When I joined the SMB team in April as a Strategic Design Specialist, I was not only new to the team, I was new to the U of I. As I’ve been able to meet some other designers, I discovered that there really isn’t a design community on campus that meets regularly to share ideas […]

If a marketing message doesn’t engage readers, is it really a message? Yes, this is a play on the “If a tree falls in the forest” quip. My adaptation might be a stretch, but the question still gets to the heart of what’s vital in creating effective website content: Writing to engage our audiences is […]

Surveys are a great tool for collecting large amounts of data from your audience, but they do have limitations and don’t always gather the depth of information you’re after. This is where focus groups can be extremely beneficial.  There are generally two ways that focus groups can be used as part of a market research […]

The Office of Strategic Marketing & Branding exists, in part, to help campus marketers’ and communicators’ jobs to be a bit easier. We understand that you have a lot to do, no matter how large or small your team may be.  One of the ways that we will be looking to help in the coming […]

The U of I’s block-I logo is the cornerstone of our brand – it represents the spirit of our university and rallies together the Illini community. Using an animated version of the logo at the right moments can really bring that design element to life. The best animated logos do more than add motion. They […]

Opportunities for campus marcom professionals to begin moving toward anti-racist marketing and communications are the focus of my first conversation with Ross Wantland of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (OVCDEI). In this followup post, Ross shares guidance about representation – in both storytelling and photography. Kristin: What are some […]

This campus is so fortunate to have the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (OVCDEI) leading us toward an increasingly diverse and inclusive community. Not only are the office’s resources critical to fulfilling our mission as a university, the people on staff at OVCDEI are incredibly knowledgeable and generous. Last year […]

In my previous post I talked about the importance of using daily budgets, creating an audience structure, and constructing a funnel approach for reaching your audience. This post focuses on the final element, which is usually the most critical one: properly structuring your creative assets. Creative Structure Once your audiences have been divided into separate […]

Most units at the U of I deal almost exclusively with performance marketing campaigns (vs. brand campaigns). These campaigns have a specific action you want the user to complete, such as apply for a program, buy a ticket or donate money. And at the university, our offerings are typically high-involvement purchases, similar to a car […]

Writers know that any story can be told in 10 or more ways just by leveraging different hooks, perspectives, and storytelling frameworks. And when you frame stories to engage your audience, they can be incredible marketing tools. One way to achieve that level of engagement is to start by asking yourself this question: "Who’s the […]