The College is in the midst of an ambitious marketing plan designed to reshape its image as a “hidden gem,” a designation used by The New York Times in summer 2006, in a roundup of top colleges.
“We certainly agree with the ‘gem’ part, but we’d like to change the ‘hidden’ part,” said Director of Communications and Marketing Jill Hungsberg, “Union has a lot going for it – many great people with impressive stories to tell – and we certainly want to get the word out.”
Members of the Office of Communications, which includes Web experts, writers, reporters and media relations professionals, have rallied around four major objectives this year:
- Elevating Union’s reputation in the marketplace, especially among prospective students;
- Developing a unified, compelling brand identity that communicates the College’s strengths in a consistent manner across channels;
- Revamping www.union.edu to be more user-friendly, attractive and content-rich; and
- Consulting with other campus departments and offices to help make their communications efforts more effective.
“The Internet has a huge role to play in addressing these objectives,” said Ken George, who joined the Communications team in August as Web director. “We’re focusing not only on using our Web site to promote Union, but also engaging our audiences in Facebook and other social networks.”
George comes to Union with 13 years of experience in Web communications and new media publishing for news organizations, the most recent being WBUR at Boston University, one of the nation’s largest National Public Radio stations.
The “Union Reboot” project, he noted, “is all about a smarter use of digital spaces to showcase what makes Union special to prospective students, donors and others, while giving the campus community access to the information it needs.”
To help implement the marketing plan, the Office of Communications has partnered with top firms in the areas of Web site development, graphic design, branding and market research.
“This is an exciting process. We’re tackling our objectives on multiple fronts at once,” said Hungsberg. “By the end of the academic year, our constituents should begin to see real differences in how the College portrays itself.”
Faculty and students are invited to follow and discuss the relaunch of the Union Web site at www.unionreboot.org, or on our official Facebook and Twitter sites.