Overview of the Spanish Conference of University Rectors §CRUE´s structure and Communication´s Structure §Why a communication Plan? §University Scenario §Communication Plan´s objectives §Action Plan: Communication Strategy §Action Plan: Perception map
Esther Huerta Garcia Is graduated in Journalism with a Master in Audiovisual Journalism and a Master in Co-operation and Development in the European Union and Emigration.
She has worked in various media in Spain and abroad, like TVE, International Herald Tribune, US News, New York Sun. She has also experience in marketing and communication. Since 2007 she has the position of communication officer responsible for the communication functions at the Conference of Rectors of the Spanish Universities.
Currently she collaborates in Times Higher Education and writes opinion papers for Estrella Digital.
In 2003 and 2002 she was awarded first prizes for her work in communications.
2. How did I become a top communications professional?
Arja Suominen
Senior Vice-president, communications Nokia
The logo represents the values of an organization in a condensed form. This need to be up to date, but this is only a starting point. Today, good brands are emotionally binding and their imagery is unique. Brands involve the users, and this means that participative elements are increasingly
important. In this workshop we will look at branding issues which are relevant for universities.
Prof. Katrin Androschin
is managing partner of the agency "Embassy - design, branding communication" in Berlin. She is a professor for Branding and Corporate Design at the btk - University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and has taught Visual Communication at the University of Bolzano/Italy for the
last years. Katrin Androschin is an expert for corporate identity and branding and has been responsible for many international design and branding projects. She grew up in Austria and has lived and worked in London, San Francisco, Zurich and Berlin."
Second.ua, the island of University of Aveiro (UA) in Second Life ® (SL), is transversal project that aims to explore virtual environments educational and institutional capabilities. It allowed creating another extension to the institution, promoting new communicational phenomena sustainable within this kind of virtual world. Along with support for educational practices like informal classes, conferences and discussions panels, Second.ua has been developing several events that promote UA among SL users like: music concerts or broadcasting live events.
It includes areas of information about the courses and research carried at UA and has been used for supporting students, namely in peer consulting, the LUA project.
Carlos Santos; Luís Pedro Teachers at the Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro
The University of Copenhagen, Denmark, established in 1479, introduced a design programme in 2001, and has been working on implementing it to all parts of the university ever since. In 2007 two other universities merged with the University of Copenhagen, becoming the 7th and 8th faculty at the University which now has 37,000 students and 7,500 employees, including 5,000 scientists.
The workshop deals with the process and with the elements on which the design programme for the University of Copenhagen is based - a system including individual seals and colours representing each faculty as part of a overall logo structure. The workshop also deals with the design process as an important part of the self-perception and image building of the University.
Pete Burke
Art Director and Graphic Designer Jens Fink-Jensen
Communications Officer
They are both in charge of the design programme at the University of Copenhagen
The ever-falling demographic curve and teenagers' fading interest in technical education make universities and colleges start looking at suitable market and marketing tools. Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) has decided to launch a marketing campaign of a brand new type, a project that is targeted really consistently. It was highly necessary to avoid hackneyed clichés universities and colleges often use to attract secondary school students. CTU have produced an unusual marketing campaign titled CTU's Magnificent Seven on http://www.sedmstatecnych.cz/
Alexandra Hroncova
Marketing Communication Specialist CTU in Prague
New media technologies maintain a crucial role in the process of internationalization of universities as well as academic life in general. Aside to promoting facts and data about schools, staff, missions and visions of higher education institutions, new media offers rich experiences and encourages social interactions. Research studies, however, disclose obvious drawbacks in academic communication on the Internet: higher education institutions tend to ‘domesticate’ the issues and trans-national (for example, pan-European) views are missing.
In this paper, a different approach is taken. It proposes that a wide availability of online academic information sources (institutional web sites, Internet media, online data-bases, student and teacher blogs, web 2.0 applications, etc.) offering different (alternative, critical, independent) views on academic life (as well as policy making) could become useful means in overcoming national (cultural and geographic) barriers in academic communication.
Aukse Balcytienne PhD Associate Professor of Journalism and Vice President for Public and International Affairs at University of Vytautas Magnus, Kaunas, Lituania
She has expertise in planning and coordination of large scale comparative media research projects as well as administrative projects related to the management of higher education institutions. She has been teaching and doing research in different universities in Europe and the United States. Her publications include over 70 articles and two books. As Vice President of the university, she supervises the implementation of university public communication policies at local, national and international levels, drafts short term and long term communication plans, manages other communication activities. As media researcher, she has been involved in management and coordination of different research projects both national and international. In 2008 she was elected to the Lithuanian Science Council where she represents Humanities and Social Sciences Division. She is member of the Lithuanian Radio and Television Council.
In March 2008 a single blog post by British ?? supermarket giant Tesco's US Director of Marketing forced the company's share price to drop by 11.25
pence (UK). At the same time, all around the world bloggers are blacklisting and blocking PR professionals who send them unsolicited press releases. The power of social media has taken the world by storm, and this is
revolutionising the role of the PR professional and how we approach PR in an online world, particularly in the university sector. PR needs to change, adapt and 'upskill' in order to benefit from the opportunities that social media brings, and to minimise the damage that it can cause. This session will focus on the challenges that social media is presenting the PR professional with, how we need to change our approach to PR at the most
fundamental level, and how we can find the time and resource to do this without compromising more traditional PR approaches that remain as important
as ever.
Tracy Playle
Senior Communications Consultant, Pickle Jar Com. Ltd., UK
Christine Ayre
Head of the Corporate Design Unit, king's College London
12. Marketing or communications. Is marketing a devilish tool in the academic world and why do we refuse to use the word? [photo]
Today’s universities are inevitably involved in marketing activities. However, very few dare naming them "marketing." They avoid using the word altogether and use more - shall we say - 'acceptable' terms, like “information,” “promotion,” etc.
Sometimes, a marketing job ends up being done by the Communications Services team. The question is: Are Communications and Marketing one and the same thing? Can Communications professionals be expected to do Marketing, too? Or do we need Marketing professionals? Should the Marketing and Communications functions be separated? Or should universities adopt the structure of the business world for Marketing and/or Communications?
During two days over 120 press officers from many Polish universities have prepared for one of the smallest Polish community such products as web site, visual identity system, concept of PR activities for coming two years, bunch of adverts ready to immediate using, promotion leaflet and village billboards.
The results of these works had been passed to the local authorities.
The mission of such activity of PPRIO was as follow:
during our many conferences we reached soft results (integrity, some knowledge) so we decided to leave some hard result behind us;
exercises in building a new trademark should go from the smallest to the hugest; so - if you are sure that you can promote a big university - check if you can promote a small village;
the greatest workshop is when you have to work under the pressure of time, with unknown people in your group, competing with the others and not sure about results;
the environment of PR people, when they work as an association, should do some more for the others, less experienced in forming their public relations. PPRIO thinks it is an important part of corporate social responsibility.
The results seem to be great. Media were talking about the conference a lot; the practical solutions and "A Model of Community Promotion" had been presented at many universities, in front of many local authorities and every time they met high interest.
Marek Zimnak
Marek Zimnak reached Ph.D. level in the field of new media. He has typical journalistic background - during his professional career he worked for press, tv, radio and participated in developing the biggest Polish IT projects. He is currently the president of Polish Universities Public Relations & Information Officers Association.
The word “brand” has no perfect equivalent in the Romanian language; it is used as such. Unfortunately not only the words are “borrowed”, but the logos, logotypes, outdoor panels, icons, taglines, graphic signatures prove to be as well mere mimicry or less inspired variants of the European and American patterns. We present the first attempts to create a brand for Romania, unfortunately being far away from the real Romanian specificity. It looks as a rather “cheap” and alike holiday location. The campaign organized for the Romanian city, Sibiu, as the European Cultural Capital in 2007, might have acted better for our country and, partially, it was a kind of success depicting faithfully and closer the local specificity. We are going to analysis some of the main components of the campaign in order to prove our statement underlining the fact that all the plans and activities aimed to illustrate a western, modern and very relaxing way of life not normal for the Romanian people. It is very true that culture played a leading role facilitated as much as possible. As Iasi, the capital of Moldavia, the oldest and second academic centre of the country, celebrates 600 years since its documentary certification being also been nominated to be the European Cultural Capital in 2019, we have to point out the dangerous question: “What will happen in 2019 if this paradoxical attitude remains the same?” When local (implicitly, national) identity is involved, proper components, illustrative mainly for the national spiritual connotations, must be used as attributes that reflect with inspiration and good faith the collective conscience, the essence of the Romanian national identity. These spiritual characteristics are more difficult to bring up, but much more relevant from the perspective of rebuilding a public image and the inner sight of a nation, emphasizing the aspects regarding culture and civilization.
Our contribution to this conference, according to its goals, submits an approachable and more profound presentation of the local/national specificity. Our intention is not to bring forward a brand campaign, but to draw attention on many spiritual assets to which previous activities of this kind failed to take notice. We do not generalize: a good method starting from a valuable subject has as consequence a positive result. The contemporary society lives mainly due to images, mostly to the huge „industry of illusions/dreams” – cinema. One of the deceiving opinions induced by this modality to „tell” beautiful lies to people regards the so-called „realism” of the images. In fact, there is no realism in them; none of the images is „real”. The grid of imagery intercedes between the concrete world and the fictitious world of image or of the literature. A subtle spiritual rapport attains to settle a link and to complete the information about the Romanian mentality/habits/historic, social and cultural background. In order to regain and render identity, we have chosen Art as our conceptual horizon. We have chosen the “Eye” as logo for our purpose, because it has a very well established symbolical significance: knowledge and correct perception. We add another meaning which we consider also as an important one: frankness/sincerity next to genuineness/honesty. In the European Union, true reconciliation and respect for each nation cannot be attained without these basic feelings. The intercultural demagogy is one of the worst tools in the hands of the administrative and political agents. To create only cultural “shop-windows” for the people abroad is a circumstantial solution which unfortunately encourages national arrogance and historic requital. Romania and the Romanian society must settle out, with honesty, the problem of the necessity of changing mentality and the one of its values which we claim for.
As already mentioned at the beginning, we did not intend to present a brand campaign. For a long period of time, we have faced the “indifference” of the history and the acid tests of our destiny as nation and country. Nowadays we face ignorance, sometimes even mockery and we refer, first of all, to the Romanian people. The foreigners as well, but we are responsible for the conveyed message sent abroad. Repeatedly and constantly, each of us have to tell the truth, present the national contribution to the world, in order to estimate the quality and assesses of Romania. Our counsel and inducement cannot be another one except: LOOK BEYOND THE IMAGE!
Odette Arhip, PhD Dean of the Faculty of Communication Sciences at Petre Andrei University, Iasi, Romania
