University Communications

Communications @ Ohio State

Melinda Church, Vice President for University Communications

Behind the reorganization of University Communications

How could we more effectively tell Ohio State's remarkable stories? That was the central question behind the reorganization of University Communications.

Reorg 1.0 kicked in on March 1, the first milestone on a journey without end. That is the nature of marketing and communications in the context of a world that seems to spin and change faster each day. Tools. Tastes. Audiences. The stories themselves. All of it changes -- nearly every day.

For University Communications, the trick is to be nimble, to embrace the quicksilver shifts with a bring-it-on attitude -- and to configure ourselves to be more agile, more proactive, and more data-driven. But never to lose the art.

To start, we had all of the right ingredients: a team of staff members who are creative, tenacious, collaborative, and inquisitive. Today, we are renewed and reinvigorated by being gathered in work groups centered around function instead of around audience. We are asking questions that we've not asked before: How can we produce better visual stories? How can we start at the start: that is, take a great story -- say, two recent alumni who are among the Lost Boys of Sudan -- and think about how to tell it to different audiences in different ways, with the same core messages? At a University the size of many American cities, how do we ferret out those stories in the first place?

We have hit the road in search of a new and better way to communicate the spirit, passion, and discovery taking place at this extraordinary University. This is my first check-in, and no doubt we'll take some interesting detours along the way. As Andy Warhol said, "They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."