News


Fri, 06/21/2024

Tracking your campaigns through UTMs

As part of our commitment to continuous improvement, we’re diving into the world of Urchin Tracking Module codes (UTM)—a powerful tool that can help enhance your digital marketing efforts. Whether you’re a faculty member, staff, or administrator, understanding UTMs can help you make data-driven decisions and optimize your online presence. ...

Tue, 04/19/2022

Welcome to the brand new brand site

More than five years has passed since we debuted the KU brand. That can only mean one thing: We’re old. We’re due for an update to the online brand center. Now, after more than a year of work, we can officially introduce you to KU Marketing’s new and improved brand...

Fri, 11/19/2021

Announcing: KU Marketing

As KU Marketing Communications, our office has done immeasurable good for the University of Kansas. We’ve helped raise enrollment, created award-winning marketing campaigns for campus partners, and established KU’s first brand platform and positioning. ...

Fri, 02/14/2020

Signing off and starting fresh: Reintroducing the KU signature

For over a year, the design team at KU Marketing Communications has been hard at work rethinking, retooling, and reconstructing all aspects of the university signature. ...

Thu, 02/13/2020

Google Analyze this

So, you’ve built a website. You’ve spent hours of hard work creating something functional and informational. You may think that the process is complete, but now it’s time to analyze how the site is performing. Luckily, KU already has Google Analytics coding on all its sites. All you need to do is start asking questions and digging into the data to find answers. Google Analytics can be overwhelming if you don’t know where to start. Here are a few key metrics you should consider tracking.
Fri, 12/20/2019

Announcing award-winning brand work

KU Marketing Communications has earned awards recently for several of its marketing pieces and campaigns. The awards, from the Kansas City chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and District VI of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), honor our continuing efforts to create strong,...

Wed, 11/20/2019

Finding the brand abroad

On a cloudy day in the Bagamoyo district of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with the Indian Ocean lapping lazily in the distance, five Jayhawks smiled for the camera. Those Jayhawks — four humans, including myself, and Hal Sandy’s blessed bird in convenient flag form — had traveled 9,000 miles to be there.
Tue, 07/09/2019

Words matter.

Writing about people from diverse backgrounds challenges both those writing and those being written about to ask themselves, “What language is fair? What is ethical? What is respectful?" As we consider how we discuss issues of identity, it’s important to note that often, the person gathering the information and creating the annual report story or the script or the news release is an outsider to the lives of the people being covered.
Thu, 06/13/2019

Four Refreshing Perspectives for Higher Ed Social Media Marketers

I recently attended the CASE Social Media Conference in Portland, which brings higher-education professionals together to share their perspectives on using social media as a marketing platform. This was my first CASE conference and I was pleased to find the presentations insightful, the presenters inspiring, and the community kind and welcoming. The conference hotel – a Hilton nestled into a downtown saturated with bizarre-yet-delightful donuts, a bookstore that spans an entire city block, and its own genus of tantalizing street food – was buzzing with enthusiastic marketers. This post explores the four most important things I learned from their stories and experiences.
Thu, 05/30/2019

Campanile Storm

In 2016 I was a new photographer at KU Marketing Communications. I had been a brand manager at Sunflower Outdoor and Bike Shop and had only been shooting for about three years. I was self-taught, so getting hired at KU was the affirmation I needed— but I wanted to prove myself as soon as I could. On the July day this photo was taken, my wife and I were chatting with a friend who was visiting from Minnesota. Through the windows in our living room, I noticed something funky happening outside and went out to look. You know how sometimes as a storm approaches the air gets calm and the light turns strange colors and creates an odd mood? I love that light, and the light was doing that thing. The ephemeral nature of ever-changing cumulonimbus clouds — boiling, rolling turbulent water vapor with a mind of its own — cares not if you got your frame, so you have to move fast. I ran back into the house. I told them, “I’m going to campus to take photos, and we have to go right now.”
Thu, 05/02/2019

#NewProfilePic

When I sat down to write this, I did a quick search on Twitter that showed over 4,000 updates to the hashtag #NewProfilePic in the previous hour. You know what it’s like – we scour our photo libraries for the perfect profile pic for our social accounts. One that is quintessentially us, one that highlights all (and only) our best features. Why? Because we want our network of friends to see us in the best possible light, one that we control.
Thu, 04/25/2019

Livestreaming made easy: How to add Facebook Live to your marketing toolbox

Fri, 03/08/2019

Winning personalities: How KU and Gen Z align

Jayhawk communicators have the wonderful challenge of communicating to and connecting with a wide variety of audiences — all while staying on brand. This year brings yet another audience into the mix: Generation Z. Using the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition, Gen Z starts with those born in 2001. That means that this fall’s incoming class of freshman will represent the first “post-Millennial” Jayhawks.
Thu, 02/28/2019

“C.T.-eh?”: A helpful glossary of marketing terms

KU communicators are constantly caught in a crossfire of marketing jargon. It’s easy to get confused, and even easier to simply nod and pretend like you know what everyone’s talking about. If that sounds like you, you’re not alone. To help, we’ve got this quick glossary of marketing terms that every communicator should know.
Mon, 01/28/2019

Looking Back: An essay by Doug Koch

In the late 1980s, I joined the Office of University Relations as photography coordinator. Like similar offices at other universities, our office had evolved from a news bureau that served both internal and external audiences. Dedicated writers, many with prior experience in the news industry, wrote stories in Associated Press news style. Photographers schooled in photojournalism attempted to walk the line between news and editorial styles.
Fri, 01/11/2019

Get it on paper

So you came to a blog to read about paper. Printed materials — while not the only means of communicating our message — are still an important component in our marketing plan.
Tue, 11/20/2018

Becoming a PowerPoint power user: 8 tips when building your “deck”

When creating a presentation, you have a great head start thanks to the awesome PowerPoint templates available on our brand site. PowerPoint is installed on nearly every campus computer, it’s free for KU community members, and it was even co-developed by a Jayhawk, Thomas Rudkin.
Thu, 09/06/2018

Making the most of having the blues

When used in print as a spot color, PMS 293 not only makes KU blue consistent across your publications, it also introduces an energy and vibrancy that instantly reads as KU. Create the same effect in your color-treated photos by using duotone presets to easily convert your photos to one of these four color combinations.
Thu, 09/06/2018

Awards for KU design work announced

Last year, KU Marketing Communications debuted KU’s first-ever brand platform, “Our Chant Rises,” after two years of concepting, creative development, testing, and refinement. This brand work, along with a mailer created for the KU Office of Admissions, received A14 awards from the Kansas City chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) in its annual design competition.
Fri, 08/31/2018

Proofing, paranoia, and precision: An editor's guide to sleeping soundly

Near the end of every major project — viewbook, campaign, website — I can predict one event with certainty: I will awaken in a panic at 3 a.m., wondering, “Did I put the right year on the cover? Is that professor’s name spelled correctly? Did we check those links?”...

Tue, 08/28/2018

Hue are U: The search for the perfect Kansas colors

Crimson and blue run through our veins. But as intrinsic to the Jayhawk identity as they feel, those colors represent a choice made after a fair bit of disagreement and controversy — a saga well documented in an article on the wonderful KU History website.
Thu, 06/28/2018

Audio for Interviews

We’ve all been there. You’re watching a beautifully shot YouTube video about sea urchins and then the ocean expert comes on screen — and it sounds like the expert is speaking through a trash can. Uh-oh. This is the nightmare we try to avoid when filming an on-camera interview. ...