{"id":53134,"date":"2020-07-06T14:16:11","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T21:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=53134"},"modified":"2020-07-06T14:26:25","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T21:26:25","slug":"sorry-marketers-but-i-am-not-your-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/sorry-marketers-but-i-am-not-your-brand\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorry, marketers, but I am not your brand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nDear Philip,
\n<\/em>Please find attached an amended version of your slides for your mini lecture, \u201cArtificial Intelligence, Atom By Atom\u201d, as part of our virtual open day events. I\u2019ve blended your slides with our template.
\n<\/em>Is that OK?
\n<\/em>Many thanks\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

That is an excerpt from an email I\u00a0received recently from our external relations and marketing team after submitting my contribution to the\u00a0University of Nottingham\u2019s virtual open day. My carefully crafted slides failed to \u201crespect\u201d Nottingham\u2019s corporate identity guidelines. Hence, they were shoehorned into its PowerPoint template, with its relentless and utterly predictable brand positioning. The atomic background to my title page was replaced by a stock photo of the university, and the corporate logo, with its retro gradient background that sticks out like a sore thumb in just about every context, was slapped on every slide.<\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s far from OK.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, I\u00a0wrote a letter to\u00a0Times Higher Education<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cMutual respect and teamwork are vital<\/a>\u201d, 6 July 2017) to highlight the importance of appreciating each other\u2019s expertise and knowledge. \u201cJust as it is arrogant for academics to dismiss out of hand the key contributions of their marketing colleagues, it is similarly unhelpful for university central marketing to ignore the advice and input of academics,\u201d I\u00a0wrote, ending with a plea: \u201cLet\u2019s\u00a0talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, in this latest case, we did talk \u2013 although that conversation should not have been necessary \u2013 and I\u00a0was graciously permitted to use my original slides. But I\u00a0am very much an exception; the expectation is that all academic presentations for\u00a0Virtually Nottingham<\/em>\u00a0should conform to the university\u2019s corporate identity guidelines.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s especially frustrating is that this type of pathological corporatisation is detrimental to the very image and, if we must, brand that we want to portray. How many students come to a university because they admire the corporate identity guidelines and branding? Indeed, how many students and young people are directly opposed to the type of corporate branding that universities want to impose on academics?<\/p>\n

We claim that our university embraces individuality, originality and critical thinking. And yet our marketing strategy homogenises all presentations to the point where the corporate identity smothers the differences between disciplines and faculties. Every university slavishly mimics what every other university does ad\u00a0nauseam. Our promotional videos are indistinguishable, and there\u2019s absolutely no attempt to embrace the diversity of teaching styles that should be the lifeblood of a university.<\/p>\n

As Naomi Klein put it in her inspiring 1999 book,\u00a0No Logo<\/em>\u00a0(which has been described as defining a generation), \u201cToo often, the expansive nature of the branding process ends up causing the event to be usurped, creating the quintessential lose-lose situation.\u201d Students, academics and marketing professionals \u2013 we all lose out.<\/p>\n

In terms of effective promotion of universities, the corporate environment and ethos are entirely counterproductive. Compare and contrast the official\u00a0Nottingham YouTube presence<\/a>\u00a0with the\u00a0Sixty Symbols<\/a>\u00a0channel, to which my physics colleagues and I\u00a0regularly contribute \u2013 a collaboration with the video journalist Brady Haran that was awarded the Institute of Physics\u2019 Kelvin Prize in 2016 \u201cfor innovative and effective promotion of the public understanding of physics\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although the contributions are from a single school, Sixty Symbols far outstrips official university channels in terms of subscribers, views and reach. The same is true of Haran and colleagues\u2019 other channels, involving the chemistry and computer science schools:\u00a0PeriodicVideos<\/a>,\u00a0Computerphile<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Numberphile<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why is this? It\u2019s not particularly difficult to fathom. One key reason is that these academic-driven channels forgo the corporate branding and imposed uniformity that is typical of science communication. We presenters all have our own type of script, style and structure: an unvarnished approach that humanises us and helps connect us to the audience. Think of it as \u201cguerrilla marketing\u201d, if you will.<\/p>\n

The virtual environment, in which we will have to deliver our open day presentations and mini-lectures this year, already imposes a considerable distance \u2013 pedagogical as much as physical \u2013 between academic and audience. Forcing all academics to rigidly comply with corporate identity guidelines only expands that distance further.<\/p>\n

Author Bio: <\/strong>Philip Moriarty is Professor of Physics at the University of Nottingham.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Philip, Please find attached an amended version of your slides for your mini lecture, \u201cArtificial Intelligence, Atom By Atom\u201d, as part of our virtual open day events. I\u2019ve blended your slides with our template. Is that OK? Many thanks\u2026 That is an excerpt from an email I\u00a0received recently from our external relations and marketing […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":53139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[10553],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-53134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-branding-2"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSorry, marketers, but I am not your brand - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/sorry-marketers-but-i-am-not-your-brand\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sorry, marketers, but I am not your brand - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dear Philip, Please find attached an amended version of your slides for your mini lecture, \u201cArtificial Intelligence, Atom By Atom\u201d, as part of our virtual open day events. 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