#84 - How to Manage 300+ Marketing Staff at a Large University
w/ Heather Macbain
University of Edinburgh
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SHOW NOTES
In this episode of Higher Ed Storytelling University, host John Azoni sits down with Heather MacBain, Head of Marketing at the University of Edinburgh. Heather manages a vast network of over 300 MarCom staff across the university, spanning marketing, communications, and stakeholder engagement roles. She shares insights on how their unique structure helps keep everyone aligned in messaging, branding, and strategy.
Heather and John discuss the challenges of managing a decentralized marketing team, the importance of maintaining brand consistency, and how Edinburgh fosters a strong community of practice among its marketing professionals. They also dive into the impact of social media, the power of professional development, and how to create clear vision and autonomy within a large institution.
Key Takeaways:
Managing a Large MarCom Team – How Edinburgh’s decentralized structure operates effectively with 300+ marketing professionals.
The Power of Community – Building a strong internal network to share best practices and stay aligned with university goals.
Social Media Strategy – Why marketing teams need to focus on engagement and community-building rather than just posting.
Brand Consistency vs. Creative Autonomy – Finding the right balance between clear guidelines and allowing departments flexibility.
Professional Development for Marketers – The importance of continuous learning and how Edinburgh supports its MarCom staff.
If you’re looking for insights on marketing leadership, brand management, and building a strong internal marketing community, this episode is for you.
Connect with John Azoni:
LinkedIn: John Azoni
Website: Unveild
Newsletter: Subscribe here
Connect with Heather MacBain:
LinkedIn: Heather MacBain
Website: University of Edinburg
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00:00:00:08 - 00:00:28:04
John Azoni
All right. My guest today is Heather McBain. Heather is the head of marketing at the University of Edinburg in Edinburg, Scotland. She manages a network of over 300 Markham staff across the university in marketing, communications and stakeholder engagement roles in colleges, schools and research institutes. Today, we're talking about how they're structured in this way, why they're structured that way, and how Heather works to keep everyone sort of rowing in the same direction when it comes to marketing communications.
00:00:28:14 - 00:00:30:20
John Azoni
Lots to talk about there. So, Heather, welcome to the show.
00:00:31:19 - 00:00:37:08
Heather Macbain
Thank you so much. Yeah, delighted to be here and have have the conversation about how we how we wrote together.
00:00:38:18 - 00:00:47:22
John Azoni
I I'm managing one person right now unveiled a new project manager. She's doing great, but I'm finding that that's hard for me.
00:00:48:07 - 00:01:03:18
Heather Macbain
Yeah, well, yeah, well, probably come on to in more detail later, but yeah, I don't manage them as such. But leaving and trying to, trying to crawl in the same direction. But yeah, it's a big community here at invest so Yeah.
00:01:03:19 - 00:01:06:04
John Azoni
Sort of coordinating this network. Yeah.
00:01:06:14 - 00:01:06:21
Heather Macbain
Yeah.
00:01:07:11 - 00:01:10:12
John Azoni
So Heather, what's something that people might be surprised to know about you?
00:01:11:07 - 00:01:33:16
Heather Macbain
Oh, well, so I very much succumb to this new year, new me thing that is actually really prevalent across education, no matter where it is in the world. And last year I took that quite literally and sat in January and I thought, what do I want to learn more about? And I was thinking about all these courses about, you know, I could upskill myself and I just got really into drinking wine.
00:01:34:04 - 00:01:37:16
Heather Macbain
So last year I did a white wine and I wanted to.
00:01:37:16 - 00:01:39:09
John Azoni
Upskill myself in that area.
00:01:39:18 - 00:01:58:15
Heather Macbain
I know, right? Well, yeah. So I think I took it into my own hands. And my mission last year was to get a qualification in wine. So I did that and yeah, nothing to the extent of what we, what we do at universities. But yeah, yeah. So it was all online and learn about different wines, different regions and things like that.
00:01:58:15 - 00:02:23:19
Heather Macbain
So I became a student for a bit, but in something not quite as extensive as a postgraduate master's program. But yeah, into a very, into my wine and I'm on the start of a journey I think. And yeah, I loved it when I went, I went to Italy a few years ago on holiday and it was one of those scenarios where we all got put on a bus and bust out to a vineyard and people from all over the all over the world.
00:02:23:19 - 00:02:51:05
Heather Macbain
So California, Seattle, Latin America. And no one said a word on the bus as we were going to the vineyard. It was all very quiet. And then a couple of vineyards later, all best friends sharing Facebook like names and all that sort of stuff. So and that's where my love for wine kind of kicked off. So yeah, that's something that you may not know about me from everything that you see on LinkedIn and other things.
00:02:51:05 - 00:02:52:04
Heather Macbain
So yeah, I love that.
00:02:52:04 - 00:03:14:09
John Azoni
That's probably one of my favorite responses to that question. So yes, I did in college, I did a semester in south of France in Aix en Provence and and it was awesome. It was like just one of the best times in my whole life. And I got really into wine there, too. I was 22, so I was newly.
00:03:14:09 - 00:03:22:01
John Azoni
Well, in the States, it's 21, you have to be 21 to to be legal. So I was sort of newly into the alcohol world, but.
00:03:23:07 - 00:03:28:18
Heather Macbain
Well, a good place to start in Provence, though. Yeah, it's funny too. Yeah. Yeah. Classy.
00:03:28:21 - 00:03:46:21
John Azoni
I legitimately I mean, most people drink before they're 20. I legitimately did not drink until I was 21. But anyways, so I got into wine too. And like, you know, we had people in our LA cohort at the school I was going to that knew about wine and would teach us stuff. And I don't remember a whole lot.
00:03:46:21 - 00:04:01:19
John Azoni
The one thing I do remember is that red wine, it's not necessarily like white wine is not green grapes, and red wine is not red grapes. It's like grape juice is clear, but they just put the skins of the grapes in the red wine. Yeah, I retain that.
00:04:02:04 - 00:04:18:19
Heather Macbain
It's all about the different process. Yeah, but I learned that as well, that my course and it was is fascinating. And even I think I got told off by my wine tutor we had a session at the start and she was like, What kind of wines do you like to drink? And I was like, Well, I actually like to drink this kind of wine, but chilled.
00:04:18:19 - 00:04:33:10
Heather Macbain
And it's a red. And she her eyes were like, Oh, what are you doing one at all? And she was like, Well, everyone's got their preference. And, you know, it was just things like that that was like, oh, like, you know, trying different things that you've never tried before. But yeah, I'm definitely at the start of my journey.
00:04:33:10 - 00:04:50:17
Heather Macbain
Friends are now asking for me to choose the wine If we go out for dinner or coming over to the house and expecting fancy bottles of wine, not the, you know, the stuff that you get in the local store. But yeah, so still so much to learn. But yeah, we'll combine it with my work. So yeah. Yeah is a nice thing.
00:04:51:02 - 00:04:55:09
John Azoni
So what would be your top recommendations right now for wine. Yeah.
00:04:55:17 - 00:05:10:19
Heather Macbain
Oh, so I really like a Sauvignon blanc now, which I didn't used to like, but that's great. I think that's quite trendy just now. People quite like her and we call it in the UK a savvy, be well savvy dude. That's Gen Zs I think. And yeah and.
00:05:10:19 - 00:05:12:23
John Azoni
That's what we call mental breakdowns men TBS.
00:05:12:23 - 00:05:33:21
Heather Macbain
Men's TV. Yeah. Yeah. Well you can have both I guess at the same time. And I really love a malbec. I'd love to go to Argentina in the future and go and do some kind of wine tourism, vineyards. And that's the one that actually that I said I like to drink chilled in the summer. And my Winchester wasn't so impressed with that.
00:05:33:21 - 00:05:36:02
Heather Macbain
But I still like it, so.
00:05:36:10 - 00:05:41:05
John Azoni
All right, love it. Bonus question for you. How do you spell Markham?
00:05:42:06 - 00:05:51:16
Heather Macbain
Oh, okay. So I do Capital M Air and then capital C or M, m.
00:05:52:01 - 00:05:53:16
John Azoni
O, So place.
00:05:54:12 - 00:06:17:01
Heather Macbain
Because I think there is always been at the Bay and Edinburgh and that's what we've gone with. And also it's Markham and then our department, the central department in Edinburgh is called Communications and Marketing. So it's always been this kind of debate about whether it should actually be comms marketing and what terminology you should use. But yeah, that's how I would go for it.
00:06:17:01 - 00:06:18:22
Heather Macbain
But debate still reigns.
00:06:18:22 - 00:06:43:07
John Azoni
I think I did a multilayer poll on LinkedIn about head first, how people spell Markham and by a narrow margin it was one M and then how do you capitalize it? And it was overwhelmingly the capital C in the middle. So I learned a lot. But it is very I mean the how you spell it like there is a lot of people I respect and the tomb side of things.
00:06:43:07 - 00:06:48:05
Heather Macbain
Oh okay I'll get to know. So I'll go back to people with that one then.
00:06:48:18 - 00:07:01:02
John Azoni
I'm a1m or so. Anyway. All right. So give us a lay of the land of University of Edinburg. How like, how is Markham structured? Where do you fit in that kind of stuff?
00:07:01:12 - 00:07:29:16
Heather Macbain
Yeah. So we are based in the capital city of Scotland, so in Edinburgh and we're a member of the Russell Group. So that's a group of institutions in the UK that are by definition I think, research intensive. So and a lot of them are historic institutions as well. So we have been around for over 400 years now. So very historic, very prestigious is what comes through in our kind of brand research.
00:07:29:16 - 00:07:59:11
Heather Macbain
And we've got around about 49,000 students. So that's it's pretty big and that's across undergraduates. Postgraduate research, postgraduate taught short courses. So we've got a really diverse portfolio range, about 14,000 staff as well. So that's on the professional services side. But also in our academic colleges, we call them, or faculties and other kind of commercial aspects of the university as well.
00:07:59:11 - 00:08:27:02
Heather Macbain
So we're pretty big and in terms of marketing and communications. So we have a central communications and marketing team and that has all the disciplines that you mentioned before. So marketing, communications and stakeholder engagement. But we actually have more than 300 marketing and communications staff across the university. So that is not in our central team. That's a combination of that plus staff.
00:08:27:02 - 00:08:55:20
Heather Macbain
There are in our faculties, in our schools. So the subject areas that we teach, research institutes, other kind of essential professional services departments like our accommodation, catering events, research, etc.. So I think we've kind of sage and we haven't been challenged on it yet, is that we're one of the largest marketing and communications staff, communities and Haiti. But some other institutions across the world may be able to challenge that.
00:08:55:20 - 00:09:24:12
Heather Macbain
But yeah, we're pretty big and that claims up to about 550 to 600 that are in our professional community, that elite. So that's people that are pure marketing communications staff, but also people that are in the student recruitment admissions and other kind of related posts that are joined our community to learn from best practice and upskill themselves. Because you do a part of communications, for example, as part of their role.
00:09:25:04 - 00:09:57:13
Heather Macbain
So my role sits in the central team and it's really made up of two half. So half of my role is to lead student recruitment, marketing for the university and anything that's kind of university wide and corporates to recruit students. And then the second half is to lead our community of practice. So those kind of 300 people that are dotted throughout the organization, that are in a marketing and communications role and bring them together so we can all learn from each other and become more efficient and effective.
00:09:57:13 - 00:09:57:20
Heather Macbain
Really.
00:09:58:22 - 00:10:08:22
John Azoni
That's great. That's a lot of people. What are some challenges with, you know, keeping that many people sort of in line creative Lee and messaging wise?
00:10:09:20 - 00:10:39:18
Heather Macbain
Well, I think was something that I hadn't really appreciated at the Star is because we are so devolved and because everybody sits in different departments within the organization that they all have different lean management structures. And that's been something that's been quite hard and more challenging to navigate really, because some people are lane managed by communications and marketing professional and they've got years of experience and they can act as a coach and a mentor to that staff member.
00:10:40:07 - 00:11:09:23
Heather Macbain
Some don't, so some are Lane managed by what we call a director of professional services and a skill that's also managing our finance operations and things like that for that particular department or school. Some are lane managed by kind of other types of disciplines. So what has been a real challenge is trying to ensure that those lane managers are giving this the marketing communication staff time to engage with the community.
00:11:09:23 - 00:11:36:07
Heather Macbain
So they're actually giving them space and their workload or they see the value and what we're trying to do to, you know, enhance their professional standards really. So I think that certainly has become more apparent over the years since I've been doing this work. Well, I say another challenge is probably just our size, that if you put 300 people together, there's inevitably challenge with making sure everybody's got the right information at the right time.
00:11:36:15 - 00:12:10:05
Heather Macbain
And we've got quite a hierarchical structure. So there's quite a lot of layers in some areas. So making sure that decisions that are made in that marketing communication space are communicated appropriately to the right people so that they get they get actioned or people feel informed of what's going on. And because we're so large, sometimes the decisions can feel so late away from you and actually you're not being informed so that you can actually make a make an impact on what you're doing.
00:12:10:13 - 00:12:21:21
Heather Macbain
So I think that inevitably is just a challenge for us and having the amount of staff, but also them being devolved in that way. But yeah, I think that's probably our biggest challenges that we face.
00:12:22:15 - 00:12:34:08
John Azoni
Yeah. So when you say line managers, you're talking about like maybe like someone that's over top of several other, you know, Markham staff that's kind of like managing for that department.
00:12:34:08 - 00:13:01:08
Heather Macbain
Yeah. Yes. Or in the central team of asset sales, it's people that are from marketing communications backgrounds are all kind of together. But in a academic school, for example, the marketing communications people might be setting alongside the other professional services disciplines and a kind of smaller unit. So it might have our finance student experience, student support altogether. And then there's like the academic side of the school with all their teaching staff.
00:13:01:19 - 00:13:45:11
Heather Macbain
So they actually might be lane managed by someone that's not from a marketing background. So they may just struggle to understand where the marketeer is coming from or just not understand fully the value and where it can have the most impact. And I think that's yeah, that's something that the community of practice that we've Edinburgh is really trying to, to address and something that we've tried to actually build content for because when I was a couple of years ago when we launched our student recruitment campaign and we actually created a video not for our prospective students to kind of showcase this campaign, we created a video for the internal staff and not even for the
00:13:45:11 - 00:14:08:15
Heather Macbain
marketing staff, for their line managers, so that they could use that as a resource if they got challenged. On why things were changing while they were using different messages, while the creative look and feel of what they were doing was changing, they could point to this, you know, really short video or they explained, you know, it was came from the strategy and it was all part of addressing user needs and all this sort of stuff.
00:14:08:15 - 00:14:24:14
Heather Macbain
But it was in a can it digestible format that non marketeer would be able to kind of get on board. But it was in kind of a format that a senior leader could watch for a minute and get. So yeah, it's certainly something that we've become more aware of over time.
00:14:25:07 - 00:14:59:04
John Azoni
Okay, great. And I like that you said you need to give people time, you know, to engage with this stuff, because I find that that's really difficult because, you know, when you get swamped, like in the day to day stuff to like, come up for air and do professional development or something, it's hard to find that time. I personally like I try to reserve Fridays for just doing like fun stuff, like I'll just play with I or try to figure out some new part of, you know, Adobe premiere or like our editing software that we use that that I didn't know about before.
00:14:59:11 - 00:15:14:17
John Azoni
And I found like so many time saving work or tricks and things like that in that time when you just give yourself time to play. But it also is like very it is very hard even for me to let myself have that time because I'm like, I could be doing something. Like I could be delivering something. Yeah, right.
00:15:14:19 - 00:15:37:10
Heather Macbain
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, because our community are in different pockets and the university is, you know, some line managers naturally will, you know, build that and encourage that a lot more than other line managers. So it's not just about the central team and the couple, you know, the handful of senior leaders that we've got in that department that we have to make sure are encouraging professional development.
00:15:37:10 - 00:16:05:03
Heather Macbain
We've actually got probably about 60 different lane managers across the university that are managing marketing, communication stuff that we have to convince those it's part of their professional discipline. I mean, marketing as a profession, you know, has accreditations. It's, you know, it is really professional and some people get that more than others. So I think it's our job to try and continuously convince the people that need convincing on that.
00:16:05:12 - 00:16:23:02
Heather Macbain
And yeah, and for some people it's it's it's really easy for them to access. We try and give them resources to be able to do that. I mean personally I, I used to do the Fridays but I would always get caught with last minute things. So I would always get to delete my diary. But I use my commute on the train into the office for that.
00:16:23:02 - 00:16:43:05
Heather Macbain
So mainly feel like podcasts and things like that and keeping up to date with reports that are coming out from different sources and new data or and yeah, listening to podcasts is like my thing is trying to keep up and you know, professionalizing myself and understanding what's going on. But everybody's slightly different on what they prefer.
00:16:43:22 - 00:16:47:03
John Azoni
So your commute is on a train. Do you own a vehicle?
00:16:47:17 - 00:16:56:16
Heather Macbain
I do, yeah. I've got a car. Yeah. So we've got two cars so we can do the commute and we've got a daughter at nursery as well. So we have to do the nursery drop off and things like that as well.
00:16:56:16 - 00:17:16:00
John Azoni
So. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I went to Chicago recently and you know, Chicago, Illinois is a very, you know, metropolitan city like kind of very enclosed and public transportation and all this stuff. And I met this guy who's like, Yeah, I haven't owned the car in my entire life. I don't have a driver's license. Guy's like 60 in his mid sixties.
00:17:16:00 - 00:17:38:19
John Azoni
He's like, I don't know how to drive. I just take the train everywhere. I'm like, Man, what's that like? Cause, like, I live in Detroit, where we are the capital of the world of motor vehicles. Yeah. So our entire our entire city was built in automobile infrastructure where you have to drive everywhere. So, like, it's kind of weird to just have one car, like, have it be a one car family.
00:17:38:19 - 00:17:42:11
John Azoni
Like, yeah, we couldn't function like without two cars.
00:17:42:17 - 00:18:00:01
Heather Macbain
We definitely thought it. I think it was towards the end of the pandemic, we actually bought one of our cars just before we went into lockdown. So it was just sitting on the driveway for months and they were like, Actually, do we even need this? Like what's working life and or just life in general going to be like on the other side of this?
00:18:00:01 - 00:18:18:22
Heather Macbain
And actually we could go down to one car, but yeah, not realistic. But I would say the same is the case for people living in Edinburgh that will never drive because one of the things about our city is that it is very cosmopolitan. It is a big, major city, it is our capital city, but it is so walkable.
00:18:18:22 - 00:18:36:23
Heather Macbain
So I've got friends and family that live in the center of Edinburgh and they've never got their driver's license because actually the public transport is great. It's free for students and young people and yeah, the public transport is pretty good. So actually they just never have the need to it, which is great for the planet too.
00:18:37:11 - 00:18:54:12
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. So were you around when like this community of practice was start? Like, did you see how things were before? Like, was it just kind of like, you know, the Wild West of just people doing whatever they wanted? And then you guys were kind of like, okay, we got to rein this in, or.
00:18:55:07 - 00:19:27:10
Heather Macbain
Yeah, I would say so. I think so. I joined the university in 2019, so it's about six months before, before the pandemic across the world. And I would say there was the kind of organic start of our community of practice of what we've got now. So there was a group of marketing staff across the university, probably about 20 to 30 staff that would meet up every couple of months, and it was quite informal and it was run by our central communications and marketing team.
00:19:27:20 - 00:20:00:03
Heather Macbain
But as I say, it was very informal and it was on kind of topics that were strategic, be important in the university, and it was basically to get everybody aligned. But there was definitely it wasn't the kind of scale it is now, but there was definitely that appetite for people to come together and share and also just feel a little bit less isolated in their role because in departments and faculties and schools and things like that, sometimes we're experiencing, you know, one person being the marketing and communications person.
00:20:00:03 - 00:20:19:17
Heather Macbain
So they are doing all of that remit and they're one person sitting alongside of the professional services staff. So it can feel quite isolating and things. And you know, they're wrestling with these big problems to solve. And actually, you know, those people out there that been there, done that or have some kind of insight or lessons learned to share.
00:20:19:17 - 00:20:46:23
Heather Macbain
So it was certainly the start of something that I experienced when I came into post and we then went into lockdown. And that totally changed the game for us because what once was like the Wild West has been spoken about before and during COVID. It kind of forced us all really to pull together and create consistency that once before had.
00:20:46:23 - 00:21:25:16
Heather Macbain
And, you know, we'd always thought like, that's the vision. That's what the aim that we're trying to do here. But it was never really there was never in the mechanics around about it to actually make that happen because of our structure. But during COVID, it certainly it was, you know, top of mind for our senior leadership team, which was we need to communicate accurately, authentically, with empathy and all of these things during the pandemic to reassure our prospective students, in my case, but all of our other audiences that that we are here to support them through this, whether they can come and travel to Edinburgh or not.
00:21:25:16 - 00:21:58:17
Heather Macbain
And what we very quickly realized or we realized before that was that everybody was communicating to prospective students. There was it wasn't run through one particular department. So we had no oversight or control over the messages that were going to this to these audiences. And that was a real wake up call for us, actually, that, you know, we didn't know the information that they were getting, the accuracy of anything that was conflicting with each other.
00:21:58:17 - 00:22:20:05
Heather Macbain
So, you know, someone saying, you know, don't travel to Edinburgh because of these lockdown restrictions. And then naturally they could get an automated email half an hour later from a system somewhere in the university saying, we look forward to welcoming you to it. And you go, Oh my God, stop, stop, stop. So I think it was the pandemic really that made highlighted the need for us to pull together.
00:22:20:05 - 00:22:56:16
Heather Macbain
And actually the people that were maybe on the outskirts of the community looking and going, oh, I'm not really sure what's going on there. It's quite an Edinburgh to do that. So everybody kind of works in their own unique ways that actually they saw the benefit of us all coming together. And I was part of a group of colleagues that were really gauging the communications, giving kind of a proved wording that had been signed off by our senior leadership team that people could use in their communications to to prospective students and kind of co-ordinating that that essential response to the pandemic.
00:22:56:16 - 00:23:02:03
Heather Macbain
So that was really the pivotal moment when our community became what it is today. Really.
00:23:03:00 - 00:23:25:16
John Azoni
Okay, awesome. So how do you define and communicate a clear vision, you know, for how marketing communication efforts should look and feel and like, how detailed do you get in like setting those boundaries? Like how much autonomy do you give people over their own work and the templates they create and things like that versus how much you guys set boundaries there?
00:23:26:18 - 00:23:49:22
Heather Macbain
Yeah, it's a really good question actually. And something again, we've learned a lot from over the last few years of this work. And I would say one thing is the organizational strategy has to come first. So if you're if your work is in aligning to that, then, you know, the question could be asked, well, why are you doing that or why are you prioritizing that, that piece of work?
00:23:49:22 - 00:24:12:10
Heather Macbain
So what we try and do as much as possible in our community of practices point to what we have at Edinburgh, which is Strategy 2030, which kind of really clearly outlines the areas in particular for marketing, for student recruitment, the areas that we should be focusing on that have been set by our kind of leadership team. So that is our North Star effectively.
00:24:12:10 - 00:24:40:02
Heather Macbain
That's what we should all be working to do. Our job in the central team really is to set the kind of standards for our brand so we have the responsibility for that and the central team. So we need to make sure that all marketing and communication staff understand the brand nor who we are, how we speak, how we interact with people so that they can use that in their work and we can create a level of consistency.
00:24:40:16 - 00:25:07:19
Heather Macbain
And then I guess the other thing is that we set guidance. So there's some things I would call them, the non sexy things, which is legal compliance stuff in that kind of marketing space. So GDPR, Competition Markets Authority stuff that actually we set the guidance for that. So that takes up some of my remit working with colleagues and the team, you know, procurement regulations, all of that sort of stuff.
00:25:07:19 - 00:25:27:07
Heather Macbain
So we set guidance for that, but we also set guidance for what we should be doing on social media, what we should be doing on creating web content, video content is another one. So we do set guidance, but there is a lot of freedom there. And that and rightly so, because a lot of our subject areas have different priorities.
00:25:27:07 - 00:25:49:17
Heather Macbain
Some are looking to, you know, diversify their student intake into different markets. Some aren't looking to do that for like, you know, viable reasons or some are growing their portfolio, some are shrinking it, you know, So there's lots of different needs. There's a lot of different cultures that are going on. So there's very much freedom and autonomy in those areas.
00:25:49:17 - 00:26:15:19
Heather Macbain
And and one thing that I love about our community is that actually we have talent across the whole university. So it isn't the case that, you know, the central communications and marketing team are the experts which sometimes gets referenced. And I, you know, try where possible to correct them because they are really talented marketing and communications professionals throughout the organization.
00:26:15:19 - 00:26:44:14
Heather Macbain
And by bringing them together in this community, we can amplify their voice and get them to get others. So we've got people that have got, you know, years and years of experience in marketing positions. We've got, you know, ex creative directors from massive marketing agencies in the UK that are sitting working in a school, for example, and it's about how do they use their expertise to, to share that across our community.
00:26:44:14 - 00:27:22:20
Heather Macbain
So there is a lot of freedom that they have and that can be a challenge as well when you're trying to create this consistency. But another thing we've tried to implement as well is co-creation there about all the expertise that's dotted throughout the organization, that it's not really for the communications and marketing team to come up with some guidance on generative AI, for example, actually that our people out there in the community that have been tackling this have been using AI for a couple of years now, people that have used it for graphic design and people that have used it for other things.
00:27:22:20 - 00:27:52:16
Heather Macbain
So it's like actually how can we bring a group of people from across the community together to try and tackle this rather than it coming from Central, which actually, you know, I've spoke to, you know, people in the sector and that doesn't tend to go down very well and this kind of central versus local debate. So co-creation is something that we're very much adamant that as part of the community, because everybody's got something that they can bring to the table and advice they can give.
00:27:53:02 - 00:27:55:20
John Azoni
Yeah, for sure. That makes it definitely a lot less like top down.
00:27:56:05 - 00:27:56:16
Heather Macbain
Yeah.
00:27:56:16 - 00:28:08:10
John Azoni
Or like community focused in, you know, managing that. Did you guys have any tools or programs that you use to kind of keep all the things and people in line? Is it like Slack or some project management tool or.
00:28:09:00 - 00:28:39:11
Heather Macbain
Yeah, so we have a microsoft teams channel, so the university runs off and Microsoft teams, so we implemented that in 2021. So that's been running for a few years now and that was a move from what was an internal mailing list. So we had loads of different mailing lists set up for marketing communications staff. And what we realized in particular during COVID was that we were doing lots of broadcast out to our internal staff community.
00:28:39:11 - 00:29:03:15
Heather Macbain
So we're we're saying here's some updated guidance on how to explain vaccinations to our students or whatever it was, but we weren't getting the the two way communication, so we weren't getting feedback on it in the way that we had hoped or it was going to one particular person and the communications and marketing team. And it was ultimately their responsibility to share that.
00:29:03:15 - 00:29:35:23
Heather Macbain
Whereas what we did was we implemented a microsoft teams channel and obviously it's open to everybody. So it means that anybody can post in the channel. So communications and marketing essential colleagues can post. And when there's a significant update from the principal or a new piece of strategy or, you know, there's a day that we want to mark International Women's Day or whatever, and here's our the content that we're producing and things like that so people can post in the channel, but we can see the reactions and we can see the feedback.
00:29:36:05 - 00:29:59:01
Heather Macbain
So even down to things like that links dead like give me a portal for that or, you know, things like that. But also we can see where things are landing really well for our staff. Like I've just shared that my head of school thinks that's brilliant or, you know, we can see that like if it's resonating or not, but more valuably we can see what the hot topics are.
00:29:59:13 - 00:30:30:12
Heather Macbain
So, you know, one of the examples would be Xe. Formerly Twitter has been like the constant conversation over the last couple of years, I would say. But we've been like allowed to because of the teams channel. So to see how that is playing out with our staff and marketing and people's different perspectives because every so often someone would post in the channel about, you know, what are we thinking in terms of should we still be engaging with the, you know, what should we be doing on the platform, that kind of thing.
00:30:30:12 - 00:31:06:15
Heather Macbain
And it has evolved naturally over time. But we can see whether it's something that we think we need to build guidance on, whether we think we need to do a specific forum session on it, whether we think we need to escalate anything to leadership, whether we think we need to get a small group together to do something. But we can see the hot topics and we can see the debates that are happening so we can address it with our staff before it potentially either escalates or it just becomes a real barrier to staff being able to do their jobs effectively.
00:31:06:23 - 00:31:21:10
Heather Macbain
So that's been a huge benefit of having that channel. And I think it really provides us with content for our events and other things that we run in the community as well, because we can see what people are wanting to talk about and so yeah.
00:31:21:20 - 00:31:46:04
John Azoni
Yeah, definitely like you, one thing I've noticed in, you know, sending out, you know, email blasts in a newsletter format is that's not the place to create community because I tried to, I tried to put a community of higher ed videographers together over the last year. And it started out as just because I was like in the groove of writing newsletters.
00:31:46:04 - 00:32:03:22
John Azoni
So I'm like, Well, I'll just make this like a newsletter for now, and people can respond and, you know, we'll share industry updates and things like that and like nobody would respond to. Yeah. So I was like very hard to get feedback about like, is this helpful? Is this not helpful? Is there some other way we should be communicating?
00:32:03:22 - 00:32:25:07
John Azoni
And then it just kind of snowballed to where I'm like, I can actually manage like a whole, you know, Slack channel right now, but yeah, but I definitely find that like, yeah, people are reluctant to have a two way conversation when it's an email blast. It's very you have to just kind of be okay with like we sent the information and if anyone, you know, responds, that's a bonus.
00:32:25:14 - 00:32:54:07
Heather Macbain
Yeah. And I think, I mean, when we moved from email to the teams channel that we've got now, it was, you know, it took some convincing of some staff because they were quite happy with this. You know, I'll send this information out and actually I'll only get an email back if there's something significantly wrong with it. And actually they were worried about how time and resource intensive it would be to manage this channel.
00:32:54:07 - 00:33:15:15
Heather Macbain
And I was, to be honest, because I was the one that was that leads the community of practice and it was can it ultimately me that drove this decision and actually it manages itself. And the beauty of it is that what once was people coming to the central communications and marketing team and saying, you know, I'm looking for a videographer to help with this project.
00:33:15:15 - 00:33:55:12
Heather Macbain
Does any do you have any recommendations? They were coming to us in the central communications marketing team to do that. We were having to respond to those inquiries like behind closed doors, whereas now, I mean, even this morning we've had like similar requests into the channel and actually I've not touched it at all and we've had like replies immediately saying like, I would recommend this person or I can send you a call because something similar or just a heads up about their supplier that they're not on our finance system as It's just, it's things that were moving that that friction from from your job that everybody else actually has the expertise.
00:33:55:12 - 00:34:23:21
Heather Macbain
It's not just the central team that does so it makes the other people in marketing communications feel empowered that their voice and their expertise really counts. And matters and they can help their peers, which I think is great for professional development as well. So yeah, there's a lot of chat. I think I was doing some evaluation work audit recently and it was, you know, there's about, you know, 15 to 20 new posts in the chat and the teams channel a week.
00:34:24:06 - 00:34:47:04
Heather Macbain
And that's, that's a mixture of updates on projects or queries. So like can you find a videographer for me or you know, sharing best practice, Like we've just found out that this campaign got, you know, X amount of applications and here's how we did it. So yeah, it's a total range of things, but actually it keeps it really fresh and it's almost like that thing of for more.
00:34:47:14 - 00:35:06:09
Heather Macbain
And that's kind of where, oh yeah, after a while I was really kind of trying to lean into that, which was because some people didn't want to follow the team's channel because they were like, It's another thing to follow. And I've got email and I've got teams and I've got Slack and I've got SharePoint and I've got all of this sort of stuff, which is just the world we live in now as professionals.
00:35:06:09 - 00:35:26:01
Heather Macbain
But over time it's, it's created this formal thing which is like, actually I might have something to contribute to help someone out here or I might miss out on an update. And having it all contained in one place means that, you know, I know some people have it in their diet like every morning, like to check the channel because they might have missed something.
00:35:26:01 - 00:35:33:06
Heather Macbain
So it's organically just become that kind of destination for people to to check in on for marketing communication stuff.
00:35:33:21 - 00:35:55:17
John Azoni
Yeah I see both sides of it because I'm definitely like I love having a community to go to and ask questions. And in the video community there's a Facebook community of like commercial directors and cinematographers and stuff like they're kind of like producing video at a pretty high level and we can talk about like industry things or contract problems that come up and stuff like that.
00:35:56:02 - 00:36:32:02
John Azoni
But on the other side, like I've been stressed by like my last year we had G chat, so like you would have just constant, like everyone would need something like right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and I'm like so, like easily distract. I mean, I literally have ADHD, so I, so I'm like, it would just consume me all day, like I would have to like, turn it off and then like, I'm going to this at 9 a.m. and then at like lunchtime I'm going to check it and yeah, you know, and engage for, you know, 10 minutes and stuff like that.
00:36:32:02 - 00:36:53:06
John Azoni
So, so yeah, it becomes something that you have to strategically manage within everybody's individual personalities of like how distractible they are. But yeah, the result of it is definitely super helpful. You know, I've sort of had a resurgence of Gchat because, you know, I hired a project manager recently and her and I have been doing all of our day to day communications over Gchat.
00:36:53:06 - 00:37:05:00
John Azoni
And it's really helpful to, you know, to just like, get a quick answer on something. But, yeah, I mean, when you get a bunch of people in there chatting and needing stuff, then you got to sort of set some boundaries yourself.
00:37:05:05 - 00:37:05:13
Heather Macbain
Yeah.
00:37:06:08 - 00:37:20:07
John Azoni
Let's see. Last question for you is talk about because you put some events on for everybody to kind of come and do professional development. So tell us about those and you know what those consist of. How do you determine like what you guys talk about and stuff like that?
00:37:20:16 - 00:37:46:13
Heather Macbain
Yeah, So we started off with our what we call our monthly forums. So they really came off the back of the situation that we had pre-COVID, which was in Paris and it was 20 to 30 people meeting to, to discuss some topics so quickly pivoted during the pandemic to make them online and. As you can imagine, the content was very COVID dominated.
00:37:46:13 - 00:37:52:10
Heather Macbain
It was, you know, what is the institution doing? How were we responding? How were we communicating with our audiences?
00:37:52:10 - 00:37:57:21
John Azoni
And in a precedented was, oh yeah, yeah, to thousands of times.
00:37:57:22 - 00:38:02:11
Heather Macbain
Oh, of course, of course. Copy paste, Coffee Day.
00:38:02:11 - 00:38:07:00
John Azoni
Every every team's message started with in these unprecedented times.
00:38:08:16 - 00:38:29:11
Heather Macbain
I know when it gets real though again you they all go here we go. But yes we moved to online and as you can imagine as well, the numbers grew quite considerably because that was the forum where everybody found out really what the hell the university was doing and responding and what we as marketing communications staff should be doing.
00:38:29:13 - 00:38:51:11
Heather Macbain
So everybody kind of went left out with their to do list of what they needed to go and check with their line manager on what they were doing or communicating in their data and things. So that really helped us in terms of growing this community of practice. So we have our monthly forums, we still have them, so they run every month online and they had a mixture of updates from across the university.
00:38:51:11 - 00:39:15:16
Heather Macbain
So we'll have members of the community, but also leaders from across the university coming to give us presentations on strategic things that are happening across the university. So it might be, you know, stuff, stuff to do with our website, it might be stuff to do with our recent one was about our staff survey that we've done across the university about how communications staff can help spread the word and get involved and help promote it.
00:39:16:05 - 00:39:33:05
Heather Macbain
It might be about, you know, our student recruitment efforts from the director of student recruitment and admissions. You know, there's a range of things, but it's basically making sure that marketing communication staff are informed of what's going on and things that are likely to impact their work. I also gave a round up of the things that have happened in the teams channel.
00:39:33:05 - 00:39:57:03
Heather Macbain
So if you've missed it, then I give a verbal update of things that are still live that you might want to consider. So it might be promoting things in your like school email newsletter. It might be that you need to fill in this survey. It might be that you need to do this kind of compliance thing. You know, it could be anything, but at least as that kind of another touchpoint where people can get updated on what things that they need to do.
00:39:57:15 - 00:40:26:10
Heather Macbain
But the other side of it is that we get members of the community coming to the monthly forum to share their work. And actually it's about, you know, I've had this big when I did this campaign and you know, what drove so much more traffic to the website than we've ever seen before or the engagements were just amazing and it met our objectives or what I'm trying to encourage more in particular the this year and trying to make sure that this side of things is is showing.
00:40:26:10 - 00:40:53:05
Heather Macbain
Is that actually what about the lessons learned so some people will reluctantly come forward and say, I think I have something to share that might be useful, but it didn't really go very well. And I'm like, Well, that's great. And we need to build an environment where people feel comfortable to come forward and say, Yeah, I did this thing and I spent a bit of money and I spent about time and I actually didn't go to plan because you may not know that someone else is just about to do what you've just done.
00:40:53:09 - 00:41:21:08
Heather Macbain
So it might be advertising on a particular and I actually didn't work for that market, you know, in India, for example, or I customized my email design and actually it didn't improve my click through rates at all. So don't do it. Or here's some caveats. You might want to think about it. So it's about trying to make sure that all that intelligence and that insight is helping others and not just staying in a silo.
00:41:21:21 - 00:41:45:11
Heather Macbain
So we still do those and they're online every month. Something that we introduced last year was forum takeovers, we called them. So those were forums that were either online or in person on a particular topic. So we spent the whole forum on one particular topic because as you can imagine, there was some things that were just rising to the surface that people were like, We need to talk about this.
00:41:45:11 - 00:42:03:01
Heather Macbain
So one of them was generative. AI. Everybody was kind of chat about it and the teams channel it was coming up in so many meetings and all these sorts of things and everybody was kind of dabbling in it or on the side of actually this is going to be in the world and I'm not touching it. And I was like, Well, that's not right.
00:42:03:01 - 00:42:23:04
Heather Macbain
Well, we need to have a conversation about that. So we did a in person forum last April and we brought together an external speaker from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations who does a lot of sector engagement on a I just now we brought together some of our academics as well because we were like, we have people within the university that have been working in this space for years.
00:42:23:04 - 00:42:54:05
Heather Macbain
Like I think we've been working in generative AI or A.I. more generally for 40 years now. So we have people within our buildings have got perspective that they can bring to the table. So we put on that vision and it really helps everybody get on the same page as to what it is for to star the technology behind it, the models and the ethics behind it, so that when they're using chat, TV or other kind of platforms that they're just more mindful of what they're actually doing.
00:42:54:05 - 00:43:18:23
Heather Macbain
And it started a wave further work. So we've got a working group from the community members that are now looking at AI and producing some guidance for our staff community on it. So it's co-created with everybody and we've also done takeovers on procurement because that was becoming a hot topic of like what suppliers can I use, what threshold, like how much do I need to spend to to go with this supplier and all these sorts of things.
00:43:18:23 - 00:43:36:17
Heather Macbain
So we did a joint one with procurement because it was just becoming one of those things that they were it was constantly going in the team's channel, you know, and it just bugs people. It makes your day just yeah, ruins your day if you can. If you get your wrist slapped by procurement. So let's try and remove that.
00:43:36:17 - 00:43:37:05
Heather Macbain
Right.
00:43:37:06 - 00:43:39:02
John Azoni
That's one of the sexy topics.
00:43:39:07 - 00:44:05:22
Heather Macbain
Oh, isn't it far. It was like a one hour session with procurement with a Q&A at the end, and it was all these like niggly questions that you're just like, Can I just use a freelancer? And they're like, Well, ten. And you're like, Let's just get out there and say, Yeah, you can, yeah. And avoid this. Like, I'm going to sign up to work with this supplier and I'm going to like, hopefully don't lock catch me out like you know, like, let's just make this all transparent.
00:44:06:11 - 00:44:28:15
Heather Macbain
And we also have done ones on social media, so we have those regularly now. It's a forum session on social media specifically all about the latest, you know, changes in the the channels reporting, best practice content and all that sort of thing. And the other thing that we do now and we have done for the last few years now is do a conference.
00:44:29:00 - 00:44:52:21
Heather Macbain
So these monthly takeovers are one and a half hours every month and they're recorded in they're online. This is an opportunity once a year where we get together the whole community. So we do that in November every year and we just had our third year. So this is going to be our fourth year later this year and we bring everybody together in person and it's on a particular topic as well.
00:44:52:21 - 00:45:16:20
Heather Macbain
So it kind of follows that similar take over format style. So we've had conferences on sustainability, so that really started a wave of work within the university on marketing and communications guidance on sustainability, because you know, what we do is really carbon intensive and there's a lot of things we need to do to change our behavior to make ourselves more sustainable.
00:45:17:11 - 00:45:36:08
Heather Macbain
Last year's conference was on brand, so there was stuff that we were receiving from the community that made us realize that, you know, we need to get back to basics with what brand actually is. And it's not just a marketing thing. It's the fundamental tools to all of our roles here. And actually we all just use it in different ways.
00:45:36:08 - 00:46:02:17
Heather Macbain
So our communications team, the early easing with the press and journalists and things like that, we use an innovative different way than, you know, people on our social media, like doing our social media all day. But it's still the fundamental is the brand. So This topic for this year is still to be confirmed. But yeah, we pick a topic that's a kind of hot topic for people and aligns with the strategy and it brings together external speakers.
00:46:02:17 - 00:46:27:07
Heather Macbain
So we use people from the sector, from the chartered institutes that we work with to give that external perspective, because often in teaching we can get quite, you know, sucked into the industry and our competitors always come up in these insights and reports and, you know, the people that we're competing against for for students. But actually, you know, we need to take time to look out of of Haiti from time to time.
00:46:27:18 - 00:46:55:23
Heather Macbain
We also bring in internal speakers like senior leadership and things like that to give perspective and updates on bigger things within the university that we need to be aware of. But also last year we implemented breakout sessions. We had our community got to share their work. So again, it's another opportunity in person where people can run people through a campaign that they did, you know, and the lessons from that or an initiative that they have run, you know, and the kind of findings and evaluation from that.
00:46:55:23 - 00:47:10:21
Heather Macbain
So it's a bit all about trying to make sure the knowledge and the expertise is staying within the community. And it's going beyond just sitting in one department and it's having a kind of bigger benefit across the institution really?
00:47:10:21 - 00:47:20:03
John Azoni
Yeah, Love it. That sounds really valuable to have all the speakers and times to get together and stuff. Yeah, it's super great having you working people connect with you at.
00:47:21:05 - 00:47:36:02
Heather Macbain
Our seed length and I think that's how that's how we connected. So yeah, like probably the best place I doing a couple of events in the UK over the next few months. So yeah, I'll be posting about them on LinkedIn. So yeah, that's probably the best place to reach out.
00:47:36:18 - 00:47:47:06
John Azoni
All right. Well, definitely reach out to Heather. Folks that are listening, if you have questions about this community, a practice that she manages. But Heather, thanks for coming on the show. This is super great. Having you is a fun conversation.
00:47:47:14 - 00:47:48:22
Heather Macbain
Yeah. Thank you so much.
