Dear Colleagues,
Public Affairs (soon to be the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing) is reorganizing – changing our name, our structure and our approach to the University’s communications-marketing-event planning leadership. This will affect every unit on campus and will prepare us to launch our first-ever fully integrated, strategic platform in Spring 2023. These changes:
- are the result of input from university and mar-com leadership as well as recommendations from the Huron team;
- will align our organizational structure with our brand promise;
- position us to transform the way we tell the Illinois story.
Public Affairs has been working to integrate all the units now in our portfolio (Public Affairs, Special Events and the Office of Strategic Marketing and Branding) to more directly align our structure with our institutional brand promise and adapt a more coordinated, thoughtful, strategic, service-oriented and synergistic approach to communications-marketing-event planning leadership on campus.
So, I am excited to announce today that we are realigning to a “Center of Expertise” structure, recommended by Huron, that will allow us to implement a strategy and practices for a unified university identity that will manifest in all of our communications and marketing activities. This modern approach to communications and marketing positions us to transform the way we tell the Illinois story.
This restructuring is singularly focused on delivery of that goal.
As we prepare to launch our first-ever fully integrated, strategic platform for telling our collective Illinois story, we will focus resources on the university-wide implementation, as well as on providing the ongoing support, tools and clear guidance to colleges and units to leverage the platform. And as you may remember, Huron Consulting has been partnering with university administration to determine the best way to structure and deliver marketing and communications leadership going forward. Feedback from campus and analysis in the Operational Excellence effort found that the current siloed approach perpetuates an operating model that provides unspecialized service, duplicates efforts and diverts resources from mission-critical activities.
With this most significant change in university communications, marketing and events structure in our institution’s history, we are positioned to move forward with the platform, guidelines and creative rollout.
We anticipate the transition will be completed by the end of the Spring 2023 semester, and our goal is to work with each college and major unit to provide the support to integrate it into all the ways you share the Illinois story with your key stakeholders.
I want to thank Chancellor Jones for his vision, leadership and support throughout this process. And I want to thank each of you in advance for your partnership in this transformational time.
With gratitude,
Robin Kaler
Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs
