PR/Communications Work Samples Prepared for:

Situation

If you close your eyes and picture the classic American liberal arts college, that’s Miami University. Founded in 1809 in Oxford, Ohio, Miami is one of the oldest residential public universities in the country, esteemed in academic circles for possessing the educational rigor of an Ivy but the access of a public. This is supported by the University’s top national rankings, high-achieving alumni, and quintessential collegiate setting that has enchanted many, including poet Robert Frost.

While the institution has a sterling reputation in the greater Midwest, Miami faced a number of key challenges with national recognition and out-of-state student recruitment, including strong regional competition and low familiarity outside of Ohio.

Solution

As far back as 2010, Miami turned to 160over90 to articulate a distinctive brand promise, inject new relevancy, and drive reputation. We created a “Have It All” brand platform where small town meets big ambition. Where prestige and irreverence co-mingle. Where the liberal arts tradition is enriched by modern STEM programming. And where love and honor are one.

Surrounding marketing and media campaigns from 160over90 over the years have celebrated Miami’s unique commitment to providing the best undergraduate experience in the nation.

Starting in late 2020, under the direction of a new CMO, we embarked on a targeted media relations campaign to shine a spotlight on faculty research and thought leadership, subsequently moving the needle on peer and national reputation.

We started out by story-mining with faculty and researchers across campus—some 50+ experts that represent a diversity of disciplines, perspectives, and colleges and schools—and getting to intimately know their work and where they could comment on trending topics and current events. We took a look at PR moves that competitor/comparator schools were making, to better understand where there was available white space. And informed by these activities, we shaped high-level story arcs that capitalize on discrete areas of academic and research excellence at Miami University, while mirroring trending themes in the news cycle: Change Creation & Entrepreneurship, Health & Humanity, Sustainability & Saving the Environment, and Social Constructs & Social Justice.

Working from that foundation, we led an aggressive expert commentary campaign, positioning Miami researchers as foremost authorities on topics including pandemic workforce and workplace culture changes; labor shortages and supply/demand implications; companies’ environmental and corporate social responsibility goals; vaccination policies; new and evolving mental health considerations, especially in school settings; academic freedoms; issues of gender and sexual orientation; critical race theory; and much more.

In addition to storytelling at the parent Miami institution level, we also led a focused media relations campaign for the Farmer School of Business and Dean Jenny Darroch throughout 2022, further increasing Miami share of voice around “change creation” on a national stage.

Results

PR efforts since late 2020 have yielded more than 100 media placements in leading national publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, USAToday, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, TIME magazine, Ms magazine, AARP, and U.S. News and World Report, with audience reach exceeding two billion.

Situation

From commuter night school to closing in on the top 50 public school rankings, Temple University has been no stranger to growth and change over its 140-year history, and it has no intention of slowing down. Temple has always been intent on setting the pace for what institutions of higher learning should do and mean in the world.

To that end, university leadership recognized that narrative alignment across its 17 schools and colleges and thriving academic health system would be essential to catapult the institution to previously unrealized recognition. As early as 2014 and in a concerted effort ever since, Temple has partnered with 160over90 to shape and tell powerful stories of academic and research excellence across the full enterprise.

Solution

The overarching brand portrays Temple as an unbreakable educational powerhouse that ‘charges’ its students to a full capacity of knowledge, skill, and passion, and then releases them outward on a mission to drive Philadelphia and the world forward to a brighter future. A future full of cleaner air and waterways, more inclusive communities, and a revolutionary new treatment for AIDS—none of which would have been possible in a world without Temple.

Beginning in late 2020, having achieved large-scale brand alignment, 160over90 initiated an earned media campaign to tell those life-changing stories and many, many more examples of world-class research and innovative initiatives across schools and programs loudly and proudly to peers, prospective students, and potential partners and funders.

The agency tapped into a network of Temple’s brightest scholars, researchers, and thought leaders to position the university as a center of excellence in teaching, research, and healthcare, and to cement the school’s vital role as a premier, urban, R1 institution. We’ve partnered with university experts to uplift outstanding subject-matter expertise in anti-racism education and policy, gender relevance, sex discrimination, free speech, fair representation in politics, public health decision making, COVID guidance and vaccine efficacy, health literacy, pandemic preparedness, HIV Research, early childhood education, the metaverse and educational technologies, NIL and college athletics endorsements, campus safety and curbing gun violence, and more pressing issues, making national headlines and driving critical conversation.

Results

In assessing the university’s years-long investment in branding and brand alignment, we’ve seen a cumulative return on our combined efforts. Creative marketing campaigns have helped to yield increases in engagement with prospective students, smoother paths through to application, and some of the largest and most qualified classes in Temple history. We’ve also seen direct correlations between paid marketing and admissions.

On the awareness front, PR efforts have resulted in recurring coverage in major mainstream outlets including The Washington Post, Forbes, NPR, USAToday, and the Associated Press; education publications such as Inside Higher Education and The Hechinger Report; lifestyle and culture outlets including Parade and Salon; health and wellness publications including Women’s Health, Healthline, Verywell Health, and Health Central; and younger-skewing outlets like Cosmopolitan and BestColleges, amassing 2 billion total media impressions.

Situation

Emory University’s Goizueta Business School is distinctly advantaged. It traditionally sits right at or near the Top 20 rankings, but is less traditionally situated within a liberal arts institution. It’s relatively small in size, but well-resourced while residing in one of the nation’s most connected corporate markets. Still, the landscape is uber-competitive and rapidly changing. Business school models—and their marketing—have evolved more in the last decade than the 50 years prior, and coasting on prestige and programming is a thing of the past.

So in 2015, with Dean Erika James newly in place, Goizueta engaged 160over90 on a branding and marketing initiative originally intended to beat the competition and boost the MBA applicant pool, but ultimately equipped to reboot the category.

Solution

In building the brand, 160over90 honed in on the intrinsic correlation between virtuous business practice and public benefit—a commitment uniquely carried out by Goizueta Business School. The school’s namesake, Roberto Goizueta—former chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola—is one of the most respected business leaders of the 20th century, famed for creating shareholder value but also for stewarding an organization that puts people first. And Dean James—an award-winning educator and crisis management researcher—had long espoused the power of principled leadership.

With this in mind, rather than simply react to the changing needs of prospective MBA students, we helped Goizueta and Dean James proactively answer the call of industry and focus attention on business’ true purpose—to operate in service to society at large, improving quality of life for all.

We crafted a values-driven Goizueta Beyond marketing campaign that hit airwaves, online, and out-of-home, inviting future students and fellow business leaders to go beyond the profits, beyond the bottom line, and beyond a transactional business education.

We built a dedicated brand site, goizuetabeyond.com, featuring stories that embody empowerment, creativity, empathy, and the continual pursuit of better in business.

To underscore Goizueta’s principled approach to education, we penned 100 business principles that Goizueta looks to live out every day—like “making a living and saving a life should coincide,” and “integrity is the expectation, not the exception.”

We worked with Dean James to champion a “Virtue Capitalism” platform punctuated by open letters to business, local and national media placements, and a series of high-profile industry speaking engagements.

And in late 2019, we concepted, copywrote, designed, and printed an anniversary impact report [doubling as a commemorative, high-end coffee-table book] that encapsulates all that Goizueta Business School stands for and has done in service of a better society—what we coined “The Goizueta Effect.” It debuted at a formal anniversary celebration event, planned and presented in coordination with The Goizueta Foundation to honor Roberto Goizueta’s legacy.

Results

Our work and five-year partnership have yielded year-over-year growth in program interest, peer perception, and corporate partnerships/philanthropic support. Goizueta has seen a double-digit increase in leads across MBA programs, notably in entrepreneurship and social enterprise, as well as a marked increase in quality/fit of candidates.

And the Goizueta Beyond campaign and associated efforts contributed to a $30 million gift from The Goizueta Foundation in December 2019—the largest gift in Goizueta school history.

While Dean James moved on to Wharton as of July 1, 2020, we’re confident the Goizueta brand positioning and the aptly named “Goizueta Effect” will continue well into the years ahead.

Situation

They say “what starts here changes the world” at the University of Texas at Austin. And Dean Lillian Mills of the Texas McCombs School of Business whole-heartedly believes that to be true. 

A top-ranked tax and accounting scholar and an award-winning educator, she spent 15 years teaching and researching at McCombs. She stepped into the role of Interim Dean in April 2020, at the very height of the pandemic, following the appointment of Jay Hartzell as president. And she was named permanent Dean in June 2021—the first woman to fill the deanship in McCombs’ 100-year history. 

Heading into the school’s second century, having already achieved regional powerhouse status, Dean Mills and McCombs had its sights set on emerging as an elite national contender with serious global impact. 

Solution

McCombs and 160over90 had been working together since 2019 to craft a brand narrative and put stories of humanity, optimism, agility, ambition, and entrepreneurship into market under the banner of “Make It Here”: equal parts invitation and call-to-action. 

In late 2021, we turned our attention to developing a complementary communications platform for Dean Mills that would further humanize the McCombs story, give new and powerful voice to the school’s value proposition, and advance category thought leadership. 

In the course of extensive Discovery conversations—including time spent not only on campus but around the dinner table with Dean Mills and her family—we were introduced to the Dean’s tremendous character and larger-than-life personality. We experienced, firsthand, her ‘superpower’ of quickly and deeply connecting with individuals, and her incredible capacity to make people feel heard and seen. We studied up on her many accomplishments in the field of accounting and learned how her subject matter training is formative to her communications style. And we came away with a clear understanding that, more than a career, working in the academy and at McCombs is a form of service—not in service of her ego, but purely in service of the institution and the people who comprise it. 

We went on to build a strategic communications framework for Dean Mills centered on the idea of being “Here for It”—which at once encapsulates her energy, positive attitude, and driving ambition in the deanship and creates a clear through-line to McCombs’ and UT Austin’s brand promise. 

In subsequent communications planning, we gave extensive consideration to who Dean Mills would be talking to, how she could best reach them, what she wanted to communicate, and what audiences might be most receptive to hearing. In that vein, we identified and prioritized key audience segments and articulated communications goals for each. We then crafted four discrete and detailed story arcs—on the Abundance Mindset, Innovation Economy, Business EQ, and what we called the Objectivity Principle—to allow Dean Mills to speak from a place of deep business expertise and personal passion. And we mutually took inventory of communications channels and built out a distribution plan across earned, owned, and shared media. 

We then built out a voice, tone, look, and feel for all Dean’s communications—one that visually connects to the master McCombs brand but clearly signifies messaging from the Office of the Dean—and trained both the Dean herself and senior communicators in how to optimally work within the communications platform. 

Results

As of early 2023, we’ve implemented a new content marketing and social media graphics package, custom-made a branded presentation template, and specially designed thank-you cards for the Dean. We’re currently updating the Dean’s web presence to best reflect her communications platform. And from an earned media perspective, we’ve secured earned media in Fortune, Poets & Quants, Bloomberg, and more to share the Dean’s strategic priorities and unique perspective with the world. 

Situation

The University of Vermont was long one of New England’s best kept secrets. Situated on the edge of Burlington, near Lake Champlain, not far from Stowe Mountain, UVM had been building an incredible academic ecosystem undergirded by an on-campus medical center, a multi-million-dollar STEM-building project, and a state-of-the-art residential wellness community. But associations with Phish, Ben and Jerry’s, Patagonia, and epic snowboarding were eclipsing stories of cancer treatment breakthroughs, interdisciplinary food system collaborations, and a record number of Peace Corps volunteers. And that didn’t gibe well with UVM’s 2013 strategic plan, which called for increased admissions selectivity and a higher-performing class.

Then-Provost and Senior Vice President David Rosowksy understood that redefining the institution’s brand and market position was essential to reaching its goals, so he brought on 160over90 in 2015 to help reconcile lifestyle and learning excellence.

Solution

The agency launched an extensive awareness and perception study, polling influencers and more than two dozen peer institutions as part of a 2,680-person online survey. We measured the importance and perception of things like Public Ivy status, location/environment, and global connectivity, and found that UVM ranked well for ‘softer’ attributes—supportive community, opportunities for individual betterment, experiential learning—but scored lower on outstanding faculty and highly ranked academic programs. We also sent researchers to campus for a week of in-person, qualitative interviews with key members of the UVM community, hearing stories of students as adept at leading class projects as leading outdoor excursions, and brilliant and empathetic professors who double as published researchers.

We came out of the research confident that UVM could substantiate academic quality, but to put it into market in the most credible way, we recommended building on the school’s current brand equity and overlaying proof points around educational rigor. Ultimately, we built the brand on the notion of ‘Elevating Humankind,’ pushing beyond location and lifestyle to position UVM as a unique universe of active learning opportunities, specially curated to benefit students and society.

Having established a master brand narrative, we first applied it to enrollment marketing efforts. Then, over the course of three years, we tapped into individual academic and business units—the College of Medicine, as well as the Grossman School of Business, the Gund Institute for Environment, Athletics, and more—equipping communicators with messaging and creative deliverables to embody and authentically extend the ‘Elevating Humankind’ narrative.

The College of Medicine presented a unique opportunity. It has educated physicians and scientists, conducted world-class biomedical research, and partnered in caring for patients and their families for 200 years. And in September 2016, it celebrated a historic milestone—an alum and supporter, Dr. Robert Larner, donated $100 million to the College of Medicine. This act inspired the Board of Trustees to name the medical school after Dr. Larner, which was the first occasion in the U.S. when a medical school was named to honor an alumnus physician donor.

160over90 leveraged the timeliness of the gift and naming to accelerate a transformation in medical education and, along the way, advance Larner College of Medicine’s national and peer reputation; enhance the quality and diversity of prospective students; and achieve a fundraising goal of $118 million. We helped the College take a bold stand on what it means to elevate the human condition by crafting powerful, authentic stories focused on four core areas of strength—Public and Population Health, Mindfulness, Diversity & Inclusion, and Active Learning—and taking them to market through earned, owned, and shared media. We secured national media attention for faculty experts and researchers. Concepted and created a dedicated active learning social media campaign, mobilizing channels like Instagram to showcase one of the College’s major differentiators. And developed and designed a special donor piece tied to the name change.

Results

For the College of Medicine, the Agency earned placements in Forbes, the Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News, and more, totaling 164 million media impressions in six months’ time. And the College was named to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Top 50 list of philanthropic gifts.

Our research and resulting brand work paved the way for the largest, most academically talented, most diverse class in Larner College of Medicine history and in UVM history. For UVM at large, average GPAs and SAT scores reached an all-time high, and the incoming class comprises students from 41 states and 18 countries, representing a double-digit increase in international enrollment. The school’s tuition revenue margin also increased by $6 million.

Situation

For nearly 200 years, a Yale Law School education has served as an all-purpose thinking degree, training students to lead in a remarkable range of sectors. In 2022, the school was readying to build upon its storied history to empower the next generation of mission-driven leaders with the launch of The Joseph C. Tsai Leadership Program at Yale Law School. As an established University partner, 160over90 was called on to strategically position, message, and market the program in a way that would resonate with some of the world’s most discerning students.

Solution

Yale Law School has always been imbued with a restless spirit, and change is built into its institutional DNA. The agency went about articulating the Tsai Leadership Program as an initiative that would preserve Yale Law’s core educational model while building a curriculum for the next century.

The resulting core message to prospective students and supporters was this: Amid a devastating pandemic, with vitally important issues like racial inequality and climate change demanding urgent action, The Tsai Leadership Program aims to equip every student with the skills required to address the most vexing global challenges. Lighting up the many career paths available to students and connecting them to Yale Law’s incredible alumni community will help level the playing field, meet students where they are, and get them to where they want to be.

160over90 brought the Program to life through intensely personal creative showcasing traditional and nontraditional pathways to leadership from a legal education, appealing to intellectually curious and empathetic students motivated to serve society’s evolving needs.

We developed a dedicated Yale Law School Tsai Leadership Program website, and wrote, produced, and edited an anthem video detailing the Program’s commitment to reframing the future of legal education and equipping students to create a more equitable and just future for all.

And we wrote program launch announcements and seminal press materials, and helped to secure strategic coverage in the National Law Journal and Reuters around the programs’ debut.

Results

The inaugural slate of Tsai Leadership Program courses began in Fall 2021, and was open to every Yale Law student. Ludwig and Chae Fellowships started in Spring ’22, enabling students who want to drill down into public or private sector programs to engage further. The Program is currently in its second year and is rolling out a robust series of events, workshops, and academic and professional networking opportunities to benefit a broad cross-section of students.

Situation

Rich histories are the foundation of historically black colleges and universities; a source of incredible pride and a driver of shared purpose. But what makes an HBCU stand out today is providing answers for the present and insights for the future.

In 2021, under new University leadership, Alabama A&M University was looking forward to two major milestones: the launch of its first comprehensive fundraising campaign and the celebration of its sesquicentennial.

To articulate a storied excellence narrative and, most importantly, a clear vision for the future, Alabama A&M invited 160over90 to build an institutional brand platform and campaign brand that would concurrently raise funds and reputation.

Solution

Utilizing education to better the state of Black people is what Alabama A&M was founded on. With this in mind, we developed a brand strategy for Alabama A&M built on the idea that “exposure leads to ascendancy.” Exposure—to new narratives of who they are, new ideas of what they can become, new opportunities that embrace their greatness, new challenges that force them to grow together, new examples of success that break the mold—would point the university to new heights.

In that vein, we built a creative brand platform, “From the Hill,” that weaves a powerful narrative of seeing and being seen, reaching not only for but past the sky, and moving mountains.

At the same time we launched a PR & public storytelling campaign, intently focused on elevating storylines of Alabama A&M’s demonstrated investment in education for the socially and economically disadvantaged—rising to the challenges of this particular moment in history, and naturally building on the University’s core values and longstanding leadership in the space. 

In the absence of a defined storytelling culture, we mined for stories across the university ecosystem, meeting with leadership, trustees, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and corporate partners. We unearthed incredible work—and equally incredible perspective—on timely issues like college access and affordability, Black student mobility, the ever-widening ethnicity gap in STEM fields, recruiting and retaining diverse faculty, and teaching cultural understanding in an increasingly complex world. And for the past year and a half, working intently with faculty experts, we’ve been taking those stories to both higher education trades and national mainstream press, staking claims of excellence and clearing a path to ascendancy

Results

Within the PR campaign, we’ve successfully positioned leadership and faculty experts on a national stage, drawing unprecedented levels of attention to Alabama A&M’s academic and research achievements. We’ve earned national media attention in TIME magazine, Bloomberg, and The Plug, and regularly contributed commentary to the Chronicle of Higher Education, University Business, Diverse Issues in Higher Education, and Best Colleges. In 2024, coverage is forthcoming in ABC News, Forbes, and more.