Auburn University

Communications Plan

Steege/Thomson Communications

November 1, 2001

Introduction

Auburn University hired Steege/Thomson Communications in the summer, 2001, to review its communications programs and offer our recommendations for strengthening them. Auburn’s leaders were rightly worried that word of Auburn’s many contributions to research, education, and service to the state were not being heard. In particular, they worried that news coverage about dissension within the Auburn community was overshadowing Auburn’s positive messages.

In September 2001, we discussed a first draft of this report with two trustees, Robert Lowder and James Samford; the president, executive vice president, and special assistant to the president; the Administrative Council; the deans; faculty representatives; and the University Relations staff. We found the comments from those meetings extremely helpful and have incorporated them into this final report.

Since we began work with Auburn, we especially wish to commend University Relations for improvements to the Web site. We were particularly impressed by Auburn’s initiative in getting relevant information onto the site following September 11. Auburn’s timely response addressed one of our most troubling findings when we started this work: an absence of communications within the Auburn community itself.

The greatest change from our earlier drafts of the plan is a section on priorities for the six months beginning December 1, 2001. Most notable for many people will be our recommendation in that section that Auburn Magazine devote more of its major features, all on alumni in the issues we reviewed, to current faculty and students. Overall this section pulls out the items from other parts of the plan that we view as most urgent.

Other than this change, this draft sustains our focus on a core set of challenges. There are not bells and whistles here because Auburn has too many basics to attend to first.

First and foremost, the Auburn community needs to articulate a commonly held vision about its future that can serve as a rallying point for prospective donors and its very loyal alumni. Auburn also needs to develop clear messages that establish its distinctive identity in the crowded marketplace of higher education. A thorough discussion of what the Auburn creed means at Auburn today would represent an excellent starting point.

Auburn needs to strengthen University Relations, which should guide Auburn’s communications strategy. The staff has shrunk from 18 staff members to 14 in eight years. Neither Auburn’s leadership, UR staff, nor people charged with communications in the schools and divisions have a clear sense of UR’s mission. Without a clear center, communications at Auburn have diffused and broken apart.

Auburn also needs to develop clear communications goals and priorities that support the leadership’s priorities for Auburn’s development. Clear goals will then guide the allocation of staff and budget resources and establish standards against which outcomes can be evaluated and communications strategies adjusted.

The time to address these issues is opportune in part because Auburn now seeks a new leader for University Relations. Even more important, however, we found an extraordinary readiness to address these problems throughout the university. This commitment to strengthen Auburn’s communications programs is absolutely vital to success. University Relations alone cannot resolve Auburn’s communications problems.

Because our charge was to focus on the future, this plan touches only briefly on findings about the past. The longer section on recommendations presents the conceptual pieces of a traditional communications plan with goals, audiences, and an action plan. We did not find sufficient consensus within the University community to establish messages, the other component of a traditional communications plan. The appendices hold detailed suggestions on ways to strengthen Auburn’s electronic communications, staffing University Relations, and additional finding on Auburn’s messages.

Steege/Thomson Communications interviewed 23 people individually and 29 others in groups to complete this report (see Appendix A for a list of people interviewed). Everyone with whom we talked was extremely open to new ideas and generous in their time and information. Many of the ideas in this report come directly from the Auburn community, and we thank its members for extending themselves so willingly.

We also built on the earlier reports of Arthur Andersen and IDEA, which worked in closely related areas. Development, outreach, student enrollment, and research provided us with additional background information. We thank them, especially student enrollment, which gathered and coded a large number of publications for our review.

Finally, Steege/Thomson needs to state that we do not purport to bridge the rifts that have recently divided the Auburn community with our recommendations. However, we do contend strongly that improved communications can help smooth the way to more positive relations among Auburn’s constituents. Good basic communications will reduce rumors and inaccurate information, both of which only fuel distrust. Above all, more focus on communications will help Auburn tell its ongoing positive story.

I. FINDINGS

Note: Strengths and challenges discussed here refer only to communications issues, not Auburn’s strengths and challenges in any larger sense.

Strengths

Auburn enjoys unusual loyalty and devotion among its alumni and the campus community. They form a ready corps of advocates and a receptive audience for Auburn’s vision of its future.

The Auburn community showed strong consensus on the value of the creed and the sense of family that sets Auburn apart. This consensus extended to most administrators, staff, and students with whom we talked. Such consensus can form the core of an identity that distinguishes Auburn in the marketplace for prospective students and faculty and strengthens the bonds with alumni, donors, and friends.

Successful alumni and some strong academic programs with national and, in several cases, international recognition give Auburn a base for strengthening and broadening its academic reputation through communications.

We found universal readiness within the campus community to work toward improved communications and receptiveness to new ideas about how that might be accomplished.

Auburn has an enthusiastic University Relations staff eager to help refocus the university’s communications efforts through strategic thinking and marketing.

School communications staff understand the need for an Auburn identity and are ready and willing to contribute to its development.

Challenges

The university community is better at talking about its traditions and values than its future. Its members do not articulate a clear vision about how Auburn will educate its students for our evolving world. Without this vision, Auburn will have difficulty attracting the faculty, students, and private support to stay strong.

A communications vacuum on campus threatens to undermine the very qualities of a close family by which Auburn defines itself. The local newspaper — not the university — has become the primary source of information about Auburn, even within the university community. This lack of communication reinforces silo thinking and traditional boundaries between schools, disciplines, and segments of the community.

Auburn has taken a passive rather than an active stance in communicating to external audiences as well. Rather than communicating decisions and interpreting events from the university’s standpoint, Auburn leaders find themselves trying to undo unfavorable media coverage or to correct misunderstandings. A “proactive” approach would involve careful consideration of all angles the media might cover and development of messages to prevent inaccurate interpretations around major decisions and events.

Auburn’s materials also reflect this passivity. They do not present a clear, consistent image or brand that can help Auburn distinguish itself in the crowded marketplace of higher education. Auburn does not lay visual claim to its many wonderful assets since materials from various parts of the university bear no visible relationship at all to each other, and they do not convey any consistency in message.

University Relations is isolated from decision-makers and from the other communications officers on campus. The role and responsibilities of University Relations are unclear to university leaders, the UR staff, and the university community. This lack of a center leaves Auburn without a guiding force in all areas of communications, whether they involve the media or marketing.

Auburn’s communications are not guided by a clear set of priorities. As a result, there are major gaps in communications for key audiences.

The absence of clear communications goals, messages, audience priorities, and strategies make it impossible for Auburn to allocate staff and budget for maximum impact or to evaluate effectiveness or cost efficiency in supporting institutional goals.

II. Recommendations

Goals

Steege/Thomson recommends that Auburn focus all communications activities around these three goals:

1. Strengthen communications within the campus community.

2. Develop the infrastructure and commitment to shift communications at Auburn from a passive to an active stance.

3. Define and promote an identity for Auburn, based in its core values, that establishes its distinctive place in higher education.

Audiences

Steege/Thomson identifies these major audiences, all of which Auburn needs to reach clearly and efficiently. Auburn leaders need to prioritize among these audiences:

External Audiences

Donors and prospective donors

· Individuals

· Foundations

· Corporations

Alumni

Parents

Prospective students and families

Elected officials at the state level and their staffs

Business, civic, and other opinion leaders

Alabama residents

Prospective faculty and leaders at other universities

The research community

Media

Internal Audiences

Board of Trustees

Faculty

Staff

Students

Priorities

From December 1, 2001, through May 31, 2002, Steege/Thomson recommends that Auburn accomplish the priorities listed in this section. A chart showing these priorities, the goal each one supports, and the office or person who needs to be responsible for its execution, follows the priority section.

Make it a point to consider communications — who needs to be informed in what order and what needs to be communicated — before announcing any decision at top levels of administration and in connection with any event on which Auburn might need to comment.

· Learn to anticipate controversies by consulting University Relations and administrators overseeing affected departments, and then develop the university’s position and a presentation of the facts.

· The director of UR should remain at the senior management table, even though he or she reports to someone other than the president.

· The director of UR should have completely free access to the president.

· Communicate to all campus leaders and administrators the need to support this priority through timely consultation and decisions. [Example: We understand that UR had prepared a statement on the State Supreme Court’s proration decision, but was not able to get the statement through the approval process so that it might appear in press coverage, which ran without Auburn’s comment.]

Determine institutional priorities to guide the expenditure of time and budget for communications. [Examples: If stronger alumni relations is a top priority, as suggested in our next item, that would guide expenditures of money and time in one way. If outreach to all residents of Alabama is the greater priority, that would suggest a different expenditure.]

Develop a mini-plan to improve communications to all alumni.

· Establish guidelines for school publications to include messages that support better university communications. These would include a simple message driving traffic to the Auburn Web site; another message promoting membership in the Auburn Alumni Association as a way to stay informed, and brief university news. We recommend that UR develop news briefs from which school publications can choose each month.

· Work with the Alumni Association, alumni office, and editor of Auburn Magazine to clarify the magazine’s role in overall alumni communications and to strengthen communications between the magazine’s staff and other communications staff throughout Auburn. We have these further recommendations about the magazine:

· Sustain the high quality of the design, photography, and writing.

· Support the current policy of printing all letters to the editor on the Web site and a careful balance of critical and supportive letters in the print version when space does not allow printing full text. As we understand is the case now, editor’s notes should correct factual errors in letters, but should not be used to counter opinion.

· Devote more of the major features to faculty and students. While the magazine’s own analysis of major features finds 52 on alumni and 39 on “research/faculty/history/personalities” in the past eight years, the issues we reviewed focused the major features only on alumni. Since Auburn Magazine remains the main source of information about Auburn today, balanced coverage will help give alumni a fuller picture of the many positive developments at their alma mater. (As recommended later in this report, we believe that an alumni survey could be very useful in determining what alumni want to learn about and how they want their information. This survey needs to extend beyond the current readership of the magazine to alumni who are not being reached by the magazine.)

· Ensure that the staff of the magazine is notified about meetings of the communications officers on campus.

· Ask University Relations to appoint a staff member as an official liaison with the magazine, who can notify the magazine’s editor about potential stories.

· Ask the magazine’s editor to identify a student liaison who can help with student stories. This person might be part of the new student alumni association or student government. The editor can, in turn, notify UR of student news for their purposes.

· Develop the Wire Eagle, an electronic newsletter for alumni and other priority audiences as originally recommended by the University Relations staff (see Appendix B). Such newsletters have proven very popular at other universities and colleges. They get information out far more quickly and cheaply than printed matter.

· Work with the Auburn Alumni Advisory Council and the staff of alumni affairs, including the development and alumni communications staff, to develop other steps that will help Auburn keep all alumni informed.

Send the first letter from the president to special friends, talking about points of pride and events at Auburn in an informal tone. This letter should not contain an appeal. In our experience, these letters work best when they are not designed, but are simply written on the president’s letterhead so that they do not have the feel of a mass communication. We recommend that these letters go out twice a year to high-end donors, prospect major donors, and alumni, business and opinion leaders.

Send a letter from the president to all new Auburn graduates, welcoming them to their new role as Auburn alumni. This letter should not be an appeal.

Develop an intranet to support daily communications among board, faculty, staff, and students. Auburn showed greatly improved use of the Internet to communicate with internal audiences (as well as external audiences) after the September 11 attack. However, such use of the Web site still falls short of what an intranet could do to make sure the university’s story gets to board, faculty, staff, and students and to strengthen exchange of information among all sectors of the university community (see Appendix B for specific examples on how an intranet would benefit Auburn).

· Remove all information solely for students, faculty, and staff from the Web and put it on the intranet. (This would serve to keep the Web site focused on the external audiences, preventing them from getting lost in the recycling schedule, for instance, and keeping them on the pages that promote Auburn best. It also would give your internal audiences an intuitive place to find university information they need; members of each audience we interviewed complained of difficulty in finding information on the current Web site.)

· Post information on the intranet as major as the court’s proration ruling and as minor as new summer cafeteria hours. (Students mentioned a lack of information about business such as hours, building closings, and other things that affect their daily lives and said they were left with the impression that the administration cared little about them.)

· Consult your markets — board, faculty, staff, and students — to design and test the intranet before it goes public.

· Conduct ongoing market research with a simple pop-up box on the intranet, listing one or two questions at a time.

Continue Dr. Walker’s e-mails, begun during the proration crisis, to give the campus community accurate information and the university’s perspective on major events.

· Send this information within 24 hours (or sooner in the event of breaking news).

· Include student leaders, faculty, staff, and board members in the mailing.

· Once the intranet is up and running, it can replace most of these e-mails. We recommend, however, that the president continue to send them in the instances of major issues that will appear in the news and of interest to external audiences.

· Remind administrators periodically of their responsibility to post e-mails on bulletin boards for staff who do not have access to computers.

Provide media training for top-level administrators who address the press, the board, or the faculty to help them communicate Auburn’s views on events and the benefits of decisions. Media training will help Auburn’s administrators focus their messages in reader-friendly ways and head off miscommunications by foreseeing the possibility of misinterpretation.

Improve communications links from the administration to campus leaders and media who hold primary responsibility for explaining events to the larger campus community.

· Inform the deans and administrative leaders about sensitive issues in advance of the entire community so they are prepared for questions from faculty, staff, and students. Establish a contact whom deans and administrators can call for more information.

· Establish a monthly meeting between the president and student leaders, including the editor of the student newspaper.

Create a campus communications forum for communications officers university-wide that meets at least quarterly. If UR is fully staffed, a UR staff member should have formal responsibility for coordinating school communications. If it is not, one of the school or division communications officers may be willing to work with UR in taking on responsibility for the forum. (In our meeting with UR to review the first draft of this report, the staff was enthusiastic about getting this started.)

· Poll communications staff about their professional development interests. Use meetings to talk about changes in communications policies or personnel on campus or to present a speaker on a professional development topic.

· Establish a part of the intranet where communications officers can exchange news and post professional development resources.

· Establish a mentoring system, assigning someone who has been on campus for a while to any new communications officer, who will then have somebody to call with questions about negotiating the Auburn community.

Take photography service in UR off a total cost-recovery system. Under the current system, photographers can take pictures only when “hired” by another university office, which pays for the service at the extremely low price of $40 an hour. This prevents photographers from spontaneously taking shots, and it forces them to rush some assignments and even to shoot when conditions are poor instead of rescheduling. As one staffer said, “The system prevents us from presenting the best image possible of Auburn.” Auburn may find it necessary to continue charging schools for specific photography services, but the photography division should give first priority needs to university-wide needs, which will not be reimbursed.

Hire a director for University Relations with expertise in marketing higher education and the experience to provide leadership for Auburn communications across campus (see Appendix C for a suggested job description).

Establish dual reporting lines for the research communications manager to the vice president for research and the director of University Relations. Research is a university-wide communications priority and should be an integral part of UR’s work. We support his remaining physically in the research office, where he can be most in touch with research stories and needs; however, he should function as part of the UR staff, attending UR meetings and responding to UR priorities.

Create and fill a position for a junior marketing/media relations officer. The addition of this person will allow UR to address important needs, including closer relationships with school and program communications staff and starting the Wire Eagle.

Steege/Thomson Communications

Auburn University’s Communications Plan

Auburn University Communications Plan

Goals, Priorities, and Responsibilities

The following chart lists the priorities, the goals they address, and the university office responsible for implementing them for the six months from December 1, 2001 through May 31, 2002 only. The rest of our recommendations follow the chart.

Goals (repeated from beginning of plan for easy reference)

1. Strengthen communications within the campus community.

2. Develop the infrastructure and commitment to shift communications at Auburn from a passive to an active stance.

3. Define and promote an identity for Auburn, based in its core values, that establishes its distinctive place in higher education.

Goal	Priority	Office
2	Consider communications before announcing any top-level decision	President’s Office
2	Determine priorities to guide expenditure of time and money for communications	President’s Office
2	Develop alumni communications plan	President’s Office
3	Send president’s letter to special friends	President’s Office/UR
3	Send president’s letter to all new graduates	President’s Office/UR
1	Develop an intranet	UR/OIT
1	Continue president’s letters	President’s Office
2	Create university-wide communications forum	UR
2	Take photos off total cost-recovery system	President’s Office
2	Hire UR director	President’s Office
2	Establish dual reporting lines for research communications manager	President’s Office
2	Create, fill junior UR position	President’s Office

Action Plan

This section contains additional action steps, divided by goal, for implementation between June 2002 and December 2003. Assuming the hiring of a new director of University Relations during the 2001-2002 academic year, that person should have the prerogative of assigning priorities to these items in consultation with the president’s office.

Goal #1: Strengthen campus communications

Work with market researchers to conduct a survey of the campus community to assess the effectiveness of the intranet and AU Report in meeting needs six months after the intranet is up and running.

Continue to support AU Report as one of two primary sources of information, along with the new intranet, for the campus community. (Note: Our experience shows that many people still prefer a printed campus newspaper. However, the need to provide two sources of information may lessen as the intranet matures. Auburn can monitor this shift through annual surveys.)

· Incorporate a trustees’ column or Q&A into AU Report.

· Shift the responsibility for layout to a designer, freeing the editor to do more reporting, and redesign the newsletter to have a more dynamic, inviting appearance

Goal #2: Develop the infrastructure to shift communications at Auburn from a passive to an active stance.

Ask the director of UR to establish an annual work plan for the department with clear goals that are tied to institutional priorities, means for measuring impact, target audiences, a time line, and staff assignments. This plan must, of course, leave the staff with the flexibility to respond to emerging needs; the staff nonetheless needs a framework from which to operate and for which to be held accountable.

Develop a clear mission for University Relations. We recommend these priorities:

· First, to serve as a central clearinghouse for accurate information about the university for both external and internal audiences.

· Second, to work in partnership with other offices to promote Auburn to university-wide, external constituencies, including prospective students and families, donors and prospective donors, alumni, prospective faculty, elected officials and their staffs, business and opinion leaders, and Alabama residents.

· Third, to serve as a resource for other members of the Auburn community in reaching internal and external audiences.

Strengthen Auburn’s institutional identity through clear policies and guidelines that still recognize the diversity of its schools and their audiences:

· Develop clear guidelines for the approval of materials. All materials that cross school or division (research, outreach) lines should be reviewed by University Relations for message, basic style, and accuracy and by the division heads or deans for accuracy. Deans and administrative heads need to limit their review to issues of accuracy so that any single piece can maintain consistency in tone and style.

· Retain UR’s function as the clearinghouse for all news releases aimed at the mainstream media. School communications offices should continue their outreach to the trade press.

· Develop guidelines to establish a consistent visual identity for Auburn, along with the variation appropriate to its many audiences. Post the guidelines on the intranet, and make electronic versions of the logo easily available to communications offices campus-wide. We recommend:

· Consistent use of the Auburn logo, colors, and typeface on basic stationery items, such as business cards, magazines and newsletters, Web pages at the school level and above, and banners. The schools’ graphic identities need to display Auburn’s identity consistently.

· Considerable latitude for schools and programs in developing their own materials as long as Auburn’s identity is established consistently.

Develop a core set of messages about what distinguishes Auburn, where Auburn is going, and what kind of an education it seeks to offer, especially at the undergraduate level. As a starting point, we recommend a thorough discussion of what each element in the Auburn creed means to Auburn today. These messages can then be articulated as appropriate to different audiences (see Appendix E for additional findings on messages). We recommend that this vision of Auburn’s future:

· Sustain the characteristics and traditions that the Auburn community so deeply values.

· Is grounded in an analysis of needs among its primary markets.

· Reflects Auburn’s institutional priorities.

Make fundamental principals of communications — conducting market research, planning, testing creative, and evaluating impact — into the basic operating principles of UR for both internal and external communications projects.

· Analyze all proposed communications projects by determining the goals, the audience, the messages, the distribution, and estimated costs in advance. Weigh the benefits against the costs before proceeding.

· Base the content of new projects on solid market research. Examples: Market research on what prospective students and their families regard as Auburn’s strengths and challenges should shape the creative direction for admissions materials. Similarly, UR would talk with recently recruited faculty, staff, and spouses before developing a brochure for faculty and staff recruitment.

· Test creative concepts for major materials before they are put into final form. Examples: Creative concepts for materials aimed at prospective students would at least be tested with freshmen.

· Establish and measure outcomes of individual communications projects to guide future decisions.

Develop a crisis communications plan, a fundamental for any large organization. This plan should be brief but should lay out a procedure for any member of the campus community to follow on the front lines of a crisis. It should specify contacts and backup contacts and who needs to be alerted.

Evaluate the current media relations operation to consider whether staff resources are allocated to support institutional priorities.

· Analyze several months of news releases and the stories they generated to determine the effectiveness of the current media relations operation. (Some members of the campus community believe UR fails to attract “good” media coverage. Steege/Thomson wonders if perception is playing a larger role than reality. From Thursday, August 8, through Thursday, August 16, AU logged five positive newspaper stories [a respectable showing for the dog days of August] — the new vet program, the “Un-American” art collection, an archeological dig, food technology research, and the AU band preparing to play at the Senior Bowl on national TV. However, coverage of the Sunshine ruling and the controversy surrounding the alumni tent probably reinforced the community view that AU receives only “bad” press. An analysis would provide all members of the community a clearer picture.)

· Evaluate the hometown release program against Auburn’s institutional goals. This program helps Auburn achieve broad state coverage, which has been a mandate for the UR staff. It also requires about 25 percent of David Granger’s time plus two students. Auburn should review whether this is the best use of that time. Cross-reference with information from prospective students and families about how they learn about Auburn.

· Use the op-ed pages of the state’s newspapers to counter criticisms with reasoned argument backed by facts. (For instance, op-ed pieces could address two oft-repeated criticisms of the trustees: “micro-management” and failure to act to Auburn’s benefit.)

· Schedule meetings with editorial boards to make sure Auburn’s importance to the state is conveyed.

Assign a staff member to identify, evaluate, and update all communications databases (alumni, donors, media, parents, friends, and legislators and other government officials) and post them in one convenient area. Make a concerted effort to upgrade with all e-mail addresses. This could be a staff member in UR but could be from another area as well. (Note: while this task may appear to be low-level housekeeping, it is extremely important. Good materials don’t matter at all unless they are reaching their audiences.)

Ask vice presidents, deans, and division directors to send finished materials that discuss the university as whole to a shared mail list of board members and student, faculty, and administrative leaders so people know what materials are going out. (We found that deans and some administrators had never seen materials in which their schools and divisions were mentioned.) Administrators should simply post notice of materials that discuss only their own program or school on the intranet.

Develop a system giving student leaders access to student and faculty e-mail lists and clear guidelines on what can be sent; set up a process for the UR director to approve the e-mails within three hours. (With areas devoted to students, the intranet eventually might make this system moot.)

Give UR the resources to carry out its mandate.

· Increase and reorganize UR staff (see Appendix D for full recommendations on UR staffing).

· Increase UR’s budget to handle major communications for areas such as student enrollment. These publications should be supervised by UR, even though we recommend that they be created by an outside firm.

· Increase UR’s budget for professional development.

Goal #3: Define and promote an identity for Auburn, based in its core values, that establishes its distinctive place in higher education.

Conduct the market research among key audiences — prospective students and families, new faculty, current students, and alumni — to find out what perceptions and attitudes these audiences hold about Auburn.

· The first priority should be good data on students who “convert” from one step to the next and those who don’t at each stage of the enrollment and retention process: students who inquire, who apply, who enroll, and who leave. This market research is a basic for understanding what attracts students, what sends them elsewhere at each point, and what makes them leave before graduation.

· We also strongly recommend a professionally conducted alumni phone survey, which could incorporate useful questions for Auburn Magazine and clear up differing opinions on campus about what alumni know and how they are affected by dissension within the Auburn community. This survey should not be limited to readers of the magazine.

· A confidential phone survey of first-year faculty to find what they knew and thought about Auburn before they were interviewed, when they took the job, and in the spring of their first year would provide useful insights for all academic officers involved in faculty recruitment. This survey would also gather suggestions about the process itself and needed communications support.

· Focus groups or phone surveys of corporate recruiters who visit campus can provide interesting insights about the business community’s view of Auburn students’ strengths and weaknesses.

Fill the most critical gaps in materials for primary external audiences.

· All audiences:

· Develop the spot for nationally broadcast football games to position Auburn with prospective families as long as that air time is free or low cost. A strong secondary audience for these spots is alumni, so alumni relations should be consulted about their development as well. One strategy would be to feature successful alumni talking about how Auburn prepared them for leadership. The umbrella message would be that Auburn prepares leaders or Auburn means success. (We do not think a focus on Auburn’s research or its contributions to Alabama’s economic development is the best use of this spot.)

· Create a brochure that gives an overview of Auburn. Specifically requested by the deans and faculty members, this should become the lead piece in a packet of materials for prospective faculty and staff and their families. It will also serve as a handout when current Auburn faculty and staff receive inquiries about the institution.

· Include testimonials from successful alumni in materials and during outreach meetings.

· Prospective students (Note: We understand that the vice president of student affairs has independently initiated many of the steps recommended here since we began our audit) :

· Rethink the entire program of admissions publications and letters to be sure that each one is supporting a key step in the process and driving toward a response.

· Hire an outside firm to create new admissions materials for Auburn that are as high quality as the university they represent. The firm should create the major pieces and design templates or brochure covers for UR and the colleges to use in designing the remaining pieces so that they have a consistent look. UR should work closely with student enrollment to supervise this project.

· Focus materials that reach students early in the process on encouraging a campus visit. Make it easy and inviting for prospective students to request additional information, too. New materials should establish a visual hierarchy of information so that they can support specific goals like these.

· Have a photographer capture the loveliness of Auburn’s campus and take close-ups and small groupings that capture the family feeling. Absolutely nothing makes as strong a difference in admissions publications as powerful photographs. (The new viewbook makes far better use of pictures than the last.)

· Code all print and electronic materials so that you can evaluate which ones generate response.

· Revise the viewbook to emphasize Auburn messages that reflect results of market research and to include graduates’ testimonials (the new viewbook makes good use of students’ quotes and campus pictures). Put the viewbook on a two-year schedule for major overhauls instead of annually, giving UR time to focus on other university-wide projects. The text can still be updated annually.

· Identify priority prospects, such as minorities and honor students, and develop brochures and Web pages specifically targeting them with AU benefits.

· Make full use of electronic communications to support the admissions process by enlisting families, students, and faculty to talk with prospects by e-mail. Send students you are recruiting Web links of interest (see Appendix B for other electronic suggestions).

· Accepted students:

· Develop a “what now?” brochure to send after acceptance.

· Send them the electronic newsletter (see Appendix B).

· Invite questions and develop a Q&A electronic newsletter.

· Elected officials and other leaders:

· Work with government affairs to determine which publications, such as the new electronic newsletter and Auburn Magazine, elected officials should receive. Make sure they are then included on the appropriate mail lists. Repeat the exercise with development and outreach.

· Meet with the government affairs office at the beginning of the year to determine the type of communications support they need. Give their interests high priority, and touch base with this office regularly. We recommend that the News Bureau director serve as the liaison for this office.

· Appoint one of UR’s administrative assistants to serve as a contact for the government affairs office to obtain quick answers to legislators’ questions.

· Ask the members of the Alabama Network to give Auburn their e-mail addresses.

· Prospective donors and other leaders (we did not talk with development communications and do not imply here an overview of their goals and the kind of support materials that Auburn needs for development; we suggest only a few of the most obvious steps):

· Develop a series of cultivation events that showcase Auburn, provide opportunities for networking, and make participants feel that they are part of an elite group. Keep the events small and engage board members, administrative leaders, faculty, and alumni leaders who will draw peers. Invitees could include elected officials and opinion leaders as well as prospective donors. (The University of Virginia, for instance, has had tremendous success with a president’s weekend aimed at involving young alumni leaders, who are invited to form an advisory group to the president.)

· Develop a manuscript case statement for the next five years of fundraising at Auburn. (A case statement will immediately call the question of a compelling vision that will draw support.)

· Test appeal letters signed by an alumni leader, a student, or a classmate against those signed by the vice president. Test a human interest lead as well. In direct mail, the name of the game is testing slight variations in approach to different segments of the mail list to see which ones work best. A peer or student letter might be especially effective with young alumni.

· Keep the type in all development publications large enough for older eyes and coordinate the design of development publications once an Auburn style is established.

· Alumni:

· Review the need for a printed alumni newsletter in between issues of Auburn Magazine once the results of an alumni phone survey are completed and any resulting changes in the magazine’s editorial policy are known. Such a newsletter might fill a gap in communications about educational trends and achievements at Auburn. However, the alumni survey could as easily show that alumni receive the information they want through alumni events, the school newsletters, and electronic means.

· Recommend to the board of trustees and the alumni association that they discontinue their newsletters. They further fragment communications and overwhelm recipients with paper. Incorporate these groups’ points of view in special sections of Auburn Magazine. The electronic newsletter will also get news to alumni in a timely fashion, a concern that we understand was behind both newsletters.

More urgent steps for alumni communications are recommended in the section on priorities for December 1, 2001 to May 31, 2002.

Auburn University

Appendix A

Interviews

Individual

Trustees

W. James Samford, Jr. President Pro Tempore

Grant Davis Secretary

Administration

Betty M. DeMent Vice President for Alumni

Ralph S. Foster Director, Outreach Information and Marketing

John G. Heilman Senior Presidential Assistant

Donald L. Large, Jr. Executive Vice President

Wil Miller Interim Vice President for Development

Alfred Mitchell Executive Director of Government Affairs

John Pritchett Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs

William Fred Walker Interim President

W. Wes Williams Associate Provost and Vice President for Student Affairs

University Relations

Charles Micheal Clardy Broadcast News Associate, Multi-Media Services

David Granger Associate Editor, News Bureau

Jim Jackson Supervising Producer, Multi-Media Services

Kevin Loden Associate Editor, Multi-Media Services

George Robert Lowry Acting Director, University Relations

Janet McCoy Associate Editor, News Bureau

Donna Seay Art Coordinator, Multi-Media Services

Roy Summerford Senior Editor, News Bureau

Alumni Programs/Association

Michael Jernigan Editor, Auburn Magazine

Office of Technical Services

John Richard Burnett (phone) Interim Executive Director

Consultant

Rick Heartsill Direct Communications

Staff

Dianne Townsend (phone) Associate and Managing Editor, The Shareholder

Group

Deans

Larry D. Benefield Dean, College of Engineering

Stella Bently Dean, Libraries

Timothy R. Boosinger Dean, College of Veterinary Medicine

Richard Brinker Dean, School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences

June Henton Dean, School of Human Sciences

Paul Jungnickel Associate Dean, School of Pharmacy

Frances Kochan Associate Dean, College of Education

Rebeka H. Pindzola Acting Dean, College of Liberal Arts

William I. Sauser, Jr. Associate Dean, Business and Engineering Outreach

Luther Waters Dean of Agriculture

Lawrence C. Wit Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Sciences and Mathematics

Faculty

Jim Bradley President, Faculty Senate

Isabelle Thompson Secretary, Faculty Senate

Research

Michael C. Moriarty Associate Provost and Vice President for Research

Martha Taylor Director, Sponsored Programs

Jan Thornton Director, Technology Transfer

College and Division Communications Officers

Barbara Arington External Affairs Program Coordinator, College of Architecture, Design, and Construction

Gary Beard Assistant Dean for Outreach, College of Veterinary Medicine

Mitch Emmons Research Communication Program Manager, Office of the

Vice President for Research

Harriet W. Giles Director of External Relations, College of Human Sciences

Dina Kanellos Assistant Director, College of Business

Daniel Macdougall College of Sciences and Mathematics

Charles Martin Associate Editor, College of Veterinary Medicine

Students

Lindsey Boney

Jenn Moody

Andy Redman

Brandon Riddick-Seals

Kelli Whitehead

Brandon Wilson

Appendix B

Using Technology: The Web, an Intranet, and an E-newsletter

Steege/Thomson cannot overstate the value of a Web site that visitors can navigate intuitively, an intranet, and an electronic newsletter to keep the tens of thousands in the “Auburn family” informed.

Web Site

We were pleased to see that Auburn, under the guidance of Mike Clardy, Rich Burnett, and the Web committee, has already undertaken the complex task of redesigning the site. The following recommendations in many cases underscore the work being done now; in other cases, we go further. Note that some of our recommendations might already be available on the site, but we were unable to find them either by clicking logically or by using the search engine.

We recommend that Auburn extend the redesign to all higher-level tiers (except athletics, which already follows many of the recommendations below) and the entire sites for admissions, the administration, alumni, and outreach.

Objective: Create a Web site that allows visitors to navigate easily to find the information they need.

Extend the navigation bar on the redesigned home page to all pages to allow visitors to get around the site with ease. Keep the same look in all top sections except athletics, which could use a modified version featuring the tiger and an orange and blue background for the “Auburn University” flag at the top.

· Give schools and colleges the latitude to be creative on the lower tiers as long as they retain the elements of the navigation bars and provide visual consistency within their pages.

· Develop an easy-to-use template for use by Auburn Web developers for low-level pages and post it on the intranet.

Offer users information on each page, putting all key information used by your primary audiences within three clicks of the home page. Avoid page after page of lists that force users to drill further and further into the site for useful information.

Design the site for 15-inch monitors and slow modems and for use with Internet Explorer or Netscape. Too many users still have 15-inch monitors to design sites for 17-inch monitors or larger. (For instance, visitors using 15-inch monitors will think an error has occurred on the alumni pages if they fail to scroll below the large blank areas.) Keep pages to about 60K for slower home computers.

Provide links for the main sections (Academic Programs, Administration, etc.) on all pages, perhaps as part of the footer.

Limit use of Java and complex graphics. Today’s Web users, many calling in from homes with slow modems, expect to load a page in less than 10 seconds; they leave frustrating sites quickly. (The heavy use of graphics on the alumni page, for instance, stretches load times to more than a minute on a slow DSL line, much faster than the common home connection.)

To foster consistency, develop a style guide that covers design issues, including use of Java and load times, as well as “best practices” for writing and presenting material; distribute to all departments, schools, and colleges posting pages.

Divide lists into intuitive, small groups on pages to help users find what they need quickly. (See the “Prospective Students” page on the new design as an example of the recommendation, and the old “Organizations” page as an example of a design difficult to use.)

Follow writing and headline practices that increase readability. (See Jakob Nielsen’s columns at www.useit.com/alterbox.)

· Keep text blocks short on upper tiers, no longer than 1 ½ screens if possible (as visitors drill lower into sites, they are more tolerant of longer text blocks).

· Use descriptive headlines and subheads.

· Write in an inverted pyramid style.

· Use bullet lists.

· Avoid hyperbole and unsupported statements, favoring straightforward prose instead.

Remove all pages of no interest to anyone outside the immediate Auburn family and place on the intranet.

Establish a policy requiring anyone posting pages to keep them up-to-date. Outdated pages give visitors an impression of a static organization.

Test designs with small focus groups by giving them tasks such as finding tuition and fees information and seeing how long they take; include a short survey on what the users like and dislike about the site. Include short pop-up surveys on the site for key audiences such as prospective students and alumni.

Analyze user information to determine the most popular search words, where users usually enter the site, and where users usually leave the site. With the search words and where users leave, adjust the navigation to make these areas more accessible. Review pages where visitors enter the site to determine if they present the best possible picture of Auburn.

Objective: Structure information so that every page promotes Auburn’s excellence in academics and research while valuing “family” and the creed.

Use a short text block and picture(s) on all upper-level pages, giving visitors information that carries an Auburn message with each click instead of just hyperlinks. For instance, promote academics on the academics page, the academic and social life on the prospective students page, gifts on the alumni page, and important research developments on the research page. (The “news” section of the home page will serve as the “promotion” section there.)

Use pictures, quotes, and bios from students throughout the site but particularly on pages most commonly used by prospective students to give them a sense of “this is where I belong.” (See the “Faces of Davidson” at www.davidson.edu and “Featured Seniors” at www.bowdoin.edu.)

Sprinkle achievements and honors throughout the site and develop an easily updated “brag page” with links from high-traffic pages such as prospective students, research, academics, about Auburn, news, and the resource section for reporters. List the top dozen or so honors and breakthroughs at the top, then divide by subheads in a logical order, perhaps by schools and colleges. (Post this list on the intranet prominently as well and send out in-house e-mail notifications of major additions.)

On the news page, include links to materials that give Auburn’s point of view as well as press coverage or news releases (see http://www.uga.edu/news/). Provide links to speeches, the proration section, “Auburn in the News,” and information of interest mainly to alumni and other members of the Auburn family. These elements deliver Auburn’s message with depth for those who want it.

Develop a style to feature faculty within each school and college, posting their pictures if possible, bios, honors, and publications. (See the faculty section at MIT’s Sloan School http://mitsloan.mit.edu/facstaff/index.html.) (Auburn’s faculty is among its best assets; we found that some schools and colleges do feature faculty on their pages, but not all and many inconsistently.)

Goal: Incorporate elements that will “pull” reporters and alumni and friends back to the site time and time again.

Develop a media section that reporters repeatedly visit as a valuable resource. (See the CASE Award-winning www.buffalo.edu/news.)

· Place blurbs of timely news of interest to reporters at the top, where reporters will see them immediately, and link to “campus” news, information of interest mainly to Auburn insiders, on another page.

· Build on opportunity by giving reporters the option of clicking on archived “related stories” once they have called up a release.

· Provide contact information by including the name of the UR staffer who wrote the release and links to the experts cited.

· Provide a news release search function to allow reporters to see, for example, all releases with the words “rural design.”

· Offer an “expert” search function that will allow reporters to search by name or keywords; offer all contact information as well as awards and honors with bios.

· Allow reporters to sign up to receive releases by e-mail. Offer the option of receiving only certain topics, and e-mail the releases when they are posted on the media page.

· Give reporters the option of signing up for the electronic newsletter.

· Include video, audio, and photographs whenever possible.

· Market the site to reporters at every opportunity, sending out e-mails and postcards at the launch, mentioning it during pitch calls, and listing it on all press releases and the electronic newsletter.

· Consolidate all “news” sections in the media pages. (Steege/Thomson found two independent “news” sites; making reporters search multiple places decreases the likelihood of them seeing the releases.)

Give alumni a one-size-fits-all site that builds pride and loyalty and invites donations while offering easy access to all areas. (Steege/Thomson was pleased to see many great elements on the alumni site; most of the recommendations deal with organization and presentation, not content.)

· On the alumni home page, combine the foundation and association (organizational structures mean nothing to the visitor) and highlight some of each (see http://www.colorado.edu/alumnifriends/ for an example of a nice home page.)

· Include blurb and link to story about a gift, either about the donors or about the effect of a gift.

· Link to an “alumnus/ae of the week” feature.

· Feature a news story with a link to the “News Page.”

· Include a few icons for most popular features (perhaps trips, license plates, a “find your friends” directory, the AU Bookstore to buy items) and change them weekly. Include popular links outside of the alumni page, for instance the athletics site.

· List all the areas of the alumni site, perhaps on a menu at the left.

· Give alums the option of signing up for the electronic newsletter.

· Post a short weekly survey, some fun and some information useful to the association and foundation. Include results from the previous week.

· Build community among alums and loyalty to the school and association.

· Start a bulletin board for a free-range of discussions, from the old days at AU to proration.

· Start a listserv involving recent alums and Auburn seniors as a mentoring tool for students and a way to build loyalty to the alumni association among students.

· Give all graduates a your.name@auburn.edu e-mail address that your server can forward to alums’ Internet service provider.

· Include a “find your classmates” search function that will allow alums to find contact information for others.

The Intranet

An intranet, a system available only to users with university log-ins, will go a long way to strengthen communications within the Auburn community and to stop misinformation, rumor, and even the resentment that many community members feel because information important to them is unavailable.

We applaud Auburn’s efforts to use the Web redesign as a tool to keep the university community informed, particularly after the September 11 disaster. But we think it stops short of the level of communication needed at the university. The intranet can be used as the Web site cannot to proactively present the university’s position on news events and to provide the most basic information that helps a community function smoothly.

Universities that find the intranet useful include Wake Forest, Texas A&M, the University of Idaho, Pepperdine, North Carolina State, MIT, University of Memphis, and Drexel University, the first in the country to offer students a fully wireless data network throughout campus. The University of Miami is developing one now. According to a survey by the Gartner Group, 80 percent of the higher education institutions in the United States either already had an intranet in 2000 or plan to develop a similar system by 2005.

An intranet would serve a multitude of other communications purposes for Auburn, including:

· Keeping the community up-to-date with all developments, including crucial news reports as well as achievements and calendar items having too little general interest to go into AU Report.

· Giving the community an easy way to find information. People interviewed said they experienced great difficulty in trying to find the internal information they need on the external Web site. Most said they generally give up without getting what they need.

· Allowing AU to remove all pages of no interest to outsiders, further focusing the AU Web site on areas that promote the university and preventing visitors from getting distracted by areas of no value to them. (And from getting lost in those pages; as the site is set up now, finding your way from one place to another is virtually impossible on many, many pages. One of the primary goals of an external Web site is to limit the user’s frustration.)

· Giving all departments a place to post internal announcements and academic departments an area to post research and achievements (these also should be posted with the instructor’s bio on the Web site).

Here are several examples of ways an intranet could have helped in recent news events:

· The rapes revealed over the summer. Without any official communication from the university, our focus group of students told us that many students thought Auburn was purposely covering up the attacks. If only the Web site is available to you for rapid communications to your community, the rape headlines would be prominent on your home page, making very negative events one of the first items prospective students see. With an intranet, you could post the full story, tips and advice, a history of attacks on campus, and any other information that would help the students. A news release for the media would go on the news site. You would not need to “promo” the rapes on the home page.

· The anthrax threats. You had a link from the home page on October 24 to the CDC site. But what is the university policy? An intranet would allow you to post it, letting everyone in the community know what to do without giving the information out to the general public.

· “Unfair” student firing. Because the papers called Bob Lowry for reaction, you knew this was coming but you didn’t know how the story would be framed. On the intranet, you could have quickly posted a short story emphasizing the university’s side: The student was not fired and was not rehired because the job was a 10-month position and she would be at Auburn only four more months. Instead, your internal community saw the events through the newspaper reports: The woman was fired because she formed a committee in opposition to the board of trustees. The newspapers mentioned the university’s response only perfunctorily.

· The decision to suspend the presidential search. Speculation abounded about the board suspending the search because members wanted to appoint Interim President Walker without considering other candidates. In fact, a well-respected independent consultant recommended the university address several vital issues before conducting a search. Within an hour or two of the board meeting, the university could have posted an intranet story emphasizing the report, giving members of the internal community Auburn’s perspective before they read the newspapers’ interpretation.

Here are some examples of information that your community believes is lacking and that an intranet would provide:

· Building closings, new service hours, parking regulation changes. Students say they rarely get this information in advance, which frustrates them. Some believe this shows a disregard and disrespect for them by the administration.

· Meetings and announcements from all clubs and committees. Students and faculty members say they have no centralized, easily accessible place to look for news on the university’s clubs and committees.

· Honors and achievements important to the faculty but not of enough importance to the general community to make the AU Report. Deans would like somewhere to post these achievements.

We understand that OIT has explored the possibility of creating an intranet but has been stymied by the multiple operating systems used for OASIS, WebFocus, WebCT, and MyLibrary — all tools that should be available through the intranet. Ideally, users would sign on to the intranet once, and all areas connected with the user’s level of security would be available at a click. But without a means to bridge the multiple platforms, users would need to sign on to the intranet, then sign on to each system they want to use. OIT has hesitated to create an intranet for fear of annoying users with an extra sign-in.

We urge you to expedite your investigation of the service Campus Pipeline, which has bridged various platforms for more than 100 universities and colleges. If OIT decides the system will not work at Auburn and can find no other system that will, we believe the need for internal communications far outweighs the annoyance the extra sign-in would cause.

Objective: To develop and maintain an intranet that fits the needs of a wide variety of audiences: the board, the administration, the faculty, the staff, and the students.

Hire an experienced intranet developer to work with OIT, University Relations, and the library for four weeks in planning the site, developing a site map, and designing a home page and navigation template. Place an emphasis on intuitive design.

· Survey potential users to determine what they would like to see and how they would like to use the site. Before posing the survey questions, send the participants an explanation of an intranet and its potential to give them time to consider the possibilities.

· Assemble a small group to evaluate the home page and navigation before full-scale development begins.

Design a flexible home page that fits the needs of the users and the administration. Allow users to customize the page much like MyLibrary@Auburn University, choosing favorite links and the option to get notification of news or new features in areas of interest. Include an area for university news headlines.

Keep the site dynamic by regularly polling users and offering new features to meet needs.

The Wire Eagle: AU’s Electronic Newsletter

The University of Georgia, Penn State University, the University of Dayton and a host of other colleges and universities have found electronic newsletters invaluable in keeping alumni, friends, faculty, staff, legislators, and reporters informed. They also give the university a chance to emphasize aspects of a news development not covered — or covered inaccurately — in the media. As of now, Auburn has few tools to promote itself regularly with these audiences and to keep them informed of the university’s position.

In many ways, an electronic newsletter is a far better tool than any print publication:

· It can get information to audiences quickly.

· It can generate new “friends” and closer alumni links through “viral marketing,” or by one recipient forwarding it to a friend or fellow alumni, who in turn signs up for the newsletter.

· It is far cheaper than the writing, designing, and mail costs of printed publications.

In December 1999, University Relations’ News Bureau and Multi-Media Office submitted a proposal for AU’s version, the Wire Eagle (see attached).

Steege/Thomson recommends implementing the proposal as soon as possible with several suggestions:

· Send the media a separate version with only information of interest to reporters. Keep the file short (consider sending it more frequently than the other newsletter to prevent the file from becoming overly long). Include News from AU, AU Sources, What Others Are Saying, Calendar items of interest to the media, and Did You Know. In rare cases, include news from other campuses.

· Develop separate mail lists for each audience. Although you will rarely tailor the newsletter for the other audiences, you would like the flexibility to reach each group. For instance, alumni and legislators may express a preference for getting the newsletter just once a week or twice a month, while the campus community and reporters might want to see it three times a week; separate e-mail lists will allow you to meet each group’s needs.

· Install redirect software, which will allow you to see who has used the links on the newsletters to reach your site and where they have gone. The information will help University Relations fine-tune the newsletter to match interests.

· Periodically include a link to a survey on the News Page to determine if the newsletter matches readers’ needs and interests. With separate mail lists, you can poll different audiences about different aspects.

Appendix C

Director of University Relations

Auburn University seeks a communications leader who can:

· Advise the trustees, the president, and other Auburn leaders on communications strategies surrounding any major decision or event;

· Serve as chief spokesperson to the media;

· Develop and implement a communications plan for the university with measurable goals, defined audiences, strategies linked to those goals, and clearly delineated priorities;

· Implement marketing principles of market research, testing, and evaluation as accepted procedures within University Relations and encourage them throughout the University;

· Implement strategies that support good communications within the Auburn community;

· Establish standards for Auburn communications that lead to quality as high as that in its academic programs;

· Realize and seek opportunities for Auburn to promote its strengths to relevant audiences outside the university community;

· Manage a forthright, cohesive response that gets accurate information to the Auburn community and the media in a timely, orderly manner during crises;

· Inspire creative, appropriate development of all major communications vehicles, including electronic, print, and visual media;

· Lead a University Relations staff of approximately 14 to promote Auburn effectively; and

· Serve as a resource for the rest of the campus.

Context and Qualifications

Auburn’s director of university relations will need to be a highly strategic thinker with the experience and temperament to develop and sustain positive, active communications in a community that has seen significant turmoil over the past several years. Auburn’s trustees and president are fully committed to providing full support and increased resources to achieve a strong communications program, commensurate with Auburn’s quality and complexity as a leading public research university. The new director will report to the executive vice president for administration and have full access to the president and a seat at the senior management table.

The position requires experience in higher education, preferably at a public institution; at least 10 years as a communications professional; a thorough grounding in marketing precepts; expertise in deploying the full range of contemporary communications tools; and superb management skills.

Appendix D

University Relations Staffing

Steege/Thomson recommends five new staff positions and one new student position for the University Relations Department. We believe UR cannot fill Auburn’s complex communications needs without these additions. Even with the new staffers, UR will be hard-pressed at a university as large and multifaceted as Auburn to cover marketing as well as editorial responsibilities while keeping in close contact with the schools, colleges, and administrative offices.

Our recommendations assume the schools and colleges will retain their separate communications staffs, though they will have a much closer working relationship with University Relations.

The recommendation also proposes bringing University Relations staff members into the decision making as advisors for newsletters and magazines produced by the colleges and schools. The proposal calls for broadening the responsibilities to include marketing as well as editorial duties. All university-wide materials, from a brochure on Auburn’s value to the state to specialty admissions pieces, should go through UR for review to ensure a consistency in Auburn’s messages and look.

Staffing

Create five new staff positions — a junior marketing/media relations officer, publications specialist, a second designer, a Web writer and a Web designer/programmer — and a student position as a video cameraman. Move two students working in photos to the main UR office to serve as administrative assistants. We have included the additional marketing/media relations officer in our priorities for the first six months of this plan.

· Junior marketing/media relations officer. This position will allow UR to:

· Develop a closer relationship with departments, schools, and colleges.

· Focus on marketing strategies.

· Develop the electronic newsletter.

In addition, we recommend this order of priority for hiring:

· Web programmer/designer. This position will allow UR to develop an intranet and extend the much-needed redesign to other crucial areas of the Web site.

· Publications specialist. This position will allow Auburn to immediately conduct an audit of communications publications, determine whether they achieved the desired goals, and devise a strategy to guide future decisions.

· Student for video production.

· Designer.

· Web editorial position.

Responsibilities

In our review of the draft report with UR staff, they expressed vehement opposition to a staffing plan that divided them into departments. Under the leadership of acting director Bob Lowry, the staff members are enjoying a great sense of collaboration. There are many ways to organize a department. Recognizing that a director will come up with his or her own organization, we have moved in this draft to listing responsibilities by category rather than by “office.”

Marketing/Editorial

Retain the “beat” system but review the current breakdown.

Charge staff with taking a more active marketing role, focusing on ways outside of news coverage to promote academic strengths and Auburn in general.

Give a junior officer responsibilities of lining up Auburn sources on developing news stories, clipping the papers and compiling a daily report, sending “student news” to local newspapers, and compiling the bulk of the Wire Eagle. This will leave the more experienced staffers more time to devote to other areas.

Divide the schools and colleges among those primarily responsible for media relations and establish biweekly meetings with communication specialists in the colleges and schools or other representatives to discuss all communications efforts, from news stories to newsletters and events.

Give the beat officers the responsibility of pitching to the local/regional/national mass media while the schools focus on pitching to trade publications.

Photos

Take photos off a cost-recovery system. Under the current system, photographers can take pictures only when “hired” by another university office, which pays for the service at the extremely low price of $40 an hour. This prevents photographers from spontaneously taking shots, and it forces them to rush some assignments and even to shoot when conditions are poor instead of rescheduling. As one staffer said, “The system prevents us from presenting the best image possible of Auburn.”

Change the focus of the office to serve the entire university and develop written guidelines determining when college events warrant coverage by university photographers and when the college should hire an independent photographer.

Hire stringers to shoot the individual graduation pictures, cheerleading camp, and other mass-photo events with no potential to further Auburn’s image.

Redirect all photo requests through UR’s main office, rather than the photo office across campus, to strengthen coordination between copy and photography to support university priorities and messages. Reassign two photo students to the main UR office to handle the photo requests.

Publications

Give UR responsibility for all university-wide brochures and booklets to ensure a consistency in messages, tone, and quality. Allow the department to hire freelance writers when needed rather than declining university-wide projects considered important to further communications goals.

Shift the responsibility for laying out AU Report to a designer.

Assign UR to work closely with the schools’ communications officers, designing newsletter and magazine templates that promote Auburn as well as the individual colleges. Make a staff member with expertise in publications an advisor on the schools’ magazines and newsletters.

Web

Give UR responsibility for all the upper tiers of the site plus all pages for UR, the administration, admissions, alumni, and outreach (see Appendix B for further details about the Web).

Video

Hire a student to help with the equipment.

Appendix E

Auburn’s Messages

Information bombards all the people that Auburn seeks to reach, and they are now expert at filtering out most of the information they receive. Auburn needs to be equally expert at breaking through the clutter. This requires sharply delineated messages, tailored to address the audience’s interests.

As Auburn articulates its core characteristics and messages, Steege/Thomson recommends that Auburn look particularly at these issues that arose for us:

· “A preeminent land-grant university in the 21^st century.” The 21^st Century Commission uses this phrase to characterize Auburn’s overriding goal, and the phrase, “a land-grant university” appears on a wide variety of Auburn materials. However, we found few people who would venture a definition. One administrator believes that the phrase means a great deal to legislators in Alabama, while another reports that most alumni have no idea what it means. If Auburn is going to continue using this phrase so prominently, especially to characterize its vision for the future, the Auburn community should determine its meaning. We also suggest judicious use in materials for audiences, such as prospective students, for whom it is just clutter, unless it is defined in a way that is meaningful for that audience.

· Academics. We found that academic elements took a back seat in Auburn’s description of itself. Some members of the community did mention Auburn’s strength in undergraduate education, but focus was much stronger on the emotional aspects of the Auburn experience. The IDEA Group noted an imbalance between athletics and academics. Overall, Auburn may want to pay more attention to the academic experience.

· The value question. The Idea Group’s report focused heavily on pressing Auburn to consider how much the university wants to be perceived as the best bang for the educational buck or as the university where students benefit from the best. We concur that Auburn needs to address this issue. In our work, the Auburn community seemed comfortable with the message that Auburn is a good value, but some people clearly felt that Auburn is suffering from too much emphasis on its low cost. We recommend plumbing attitudes toward this aspect of Auburn’s message as an important focus of market research, especially among prospective students and families.

· In the top 50. Auburn very often cites its placement in the top 50 public institutions in US News and World Report, but wonder whether it is a valuable achievement to cite. We would be interested to know from market research how many prospective students considered this stat in investigating Auburn.

In addition to the points summarized above, Steege/Thomson offers the quotes below from our interviews as food for thought.

On value

“What helps us is the continuing message we are the economic engine of the state. We are the best bang for your buck. We are a good return for your dollar. Maybe we need to get that out not just to the media, but to business leaders and alumni.”

“They are not concerned with value. To most Alabamians, higher education is just so expensive. It’s folly to talk about ‘we are the best value in higher education’ to a local audience. People want to have the pride that their education came from a highly respected, though not snooty institution, that we do have a national respectability, that there are people who make it from there, but that we haven't lost sight of our roots."

“I’m tired of being bargain basement.”

On the Auburn character

“Our creed is what Auburn is all about.”

“Protect the creed. I am afraid there is a change in the warm, friendly atmosphere. There has always been a lot of pride at Auburn. To Auburn graduates, family tradition matters.”

“The Auburn spirit and the Auburn family are greatly overused and largely mythological. The university has not done a lot to get at what core perceptions are among different groups.”

“Auburn offers a safe, small-town atmosphere.”

“You are a name, not a number. The opportunities for close friendships are remarkable.”

“Auburn offers a sustaining personal life. We prepare complete citizens for life as well as thought.”

“From the moment I arrived at Auburn, I have heard about the intense sense of family. I would like to feel the intensity that they do.”

“Auburn’s defining characteristics include the loyalty of its supporters and the intensity of their feelings toward the institution.”

On the land grant mission

“The land-grant mission is real. The majority of graduates stay in the state.”

“…that what we do is to serve the land-grant mission. To serve the students and peoples and communities of Alabama and beyond to help them lead better lives.”

“Communities have access to the knowledge of a university. It is a comprehensive land-grant university.”

“It is unique today because it is a major comprehensive university in a small college town.”

On working at Auburn

“Six or seven years ago, when I advertised a position in my office, people wanted to come. Now they don’t.”

“Teaching and learning are important here. People who value teaching are recognized. There are opportunities for advancement in your discipline and for growing in professional stature. There are faculty with national and international reputations.”

“It’s a supportive environment for new faculty. We really work on retention and promotion. And it’s a fun place to work and live.”

On academic strengths

“Auburn provides a very high-quality education with selected areas of prominence in graduate education. We have a very focused effort and attention to the undergraduate. All faculty teach at least some undergraduate education.”

“At the undergraduate level, it is an excellent comprehensive education.”

“Auburn has gone on record with a core curriculum, strongly favoring liberal arts. We provide a broader, general education than other places with our strengths in the practical arts. We offer a community. Georgia Tech doesn’t.”

On impact

“We do applicable research, with real-time benefit. Auburn is practical.”

“A strength of the institution is certainly the graduates’ reputation.”

“Auburn turns out people who get things done — engineers, vets. The University of Alabama educates the doctors and lawyers.”

And some voices from focus groups around the state

The Outreach program conducted town meetings across the state in 1995. While six years is very old in marketing terms, the relevance of two passages in the Outreach division’s report made them worth quoting:

“The communications category illustrates several interests: an awareness and desire for Internet services, a perception that Auburn is not providing information as effectively as it might, and a view that our outreach program and service are not marketed aggressively.”

“Even in terms of Extension/Outreach, Auburn remains a well-kept secret: We have a substantial problem of perception and image. …There is an enormous affection for Auburn which is sometimes expressed in familial criticism.”

Auburn University

Communications Plan

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………1

Findings …………………………………………………………………………………….…… 3

Recommendations ...…………………………………………………………………….……… 5

Chart (for priorities Dec. 1, 2001 – May 31, 2002) ...……………………………………….. 10

Appendix A: Interviews ...…………………………………………………………….……….18

Appendix B: Using Technology .………………………………………………………………21

Appendix C: UR Director’s Job Description ………………………………………………...29

Appendix D: UR Staffing …………………………………………………………….………. 31

Appendix E: Auburn’s Messages ...………………………………………………….………. 34