Education PR Blog

Our Prime Minister, (I can’t believe I’m saying this) Boris Johnson, has had a challenging few weeks to say the least. He’s currently engulfed in a PR nightmare for the ages, and every day the situation for poor Boris seems to get worse. However, I don’t really feel sorry for him, as he’s brought it all on himself. He has successfully become one of the most divisive political figures of the last 30 years, and he’s only been in office since the end of July.

Life is busy, and it’s very easy to come into work and go about your daily routine, Monday to Friday, sitting at the comfort of your desk. Drafting press releases, writing articles, and sifting through the vast amount of emails you may receive every day is time consuming, and it’s therefore understandable why you may ignore an invitation to a conference or networking event.

The media is constantly changing as a result of digitalisation. The internet has become the go-to news platform, meaning getting news is quicker and easier than ever. As a result, journalists are now busier than before, so as a PR professional it’s even harder to get a response. The relationship between journalists and PR professionals is key to being successful in PR, our job is to get results and the only way this works is if journalists cooperate with us.

You have finally written the perfect pitch; catchy headline, fascinating content, and sent it out to a plethora of relevant journalists. Then, a journalist responds, interested in featuring a piece from your client. But what do you do next?

Producing innovative and influential academic research is one of the best ways a business school can make itself stand out in a crowded market. In fact, academic research is now so important to a business school’s brand that leading business education news site, Poets & Quants, recently created a new ranking selecting the top 100 business schools for academic research in the world. And it’s no surprise that globally known brands, such as Harvard, Wharton and NYU Stern, finished at the top for academic research too. It’s clear that both a strong brand and strong, impactful academic research go hand in hand in the business school world.

One of Europe’s largest countries, Germany is located in north-central Europe and has a population of more than 80 million people. At its spiritual heart is the capital city of Berlin – just one of the draws which bring millions of visitors to the country each year. And it’s a country known for its people’s devotion to hard work, who place a high value on leisure, culture and a free press, and enjoy the benefits of life in a liberal democracy that has become ever more integrated with and central to a united Europe.

The UK has a vast media landscape With a population of over 66 million, and over 100 daily and 450 non-daily newspapers, the UK is a nation of avid media consumers. Dating back to the 1620’s, the UK press has extensive history, and continues to be one of the most respected, diverse, and widely read national press across the globe.

The Republic of Ireland occupies 26 of the 32 counties which make up Ireland, Europe’s second-largest island, with one-third of the country’s entire population residing in the greater Dublin area. Although it shares an island and a border with Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, it is not itself a part of the UK. Therefore, the Republic of Ireland has its own unique media landscape with a massively developing technology and business sector, making the Emerald Isle an up and coming destination for many international higher education students.

With a population of just over 329 million people, making it the third most populous country in the world, the USA is clearly going to be a key media target for any institution. But, more importantly, according to GMAC’s 2018 Applications Trends survey, 140,000 out of an overall 290,000 business school applications last year came from US-based applicants – over three times the size of applicants in Europe alone.

France is at the heart of Western Europe. Historically and culturally among the most important nations in the Western world, France has played a significant role in international affairs, with former colonies in every corner of the globe, and remains one of the world’s leading industrial powers. It’s home to around 66 million people that support the EU's second largest economy and enjoy reading some of the world’s most respected media publications.

India is the second most populated country in the world. It has an astounding diversity of religions, languages and cultures. Along with this, India has a flourishing media scene, with thousands of outlets operating in multiple languages. The mainstream media has more freedom that even before. The use of social media has grown exponentially with the increase in availability of technology. As a result, the media industry in India has expanded tremendously, so now is the time to focus on public relations and secure some great coverage.

China is home to an estimated 1.3 Billion people, is the world’s second largest economy and has one of the one of the largest media markets in the world. Unsurprisingly, being able to tap into it is a highly appealing prospect for any higher education institution.

Business education conferences can be very productive, but they can be a stressful experience if you do not prepare properly.

Whether it’s for a short-term project or long-term support, are you considering hiring a PR agency? If so, how’s the best way to go about this as a university?

There are no two ways about it, creating great, insightful content for your institution is always a good thing. However, it is extremely difficult to measure how much of real impact each piece of content actually has on the reader and whether or not this has a long-lasting effect.

Its trendy at the moment to say the ‘press release is dead’. And while I would agree that the media industry has gone through a dramatic shift in recent years, that doesn’t necessarily mean the demise of the press release. The problem is there’s a lot of wordy press releases sent to the wrong people which ultimately end up in the deleted folder of journalist’s emails. I think it’s fair to say that press releases have a PR problem. However, if it’s done right, the trusty press release is still a quick and effective way to target relevant journalists with just the information you want.

Whether accompanying MBA students on international study trips, attending overseas recruitment fairs or speaking at industry events, such excursions provide the ideal opportunity to raise the profile of their school on a wider scale by engaging with local media.

You’re looking for a PR firm to help out with your international PR efforts and come across a firm that states “we have offices based in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris and Berlin, in order to penetrate our key markets in the most effective way possible”.

Why we tell MBA stories to increase applications for Business Schools Storytelling is often considered vital for human survival. It’s how we have communicated since we were sat in caves – I think it is just as important now as it was then. And in the world of PR there often needs to be an emphasis on storytelling over selling.

Business schools and universities are successful for a whole host of reasons – their longevity, their location, their contribution to the society around them, but their life blood is the quality of their teaching and research – and for this they need the best academics.

Return on Investment. The crux of so many PR client meetings. Gone are the days of walking into a client’s office with a stack of newspapers that they’ve been featured in since the beginning of your contract; no longer can the value of PR be realistically measured by how much the table shakes when you drop that stack of coverage. So, how can it be measured?

In November, I had the pleasure of hearing from and spending time with representatives from some of Europe’s best and well-known business schools, at the GMAC European Conference in Berlin.

When sending a pitch to a journalist, what’s the first thing you need to check before hitting send? Checking your information is accurate perhaps? Making sure it’s short, swift and to the point? Making sure you’ve spelled their name correctly?

The appetite for academic research in the media is huge. Studies and statistics lend credibility to comment pieces and provide great insight into current trends. But it’s not quite as straight forward as throwing dissertations at journalists!

Hans Christian Andersen once famously said that ‘to travel is to live’. And while my grandmother never left the British Isles – she was genuinely even afraid to cross big bridges near her home in the countryside – we now live in a world with sprawling cities, where we regularly board planes, cross borders and travel the world.

As a specialist PR agency in the business education market, there are plenty of reasons why schools choose to bring us on board. If you’re considering hiring a specialist consultancy like us too (or you’re just here out of professional curiosity) then it’s probably time to look more closely at what having an agency’s support could achieve. With institutions having such wildly varying goals, here are a number of reasons why a business school might want to work with us: Raising the profile of a key member of faculty – perhaps the Dean of the business school or a renowned academic. Getting coverage in the press that hits both the quantity and quality mark can effectively boost a significant person’s profile. We often use the example of securing an op-ed for a professor in The Guardian that lead to him being inviting to speak at the World Economic Forum. Results like this speak for themselves. Boosting applications for certain programmes – are application numbers for your MBA lower than you’d like them to be? Get that course into the right press – show off your students, highlight that incredible alumni, position that academic lead – and watch the knock-on effect of climbing student application numbers. Appealing to quality students - Your EMBA not getting the quality of applicant that you really desire? Are you in need of better scholarship applicants? Placing articles within the right media outlets, like the Financial Times or The Economist, can attract a high calibre student. Numbers aren’t everything after all, getting quality applicants is vital.

This last week has provided a lot of PR fails - which have been so awful, they have literally made headlines themselves. Here are my top three. Melania Trump The first, and possibly the worst, PR fail is Melania Trump’s jacket. It’s fair to say that President Trump and the first lady have faced a lot of criticism, but somehow, I think wearing a jacket to visit a migrant child detention centre that says ‘I really don’t care, do you?’ is possibly one of the most insensitive things Melania could have done. Unfortunately for her, Melania Trump's apparently empathetic visit to the Mexican border is now completely overshadowed by the unempathetic message on the back of her jacket. Burger King Another embarrassing PR fail this week comes from Russian Burger King. Obviously seizing the opportunity to make headlines with the world’s media spotlight on Russia thanks to the World Cup, Burger King Russia decided to create a social media campaign offering free burgers for life to women who get pregnant by a football player. “Each will receive 3 million rubles, and a lifelong supply of Whoppers. For these girls, it will be possible to get the best football genes and will lay down the success of the Russian national team on several generations ahead. Forward! We believe in you!" Burger King in Russia have since apologised for the social media campaign. I would have thought that Burger King wouldn’t want to encourage Russia having a bad reputation for playing on sexist stereotypes, particularly in advertising, but this campaign really felt like something from the 1950’s.

There are more than 496 million blogs on Tumblr alone. Although this statistic may feel intimidating and evoke a sense of shouting into the void, business schools should actively try and engage with blogging. But why?

So, you secured a fantastic media opportunity for your institution and it has just resulted in a great piece of coverage, whether that’s print, online, or broadcast. How do you ensure that this coverage is generating the readership and getting the attention it deserves? Well, this is where social media comes in.

Meeting deadlines is vital. It is not rocket science to see why this is such an important rule in PR.

The business education market is becoming increasingly crowded every year – with over 16,000 business schools in the world currently according to AACSB International – so you have the tough task of convincing students, corporate partners and faculty that your school is the right one for them.

Social media platform Twitter boasts over 330 million global users, and has quickly become the go to site for journalists, PRs and the general population, to view and share news. With around three quarters of journalists using Twitter every day and over 70% of them stating that Twitter is a valuable professional tool, it harnesses the potential to be a great platform for PRs to utilise, to the benefit of themselves and their clients.

The media and its approach to news has changed, it’s not enough to churn out a press release and hope it will be picked up by established media such as The Financial Times, Times, Telegraph and Guardian.

Relationship building is key when it comes to gaining success in public relations – especially in the world of business schools.

Now is the time to make some professional resolutions which will make you a better, more productive PR person.

From the Daily Mirror to the Wall Street Journal, pretty much every widely-read newspaper uses clear language for their readers.

Avoiding disaster, navigating networking, and pitching like a pro – what advice would our BlueSky team have for the world of the PR professional?

Journalist’s jobs are becoming more and more time-pressed, with their inboxes increasingly flooded with PR’s pitches. Now more than ever, for a journalist to buy into a pitch, it needs to capture their attention. But how as a PR can you make your pitch stand out from the crowd ? Make sure it's newsworthy Journalists are inundated with pitches daily, so ones that are boring, uninteresting, and un-newsworthy are destined to fail before they’ve even been sent. ‘The 5 best paints to watch dry’, for example, will never get coverage no matter how amazing your pitch is, or how slow a news week it has been. It is a PR’s responsibility to evaluate whether or not their story is newsworthy before pitching it. Deciding this beforehand stops you from wasting both yours and the journalist’s time, and avoids disappointment when your efforts inevitably fail to deliver results. Have a creative, engaging headline The first part of a pitch that a journalist will read is the headline, and many journalists will decide whether or not they will bother to read on purely based on how interesting that headline is. This is why it is important you pay as much attention to crafting an effective email header as you do to your pitch, as this will encourage the journalist to read more. Make it relevant You could write the most amazing pitch in the world, but if it isn’t pitched to the right publication, it will never be read. For instance, a pitch about a world-changing bacon product that actually makes you lose weight (if only!!), will never be read if you’re pitching it to ‘The Vegetarian News’. Of course this is an extreme example, however it has its relevance. It is important that, as a PR, you research exactly which publications are interested in the news you wish to share and, more importantly, which journalists from these publications are writing about it. This does take time, but it is a worthwhile exercise. After all, it is far better to pitch to five relevant journalists than scatter your pitch to 50 journalists who are not. Make it short and snappy Journalists barely have time in their day to open all their e-mails, let alone read them thoroughly. So, what makes you think they will have time to read your pitch, which is as long as a thesis? You must make your pitch short, snappy and to the point, summarising the story and ensuring the journalist can fully understand its significance. Cut out all of the unnecessary information – a journalist will not want to read waffle. It is important to ensure that every single word in your pitch is carefully selected leaving the journalist wanting to know more. A pitch should be like a wine tasting, the journalist should have a small glass, and want to come back to you for the whole bottle. Do not oversell

Business and politics have intertwined for thousands of years, to the point where they are almost impossible to unpick.

Any PR and communications professional will agree that securing media interest and coverage for your faculty can been a time-consuming project. On many occasions, it can be tempting to just read the synopsis of the research they give you, draft a quick email and fire it off to a number of journalists. But this doesn’t always work.

Not all news is news. And any PR professional doing their job properly knows that securing quality media coverage isn’t just about flinging every bit of information a client shares with them out into the world and hoping some of it gets noticed. We spend a great deal of time sifting through the information our clients share with us to find the stories that will make the best impact with their target audiences. But sometimes those stories that can be media gold aren’t always the easiest to spot, or even the easiest to communicate clearly and convincingly to your press contacts. To stand the best chance of success, there are five ingredients that need to be included in your pitches... 1. A clear focus What are you trying to communicate? Consider the information you are sharing and keep the message as clear, and simplistic as possible. Your pitch cannot be too lengthy or have too many tangents. A time-pressed journalist needs to be able to scan your pitch and immediately identify what you/your client is offering, and what their angle on that topic is. 2. Relevance It might sound obvious, but you’ve got to know your audience. Before pitching take the steps to ensure that the information you’re sharing with journalists is something which will appeal to each of their individual areas of expertise. What are they writing about? Have they already covered the topic you’re sharing? 3. A strong spokesperson… The ideas you put forward in your pitch are only as strong as the person who voices them. It is vital to ensure you pitch a person who can speak confidently and eloquently with the media, and have the experience and expertise to lend authority to their perspectives. 4. …With something new to say! It’s no good having a strong spokesperson if they’re only able to tell a journalist what they already know. Take the time to craft a new angle on the topic at hand with your spokesperson in order to provide your media targets with a fresh way of telling, or adding to a story.

PR and communications teams within business schools and universities can face numerous challenges. However, there are a few hurdles that all PR teams across the board would resonate with.

You have to believe in it yourself before you can convince other people of the power of PR and to become a PR champion.

‘Fake news’ is a phrase that has unfortunately grown in popularity over the last four years thanks to Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States.

This post was originally published 23/01/2014 but after revamping the images we share via social media alongside our content this week, it occurred to me that it's perhaps even more relevant today.

When you step into the role of media spokesperson, it is full of challenges and pitfalls that could prove costly. But rather than viewing the dangers, it should be seen as the land of opportunity that can take your organisation forward. It is the chance to enhance your school’s brand and reputation.

The art of writing catchy headlines is the difference between your article, or blog, reaching the eyes of your targeted readers or disappearing into the ether as they scroll or flick disinterestedly past. Learning how to write a headline really is key to both PR and content marketing.

Sometimes, no matter how much effort you put in, things just don’t work out. You might think your client is the ideal person to feature in a journalist’s article about the advancements of online education or the gender pay gap, you’ve swiftly pitched them to the journalist listing their various attributes, and you might have even submitted a comment or secured a phone interview. But, when the article is published your client has not managed to make it into the text - so why don't journalists quote your client? It's frustrating? Yes. And it can happen for a myriad of reasons, many of which might be outside of your control – for example the journalist might not have had enough space within the word count to squeeze in your client’s comments. But there might be a little more to it. Are you doing all you can to give your client the best chance possible of being quoted? Being proactive and quick to jump on a news story is only part of the process. Keeping these four checkpoints in mind when pitching your clients to the media, whilst not guaranteeing a positive result every time, can help to reduce the number of occasions where your client is left disappointed.

It’s hard to remember a time when Donald Trump was not dominating the daily news cycle, all he has to do is tweet – although it’s often controversial – and it goes viral.