more than enough amazing story ideas coming out of Columbia, so many out of all your schools. There are too many to choose from, and so we start with audience. And we start with what is our audience going to want and what is the Business School graduate going to want to read, that the Columbia College graduate is going to want to read, that the Law School graduate is going to want to read, that the SIPA graduate? Can we find some commonality in those stories so that we get the most bang for our buck out of every 65 pages?
If you can go to the next show, sorry, the next slide.
[Ninth slide: Be consumer-centric]
So, as Jerry says all the time and reminds us, we must be consumer-centric because it's not required reading. They do get sent the magazine, but they can cancel the magazine at any time. They don't need to read it. It arrives at home. They can check us out online if they choose to, but it's not required; there's no course subjects here.
So, we must always think about being engaging and appealing. We have to be timely. We have to be relevant, and we have to have service in every story. And so when we think about all those great stories coming out of schools, and our alumni are proposing stories all the time too—they want us to cover certain stories, we're always thinking about relevance and timeliness and what is the right story for this time.
We also have to create stories that go beyond the academic context because when people send story ideas to us, they often send ideas that are very much through the funnel of promoting a school or promoting an individual at that school or promoting a donor. And what we need to do is we need to take that subject matter and really think around it in terms of, ”Yes, this is a great story, but what does the consumer really need to know right now?”
This is actually a story that is in the latest issue; it's the education of Siddhartha Mukherjee who's a cancer researcher, of course. And one of the ways that we did this story, we did the story as a very deep profile. Sid Mukherjee has a new drug coming out; he has a new IPO, so he has a certain initiative for doing this story. The medical school has a certain initiative for promoting this story. The lab—the researchers—have needs for us behind this story. But we're looking at the whole audience here when we approach this story.
And this story opens with Sid Mukherjee and his wife Sarah Z on an island on vacation, and they're both thinking about negative space. And, you know, they're having a conversation about negative space and about art, and that kind of revelation is cutting out also stencils for these kids. And that family time promotes this whole sort of eureka moment for him when it comes to his cancer research. And we really get into that family relationship with him: how he divides his time, how he spends time with his kids. And we really really approach this as if this could have been in the New Yorker or New York Magazine. So we take everybody's needs into consideration, but what we're really trying to do here is create a consumer-centric story.
So, if we can go to the next slide.
[Tenth slide: You Can Survive Without Clickbait]
I'm going to talk about some of the stories that have done really well for us, because I think that might be useful to the other people on the call to suggest, you know, the types of subject matter are very wide ranging. These are the stories that have done well online, and this is measurable, obviously, so that's why I’ve pulled these, but I don't think this would be very different if we looked at what was doing well in the magazine, too.
So, one of the things that does really well online is the story “Columbia in the Movies.” So, 21 films that were shot on campus. And just to give you an idea about the numbers, we're probably talking about 20,000 page views for each of these stories in the last 12 months. So, this is a story that speaks to the fact that people want to be proud they went to Columbia. They want to see little images of campus. It's the part of builds the badge quality of Columbia. It builds the fact that Columbia is in New York City. It builds the fact that Columbia is a cultural relevance. It builds the fact that Columbia's history—some of these movies go back, you know, 60 years.
Another popular story was “Old Friends.” It was a very inspirational story about a relationship between Sanford Greenberg and Art Garfunkel. Obviously, you had the celebrity angle there, and of course if you have a celebrity angle at your school you're going to exploit it, but what really did here is it really focused on the other side of that celebrity. It focused on the relationship with this quite extraordinary man, Sanford Greenberg, and that story was picked up in People magazine and in Reader’s Digest.
So again, we're creating stories for a consumer audience, and we know we're doing that well when it's being picked up by consumer magazines. So again, the story was picked up in two consumer magazines.
“29 Movie and TV Stars who Graduated from Columbia.” Again, the badge quality. Did you know that this person went to Columbia, that person?
But we're also looking at stories that have service and have import, and that really push forward research, and one of our very successful stories that was only published last month was “The Best Way to Stop a Negative-Thought Spiral.” This was very relevant in the time of COVID. It was a very simple Q&A with a psychologist on that subject. Very direct headline, and again, introducing that, we had a lot of material we could have chosen at that time in terms of coverage, but we really wanted something that we know would speak to every type of reader.
As did “The Lost Art of Dying Well.” Again, perfectly timed, one might say morbidly, in terms of the COVID epidemic, but also perfectly timed in people thinking about mortality and thinking about, you know, even at a younger age, what is a life well-lived.
Stories that do well for us—always health stories, always, always, always. And whether you're at a business school and you've got a story on a health startup, or a law school and you have some story on a new health policy, health stories always do amazingly well. And, you know, hot button issues: baldness, weight loss, Lyme disease, anything to do with parenting, anything to do with cancer, always will do well within the magazine.
We get a lot of engagement, and within the online audience, and we get a lot of pickup. And this story here on hair regeneration, that article goes back to 2014. We did another article on baldness that also is probably in the top 15.
Again, speaking to the issue of relevance and timing, “Healing the Red-Blue Divide” about polarization. “An Incomplete History of Columbia's Connections to the Highest Office in the Land,” which is Columbia's connections to U.S. presidents. Again, that was at the time of the election. Again, it's the badge quality—I went to a school, whatever school I went to, but I went to a school that had all these presidents that went through it or all these connections to presidents.
“A New Way of Looking at Cancer.” Again, speaking to the issue that health always does well.
And “15 Bingeable TV Shows Made by Columbia Graduates.” [indiscernible] always do well, by alumni stories that do well, but again, very audience-centric. I'm really focusing on history of Columbia, a sense that Columbia is an important and relevant and topical and useful institution that you'll get a lot of useful information after reading this story.
You can go to the next slide.
[Eleventh slide: Invest in Arresting Visuals]
Online, of course, we always try to create stories that have beautiful visuals, especially for our print magazine. It's always important to have arresting visuals. Some of these visuals are inexpensive. This story on the right, which is about a biomedical engineer and his work in cultivating bacteria—those are just slides; he happens to be an artist too. And he pulls those slides and he makes these beautiful collages.
We have illustration, of course we have portraiture, but you know, the arresting visuals are so important, and you can find so many examples of great visuals online. I was at a speech yesterday on field photography, and some of the field photography that's coming out of Columbia is absolutely incredible, really worth a photo essay for us. And you can find these visuals. They can be produced by your readers; they can be produced right here at Columbia.
Next slide, please.
[Twelfth slide: Experimenting with Formats]
We're experimenting with formats all the time. We're proud to say we're the only magazine that's ever won an Eisner award at comic con for our best short story. And again, we use different formats to explain complex subjects. So this is, of course, a comic that was in a recent issue on dark matter, and I finally understand dark matter because I read this comic.
But again, playing with formats, one of the magazines that I read is New York Magazine. It has amazing formats in it. And again, if you're inspired by consumer magazines in your work, you will always win with the reader because you're creating something that is a must-read. It's an entertaining read. You don't feel like you're being lectured to or that it's required reading. It's something that's fun.
We could go to the next slide.
[Thirteenth slide: Information Wanted]
We know that this information is wanted by Columbians. Every year we email the new grads. It says, you know, free gift, Columbia, free gift for new grads, and it's your magazine and basically it's an incentive to update your address so that this magazine doesn't go to their parents’ address for the rest of their lives. And they do open the email and they do update their addresses. The magazine is seen as a gift. There's a certain badge quality. And the also very important thing for us is this print magazine cuts through the digital clutter and is wanted.
I think that's the end of my slides. Can we just take one more look?
[Fourteenth slide: Building Community]
Oh no. Sorry, I'm taking far too much time, but I just wanted to point out how much we try and build community in the magazine through our network section. This Alumni Goes to Washington section, which is about the new appointees to the Biden administration, which was in the last issue, has a life of its own online with people emailing us every day to add updates. I got another update today. I probably got two yesterday. And so people are really invested in making sure this list is current and is building. It's like a little Wikipedia moment we're having with this.
So again, inviting the audience to participate in your content creation is something that's very important, as is, in-network, one of the things we emphasize is our global reach, our global audience.
Is that the end of my slides?
[Fifteenth slide: CAA Newsletter]
Yes, so I'm going to hand it over to Gibson, and I'm sorry if I talked quickly and talked over.
Gibson Knott:
Thanks, Sally.
So I’m Gibson Knott. I’m the Director of Marketing for the Columbia Alumni Association. And for those of you who don't know the CAA, we are the overarching all-school alumni association at the university. So, our communications are really focused on a couple of different things: obviously, keeping alums connected to the university, but also, and maybe more importantly, connecting alums to each other. And since they're from all schools, we're thinking about that not only across class years but across schools. We want alums to connect with each other.
So, what you're seeing here is our monthly newsletter, or at least the top of it. This is kind of the grab bag that sums up, on a monthly basis, everything that we do and want our alumni constituency to know about, and that includes opportunities for them to connect to each other, to learn about what other alums are doing, and to take advantage of new initiatives or learn about what's happening on campus.
So there's several different sections to it. The spotlight, which you're seeing an example of here at the top, is where we roll out the big thing for the month, and it's usually an opportunity to connect or to participate in some way. In this most recent one, it was an opportunity to let them know that they could watch the virtual Commencement. This one actually is afterward; it's to follow-up and check out the recording, and congratulate new grads, and things like that.
But below that, we list all the upcoming events that we're aware of—these are ones that are produced both by the CAA and also other schools or units across the university—that are doing things that are open to all alums. So they may be virtual cocktail hours, they may be webinars, they may be meetings, all kinds of things that they can do.
We try to get them to participate, these days, with a poll, where we share results back every month. We give them news from around Columbia. This is kind of campus news, and announcements from the president's office, new initiatives on campus, things like that are announced there. Columbians Around the World is an opportunity to showcase what alums are doing. Sometimes we use magazine content, sometimes it's from other news sources, but they're usually news updates about what alums are contributing to the world. And then a section on some of the benefits that they can take advantage of.
[Sixteenth slide: Targeted Emails (New Grads)]
So if we head to the next slide, we can take a look at what this means in a more targeted way. We also run, obviously very specific, segmented campaigns toward portions of our alumni audience to try and get them to participate in things that we think are of interest to them and would be opportunities for them to connect with each other, and I've pulled these examples out of our new grad campaigns. These are not the latest; these are from the last couple of years. We're just launching the newest campaign now, but we try to find things that we think the graduating classes that are now alums are going to want to know about and participate in.
So you'll see these include things like joining our LinkedIn group so that they can network with other alumni, learning about the Shared Interest Groups—more on those in a minute, but those are sort of official clubs that that they can participate in; joining the Arts Access program for information about arts and entertainment. These are often events where they can get to know other alums that are interested in the same things they are.
And over on the right hand side, you'll see an example of an email we did to walk them through our online alumni community where they can use a directory to look up other alums from across schools, and they can participate in message boards and sharing information. In the center, of course, is something we did to promote some social media. They can follow us on a variety of channels; we're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
If we head to the next one.
[Seventeenth slide: Opportunities to Connect]
These are just some of the kinds of opportunities to connect that we often offer them. Alumni clubs—these are the actual in-person clubs that we have, although they've been mostly virtual the last year for obvious reasons. There are 30 of these in the U.S., so wherever people are, we can connect them with their alumni community right there in the neighborhood they live in. There's 65 international locations for alums that are living internationally where they can meet and talk to others. There are also those shared interest groups that I mentioned before, and these are groups that are themed by interests and affiliations. So these include things like the Black Alumni Council, the Asian Columbia Alumni Association, the Alumni Singers, the Columbia Venture Community. It's a lot of different things where people might want to participate with others with similar interests or affiliations.
Then we have a lot of virtual, online opportunities where they can connect with each other. Just a few are the online book club where they can discuss, on message boards, a book that they're all reading together; career networking events—we have a number of these, both with our career coaches who do things in webinar format and Zoom meetings, sometimes in-person events when we're in that period of time as well as opportunities to connect on a platform called Brazen Networking, which I'll show you a little bit more about in a second; the online alumni community that I've mentioned; and the social media channels.
So if we go to the next slide.
[Eighteenth slide: Brazen Networking]
You can see, just as a sample, an idea of what Brazen Networking is like. This is not unusual for online platforms. It's an opportunity for alums to register for an event, to log in. And this event that you're seeing a screenshot of here is from an Arts Access themed event where alums in the arts could get together and talk to other alumni who are doing similar things. So, alums can enter these different virtual chat rooms based on the theme, the topic that they want to discuss, and they're paired automatically for one-on-one chats with a fellow alum that they get to know for just a few minutes and can continue that relationship beyond the session if they choose. So far, this platform has been just chatting by text, although this year we're going to be upgrading and start using video chat in this form as well.
So those are just a few of the things that we do to support alums and connecting with each other. And so all our communications are designed to try and get them to participate in some of these programs.
So, I will turn it over to Tracy Quinn.
[Nineteenth slide: Making the News]
Tracy Quinn:
Thanks very much, Gibson. Well, it's great to see so many old friends here today. Thanks for coming. And Jerry started this presentation saying that what we do is build relationships that move Columbia forward.
Well, one critical aspect of our work involves telling the story of giving at Columbia. We focus on announcements about impact, what kind of impact will a gift make at Columbia. On the screen, you'll see one recent example is the establishment of the Dr. Ken and Kareitha Forde Professorship of African American and African Diaspora Studies. Columbia trustees created this professorship to recognize the amazing leadership of the beloved Dr. Ken Forde and his wife of 60 years Kay Forde. Renowned anthropology professor Steven Gregory is the inaugural incumbent.
But, what we do with an announcement like that is work with partners. Wilson and Kelly and Acacia help us share the story on the university homepage, in Columbia News, and on social channels. At CAA, Gibson and Bronwyn and Andrea publicize the gifts through the newsletters, in social media, and we rely on relevant schools and departments to do the same as appropriate.
Next slide, please.
[Twentieth slide: Managing the News]
Another example of what we do is around hot button issues. Our frontline Alumni and Development staff get phone calls, emails, everything you can imagine about challenging issues in the press. I work very closely with Caroline Adelman in particular in Public Affairs, an amazing partner, to make sure our frontline staff has the relevant talking points, university statements, etc. to share with alumni donors and friends. Whether the topic is about divestment or unionization, we want to make sure that our messaging is aligned as appropriate with the university and share that with our frontline fundraisers and Alumni Relations staff.
So, that completes my report. Jerry?
Jerry:
Well, I agree with everything everybody said. Thank you, all, very much.
[Twenty-first slide: Thanks! Questions?]
I'm gonna actually turn it over to Cassandra, I think, who's gonna help moderate the second half of the program. Thank you, all, for sharing those different perspectives and to the audience for going along on this ride with us.
Cassandra:
Yes, absolutely. Thank you, guys, so much. Guys, were amazing. This is a very dynamic presentation; really appreciate it.
And of course, this is the part where many are waiting, which is Q&A. Feel free to put your questions in the chat. I will begin with asking some of the panelists their questions. And if you would like to ask your question personally, I'm happy to do so in case there's some follow-up that you guys have.
So, Jerry, thank you so much for bringing your team together. I really appreciate it. There's so much that goes, obviously goes, into, you know, just being able to speak to your audience, and so one of the things that a lot of people get hemmed up when they're working is creating sort of, like, their workflow and their schedule. So how do you guys decide, or like, what is your day-to-day in order for a campaign to actually make it to the public view? Like, what does that take?
Jerry:
Wow. As you got a sense from as we were talking that there are many, many different dimensions to the work that's being done, so I can't really answer that on a general basis. I think, you know, so much of our work involves importance and collaboration that you really have to take that case by case. A big part of the day-by-day effort is figuring out how we're going to work across our own organization and across our university. I'm going to punt on the general question except to say that a big part of our energy and a big part of our leadership, actually, is in figuring out how to be good partners, and how to be good partners and still put forward, you know, a framework that people can be part of and see themselves in.
I know that was a very vague answer, but I think it's the only real answer I can give for all the different aspects that we were talking about. And I will say I think that the biggest—no, one—thread through Sally's remarks, through mine, is really about balance, and the need to balance.
Those stories that Sally shared were about content, some of which is very sort of poppy and, you know, people you might have seen in the movies or on Netflix, and some of which goes to the heart of the most serious research mission. Well, in finding that balance, I think one of our big challenges, and I just want to hit this note because I think you had a question in there about big challenges, I think there are two big challenges. One is making sure that we help Columbia professors, deans, leadership who are known for being articulate, intelligent, opinionated, strong, brilliant people but may not always know how to communicate to the broadest audience, right? How to help them meet their goals.
And so when, you know, when we talk about the time frame, some of this is how do we listen to people about what they're really aiming for, and how do we get to a place where we take a creative approach and not just sort of fill an order to put out what a professor might think is the only reputable way to present that material. And so that requires a lot of approvals, and a lot of back and forth, and a lot of, sort of, balancing.
Does that make sense? That, you know, you definitely want to have integrity, and be accurate, and reflect the impact in a true way. You don't want to oversell. But at the same time, if you don't do it in a different cadence than that person might at a professional conference, then we're not doing our jobs as communicators. So that can be a very complicating factor in our timelines because we have to spend a lot of time sort of checking in and reassuring people.
My favorite story on that was when I first started at Columbia a long time ago, I wrote a press release for a wonderful art history professor, and he read it and he said, “Does it have to be so press releasey?” And I said, “It's a press release. I mean, that's why I'm here.” [Laughs] So, we got to the right point on that.
Cassandra:
I love that. You hit on something really hot, right? And I think this is also another area where some people can get stuck is just the awareness of what it takes, and in this regard, the time frame, the planning time frame that it takes to have something come out so that we're not feeling rushed, right? Because I think sometimes people will acquiesce to whatever they're being told to do because of a time crunch and not having the time to really brainstorm. So, how much time do you guys kind of allot to planning so that there is room for that back and forth? Is it six months out? Is it quarterly? What's that time frame look like?
Jerry:
You know what, let me turn to my colleagues to answer that in a more particular level. I will say one thing. There's what we would like to say to that; in an ideal way, what I would like to put out as a “best practices” on that. And then there's the realities of what actually, when you're in the fray, and sometimes you just got to turn it around. So I'm not going to pretend that we're always meeting our own models of best practices.
I will say that part of our work involves working with events, and Gibson in particular on this call is very involved in a wonderful series at home. I've worked a lot on event strategy around the question of thinking audience, and in that context I have said to people, you know, this old, like, Einstein quote that if I had a problem to solve, I would spend, you know, 55 minutes thinking about it and five minutes solving it. Like, I think the hardest thing to do, and I used to teach high school students to write: just said the same thing; don't write for the first 15 minutes. Stop and think before you start writing, and then let it go. The hardest thing to do is to really say, “Am I even doing the right thing?” “Am I really meaningful?” And so that involves, sometimes, a sense of pushback to people who don't expect you to push back, and really asking those questions.
How long you lead for that time, Gibson, Sally, Tracy, if you have examples of that, I welcome it as an answer to the question.
Sally:
Well, we find we try to plan six months out, but we're planning every single week something else is happening, something falls out. [Coughs] Excuse me. Something comes in. The Mukherjee story was six months in the making, but that was partly because we had to work around his IPO and that dark period around his IPO. And then also we kicked out the Mukherjee story because of COVID, and then we had to reframe the whole magazine around COVID.
So, we're continually evolving. Some stories become more important and supplant other stories, and then there are big events like the Business School, the new Business School next year. We're thinking about Mailman and Public Health centennial. So, we want to hit the big numbers too, the big event.
So six months, but we are continually refreshing based on– even day-to-day, we're refreshing, obviously, in terms of online, but you just have to be flexible.
Cassandra:
Tracy.
Tracy:
I think what struck me was a lot of the work that we do with gift announcements is so dependent on other people. We have to deal with prospects, we have to deal with, you know, approval of quotes, which in itself is a challenge. So, I think what we try to do is have the strategy set up so it can work according to our plan, and then we make adjustments as we go along, similar to what Sally said. But, we do the best we can, and I think in the structures in place, at least we have something to fall back on of, you know, following that roadmap.
Gibson:
So much of what we do—on my side of things, of course—is tied very directly to direct digital marketing, and so there's always a test and learn factor going on, so best practices are continually being updated. We take the best things we've learned so far and apply them to some of these quick reaction kind of situations that we often find ourselves in and use whatever we take from each campaign as a new learning that we can apply.
And then we have, sort of, the broader, more strategic programs that are not as tied to the moment and the different things that are popping up, that we really are able to spend a good portion of time, months sometimes, planning before we roll them out that are really kind of our most thoughtful and considered campaigns. And those are usually things that we're thinking about supporting through, you know, through a long period of time, usually annually or something like that.
Cassandra:
Thank you guys for that. Jerry, did you want–? I think, Jerry, that you’re on mute. Did you want to add something?
Jerry:
Just one thing. That, you know, I'm thinking about the end of campaign and the sort of pivot to the next phase on a university campaign level. So, I would say the time horizon on that is somewhere between six months and a year. You know, where we're really now consolidating our planning for a season between October and March, of wrapping up that campaign and figuring out how to coordinate that with people. It's super important to be that far in advance because we need to work with a lot of partners in order to make it stick.
Cassandra:
Absolutely. And I think that was something that really stood out too is talking about collaborating and also in terms of understanding the cycle that you're part of that, you're engaged in your audience, and what matters to them will absolutely take the reins on how you communicate buzzwords that you use, because those buzzwords will help you in your creativity—your creative process, as well—when you're thinking about how you're reaching your audience.
Which brings me to a question from our audience from Devin. Devin, would you like to chime in to ask your question to the panelists?
Devin:
Sure, I'm happy to. I was really excited to see the comic that you guys put together. I thought that was super cool because one thing we're trying to play with at the Zuckerman Institute is sort of a lot of forms of visual storytelling and other ways to tell stories that sort of move beyond the press release. So I'm just curious, as you guys have been kind of playing with these other ways of telling stories, are there any kind of new approaches on social media that you've been watching, new formats, things like slideshows on Instagram or kind of other things that offer you a different framework to work in?
Sally:
We are pretty– We have a very small team, and we have basically one person who works on the magazine and works on the digital site and there's, you know, and so we're pretty much– Our bandwidth is pretty much constricted. We just did—and if I say the word slideshows to her, her head will explode with “Oh my god”; she thinks that's so not of the moment; she won't let me do any slideshows—but having said that, we just did a little bit of a scroll down of views of vintage Columbia that's done very well and actually ended up on a lot of website neighbors—websites where you look at, you know, views of Columbia from postcards from wherever ago.
But obviously, there are lots of different formats and that we'd like to do more experimentation. We're looking at a lot of animations now for our comics. You know, I'd like to explore other formats. I think, you know, if I could master TikTok, I would. I mean, but obviously if you start with a format and you start a conversation with an audience in a format, you have to be able to sustain that conversation or it reflects badly on you. So if we started a channel on TikTok, we just have to be able to produce, and we can't do that right now.
So we're sort of, a little bit, constricted by a bandwidth but are trying to explore within the print budget and the online budget, just maximizing that for our social and creating as many different ways where we can get reader engagement within this. We're building tools for reader engagement more than anything else, so we'll have more, like, living lists of alumni that people can add to and that people can chime in on and people can feel invested in, if that makes any sense.
Cassandra:
Absolutely. And it makes me think in terms of, like, because bandwidth is something else that we often do with on campus. I'm sure everybody can feel like they would love to have more hands working on different projects.
How do you guys engage in collaborating? How do you identify people that you want to collaborate with? And second to that, if you wouldn't mind sharing with the audience, how can they approach you? How can they best approach you if they want to collaborate with you?
Jerry:
I'll answer the second question first. Just talk to us, anybody who's on this, you know, and you know Linda who's on the call here does market research. He's working with a number of schools for the Student Support Initiative. Every university-wide platform is eager for good content to share out, so I would just say don't hesitate to write. Now, whether that meets up with your need to publicize x by y is a different matter, and because it's a big university and there are lots of different dimensions to it.
In terms of who we choose to collaborate with, we for example have something called a development communicators network which some of the people on this call are on, and we'll be meeting later this month. That's somebody from, you know, one or two people, maybe even three in one case, from every school. And, you know, every time we meet we're talking about ways in which we can collaborate. We can especially amplify content and messages produced at schools through our platforms and through our programs, and we'll be doing that just in a few weeks, well next week, I guess. What's the date, the 17th? Tracy?
Tracy:
16th, yep.
Jerry:
16th, sorry. I'll be there, I promise. You know about the Student Support Initiative and how the kinds of stories people are telling about the meaningfulness of scholarships, financial aid, fellowships, internships, and other kinds of support.
There may be a perception sometimes that, you know, we have a machine to produce all this stuff. We have very thin benches in every one of the departments that's represented here today. So that's why it's so important for us to work with people and also to set priorities in any given time period and figure out what makes sense, both in terms of the audience needs and in terms of the most important messaging priority. So, I would say we've worked with every single school, and some of those have been development things, some of those have been alumni things. But, let's start with the conversation. Biggest obstacles to that collaboration are just not–
Unidentified Attendee:
[Indiscernible.] I don't know, I've been on meetings all morning.
Cassandra:
I think that we're gonna have to mute some folks.
Jerry:
[Laughs]
Cassandra:
Hold on one second. Yes, so you're saying– I’m so sorry, that caught me a little bit off guard.
So you're talking about collaborating and how important that is and how your guys have managed to collaborate and connect with just about every school. Would you say that collaborating is the most important aspect of your work, or is there anything second to that outside of collaborating?
Jerry:
Yeah, I'm gonna answer and then I welcome an answer from someone else. I think it's a combination of central leadership and collaboration. I mean, it's not all just a shingle out to see what comes along. When we have an initiative like the Columbia Commitment or we have a university-wide scope like what we have for our audience for the magazine, you know, we really do need to exercise some judgment and leadership. That leadership includes really listening to our colleagues, but we can't just sort of wait and be good just be good buddies. We have to also convene best practices, set some tone, set some frameworks sometimes. I'm sure Public Affairs has the same situation.
Cassandra:
I didn't know if anybody else wanted to touch upon that, if there are any other crucial aspects to having something compelling turn around in a timely manner. But we also have another really good question, so if no one else wants to champion this question, I'm happy to ask the next one. I don't know. Tracy, Gibson?
Tracy:
I would say priority. You know, you really have to be very careful about prioritization, and be flexible because sometimes what was a priority the day before could get shifted immediately if there's something else that comes up that's urgent, so I think balancing that is an everyday challenge.
Cassandra:
Definitely. And I think it's really good to hear that because sometimes we know many, especially the Columbia brand, we're looking to be perfect, and sometimes perfect just doesn't get done. And so having other hands or other eyes collaborating with other people helps the process to move along. And having that flexibility in that balance that certain initiatives may take precedence, and just having that balance, as you said, of being flexible, shooting for on-brand, an on-target message, and making sure that you're reaching your audience. All these things play a major part.
So, I think we're going to come up on one of our last questions, and if anybody else has any other questions, please feel free to put them in the chat room. We have just about three minutes left before our panelists will be leaving us. This final question is about stories that OAD can leverage. Are there any general prerequisites that people can consider in preparing stories or news? That is, what are the primary elements of a story that OED can leverage?
Jerry:
I'd like to divide this answer into what I would say and what Sally or Gibson might say. So from what I would say, I'm going to focus on some of our campaign messaging. And that is we really want to look at ways in which Columbia is making a better future possible. So whether that's a better future for an individual or a better future for the world through a Climate School, or an invention at the Engineering School, or better design, or more accurate journalism, whatever it might be, there's that sense of impact number one, and number two about really a personal connection to the meaning of being part of Columbia.
That's a little different from what Sally might say about stories. So, Sally, what might would you say about stories?
Sally:
We've just had an awful lot of luck recently with our partners that we just had a really nice submission in the last issue from the Law School where they talked to the Law-School Lexicon story, where they talked about Columbians who had coined phrases that are now in the lexicon like intersectionality and net neutrality, and that came directly from the Law School. They did all the research for us. It was just like a gift to us, and we could just package that up. And we put some images on it, we wrote it up, and we packaged it, and we sent it back to them, and then they pushed it out. So we pushed it out in print and they pushed it out too, so that was a perfect arrangement.
So, sometimes the most specific the better, to be honest. Sometimes people come and say we've got this big event and, you know, something's opening, but nothing really specific. And again with COVID, with Mailman we had some great luck that they found us, you know, a person who had been a hand washing expert for 40 years, and that's all she'd studied for 40 years was hand washing. And that story went up and went out and went somewhat viral. It did very well. And again them being able to talk through with us and dig through to the specifics stories, the human humanity of certain stories is great. So, we've had some really good luck. So, as specific as you can get, and the ability to be able to deliver a little bit of the work too, if possible.
Cassandra:
Excellent. You guys, we are up on time. Thank you, guys, so much for joining. Thank you, everyone who participated. [Indiscernible] there was a lot of information that has been shared today, so if there are any additional questions that you might have, feel free to send them to me or to any one of the panelists directly. If you send it to me, I'm happy to forward it directly to them. Thank you, guys, again. And also if you have any suggestions for future sessions like this and any ideas or topics, please let us know and we're happy to put those together, provided that there is an audience that is interested. Thank you Jerry, Tracy, Sally, Gibson, and Julie for joining us and giving us your time. Thank you, all, and that is all.
Jerry:
Thank you, all.