FLC In-house creative team

FLC In-House Creative Team

At Fort Lewis College, we have a centralized marketing department that works as an in-house agency and serves all of campus. Our top priorities are Admission, Advancement, and the Office of the President. When we have capacity, we also handle all internal institutional communications, department-level marketing, and external-facing campaigns. We are the ultimate brand managers and develop the brand reputation strategy for the institution as a whole. In addition to full service marketing services, we consult, collaborate, and develop marketing assets that serve all of campus.

Staff

My team consists of 11 full-time experts including a photographer, videographer, designer, art director, brand and licensing manager, web developer, web designer, web content writer, social media manager, and a media strategist/PIO in addition to 8-10 part-time student interns. The intern team was one of my signature initiatives, and it has been an exceptional addition to the department. Each member of our team mentors at least one student intern with the goal of helping them become technical experts in their fields, knowledgeable marketers, creative storytellers, and valued contributors to our collective work as a department.

Culture

We are most impactful when we leverage our unique perspectives and creativity to work together as a diverse and innovative team. That requires a culture with three foundational commitments:

Honest feedback: we regularly offer one another open and honest feedback on all aspects of our jobs from our creativity to our professionalism.
Customer service: we provide customer service that most often exceeds the expectations of our campus partners.
Professional development: I encourage self-advocacy and ambition for professional development where a hunger for learning is the norm.

I reinforce this culture at every turn so that my team feels heard and valued. That translates into staff retention, bold marketing, and satisfied campus partners.

Results

Given our intentional and impactful content strategy, we are seeing increased engagement across all of our channels. For example, with the onboarding of our new social media manager, our Instagram has seen an increase of over 2,000 followers in two months. Our media strategist pitches news stories to targeted media outlets including owned and earned channels. These stories are then cross-promoted through social, email newsletters, and advertising (testimonials and b-roll). Beginning Fall 2024, our storytelling has been leveraged through the email marketing campaigns managed by our CRM creating a cohesive and integrated recruiting strategy through the alignment of all channels for name recognition, brand authority, and yield.