The Innovation in Marketing Award is given for creativity in the use of new media and/or other vehicles to promote a campus unit. This years recipient clearly understands that technology and gee-whiz applications arent the things that make marketing innovative. The best innovations come from creatively using the resources at hand in ways that create new connections with your audience.
Sometimes that means a new website, or suite of microsites. Sometimes that means custom-designed post-it notes. Or maybe it means finding the Holy Grail of Communications in an academic unit – a process that gives the department a deep and timely pool of faculty-generated highlights that requires almost no faculty time to create. In the case of Jennifer La Montagne, the Associate Director for Communications in Computer Science – innovations in marketing meant all of these things this year. And all of them developed as a family – sharing consistent messages and images that make Computer Science look good and that make Illinois look good at the same time. Congratulations to Jennifer La Montagne, the 2010 recipient of our Innovation in Marketing Award.