Asking students, faculty, staff and alumni whether a university seems more masculine or feminine might be an unusual question, unless you are trying to trigger an emotional response.
Kevin Goldthorp, vice-president (External), is engaged in a seven-month project to develop a new communications and positioning strategy for Western, which includes a controversial survey and restructuing of the External portfolio, as well as re-evaluating the $500-million fundraising campaign.
That’s exactly what Kevin Goldthorp was trying to do.
Goldthorp, vice-president (external) at The University of Western Ontario, has taken some heat for an unconventional online survey randomly distributed this past summer. The survey is part of larger, seven-month project to develop a new communications and positioning strategy for Western.
“This is about creating a guidepost so that every cent we spend going forward is going to be on strategy, on message and will be a good use of scarce university resources,” Goldthorp says. “We are developing a better understanding of how Western is perceived by all of our stakeholder groups.”
To accomplish this, Western contracted with Level 5 Strategic Brand Advisors of Toronto. The total cost of the contract (of which the survey is a part) was $265,000. This money came from the advertising/communications budget for Western’s $500-million fundraising campaign.
While this seems like a lot, Goldthorp argues it is money well spent and will show its worth in donation dollars.
“If others think we don’t have to spend money on this right now, they’re wrong. We need to do this; we need to do it now. We need to be better than our peer universities.”
The survey was sent randomly to 40,000 staff, faculty, students and alumni by e-mail. Of that number, 4,500 people responded. Not everyone received the same questions.
Based on results, Western hopes to understand how the university is perceived through the messages it has communicated in recent years. This will inform the development of a new communications strategy.
“It is an exceptionally competitive world out there,” says Goldthorp, noting many voices are contending for funding, partnerships and faculty/students. “We are sending out right now messages that do not have a guidepost about the few major ideas we want to communicate to our external constituents. The result is an extremely diffused and poorly understood positioning of Western.
“Our outcome is not a new logo or tagline,” he adds, “although this is not ruled out as a possible secondary result. Rather, the goal is to establish a core theme, such as Western’s research prowess, which will become the underlying basis for all communications.”
Goldthorp defends the controversial survey as one way to directly answer questions about the emotional perception of the university – something difficult to measure.
Deciding to attend one university over another is often immediately based on an emotional reaction, which is later rationalized, he says. In other applications, such as understanding the efficacy of anti-smoking messaging, the unorthodox survey has proven to be extremely effective, Goldthorp explains.
The university isn’t going to make decisions based on the answer of whether Western is considered more male or female. The more than 200 emotional attributes charted by the survey will be mapped using a mathematical formula to provide a visual portrayal of the institution.
“We are getting quantitative data that is collaborating a lot of anecdotal evidence,” he says.
The survey responses will not be made public because it is of core strategic importance to the university, says Goldthorp. “Being displayed publically for other universities to analyze would not be in the best interest of the university.”
Despite this, Western has placed significant value on being transparent and open. In order to disclose information about the process without compromising the university’s findings, Goldthorp will present a summary to Senate likely in December. Everyone who was solicited to answer the survey will also receive a short summary of the direction of top-level findings.
By December Goldthorp expects to have boiled down the data into a clear, core statement that will be applied to future communications. In the New Year, recommendations will be made to the university governing bodies on implementation.
“What we do is under-recognized by our marketplace,” he says. “The survey is one piece of the work. Let’s not get distracted by a side issue of whether or not you like or did not like the survey, its methodologies. The real focus here is the impact we must have on communications or this university will suffer tremendously.”
Much of the information gained from this project will be used to inform Western’s communications strategy for the $500-million fundraising campaign. To date, Western has raised $190 million, which is behind the initially planned pace for fundraising.
Given that the campaign was planned prior to the financial crisis and leadership changes at Western, Goldthorp is satisfied with what has been raised so far and plans to ramp up the campaign to get back on track.
The university is undergoing a formal reevaluation of the campaign, including what the campaign is raising money for (particularly to align with themes of internationalization, leadership, and focus on areas of strength that will have international impact), how much money to raise and how much time is needed to achieve these goals. The fundraising target will also focus on increasing the number of endowed chairs and undergraduate and graduate student scholarships.
Goldthorp is also restructuring the External portfolio to align staff with these new objectives. His decision to restructure was based on one-on-one interviews with staff and observations of opportunities and gaps the portfolio’s performance, as we as a review of best practices for structuring advancement work based on examples at Canadian and American universities.
As a result, Goldthorp has brought together the Alumni Relations and Development portfolios and centralized writing functions within the Department of Communications and Public Affairs.
“Hopefully what they will see in the outcomes of our work is a shift in emphasis that is more engaging, more interactive, better hits on the strengths of the university and makes all members of our community even more proud to work at Western,” he says.