touchpoint - Marketing & Communications - Online e-Newsletter

Advancing Marketing & Communications
As announced by Dean Jiambalvo on November 9, the Marketing & Communications office recently reorganized with the goal of increasing the School’s brand value and enhancing our School-wide marketing efforts. We hope to achieve this by providing more opportunity for consistent and strategic messaging as well as eliminating redundancies and creating cross-school marketing synergies. The new structure consists of three groups: 1) strategic marketing and services, 2) online marketing, and 3) public relations and internal communications.

This restructuring replaced seven existing positions with five new ones to support our redefined objectives. The new positions are currently posted on the UW Employment Web site. While I am eager to fill these positions, I have enlisted numerous faculty and staff in search committee service to ensure that we hire the right skill set in each of these cases, and that may take some time. I appreciate your patience as we transition to the new structure, and look forward to sharing news as successful hires are made.

With regard to projects already in the pipeline, the Marketing & Communications staff is working to ensure continuity of support. I am also in the process of meeting with program leaders throughout the School to elaborate on the rationale and opportunities of our reorganization. It is essential that marketing and communications activities be strategic, coordinated, and highly effective as we work to advance the Foster School, and I am confident this new structure will enable us to deliver on these objectives. If you have any questions or requests, please feel free to contact me directly.

Thank you for your support and partnership,

Pam McCoy
Executive Director, Marketing & Communications

Foster School Branding Report Card
The branding report card (i.e., an analysis of the brand research conducted with faculty, staff, students, alumni, advisory board members) was presented to the Foster School Advisory Board and break-out discussions generated feedback from all board members present. This was followed by 3 separate meetings with a core team of faculty and staff to discuss our brand promise and the creation of brand tools that will enable us to live the brand. Living the brand is all about creating sustainable shifts in our behavior and decision-making that ensure we are delivering on our brand promise. We are in the final stages of articulating our positioning and will soon begin work on new identity development. Stay tuned for updates on this exciting initiative.

Foster stickers available for updating publications, envelopes
Self-adhesive stickers announcing that “UW Business School is now Michael G. Foster School of Business” and including the new Foster URL are now available at several locations around the School. The stickers are intended to broadcast our new name while extending the useful life of brochures, envelopes and other items imprinted with the old UW Business School logo until the Foster School has a new visual identity.

For brochures, apply a sticker to the front or back cover.
Every publication is a little different, so placement and alignment with other graphic elements is up to you.
For business envelopes and larger envelopes typically used to mail brochures, place the stickers at the upper left, just beneath the return address.
For examples, visit the School’s intranet site at http://bschool.washington.edu/in/foster_sticker.shtml.

Stickers come in rolls of 1,000 and have already been distributed to several offices, including MBA programs, Executive Education, External Relations and Finance and Administration. They have also been distributed to academic departments. One roll has been placed in the mailroom for those who need smaller quantities – just roll off what you need. Please contact Steve Bangs in Lewis Hall if you need full rolls or larger quantities.

Business Magazine Published
Our fall magazine has been mailed to some 40,000 alumni and business leaders and is also available online. The current issue includes a feature about the transformational gift from The Foster Foundation and the legacy of A.O. and Michael G. Foster. If you would like extra copies to distribute to selected stakeholders, please contact Ed Kromer.

Minority Business Executive Program
Executive Education and the Business and Economic Development Center (BEDC) have joined forces to offer a new program titled "Minority Business Executive Program." This accelerated one-week intensive program is designed to assist minority business leaders better face potential business challenges. Participants will learn to use financial tools to make more effective decisions, develop and implement long-term strategic plans for growth and sustainability, market their products and services more effectively, manage processes and projects, and develop leadership skills. The program will be held June 22-27, 2008 in Seattle.

If your Foster School Web site has a section geared to executives or minorities, please contact Paul Gibson for information on adding a banner to help promote this new program.

Sharing Photos, Building Community
Check out the new Michael G. Foster School of Business Flickr site. Flickr is a Web site for sharing photos and we’ve incorporated it into the Foster site. Take a look at what has been happening around the Foster School. You’ll find photos from graduations, social events, Executive Education programs, business plan competitions and more.

Paul Gibson is the site administrator and chief photographer contributing images, but we also have photos provided by staff member Nancy Ma, Barbara Pearson and Aaron Lykken as well as contract photographers like Gavin Sisk and Matt Hagen.

There are over 1300 photos posted and the site has over 8000 page views. If you have photos to contribute or have an upcoming event you would like to have photographed and added to the site, contact Paul Gibson. For examples of how the Flickr site is feeding into our own Web site see the photo widgets on IN, Alumni, the Undergraduate Business blog, and the Business Lifestyle pages.