Q&A: The Marketing and Communications Team Employs Strategy and Creativity to Propel the Michigan Ross Mission

Led by Jennifer Monaghan, chief marketing officer, the Marketing and Communications team is made up of 32 strategic, collaborative individuals. Located on the fourth floor of Kresge Hall, the team comprises five teams: Brand, Creative, Content, Events, and Marketing Intelligence. Altogether, they act as a strategic arm of the school with extensive knowledge of the marketing discipline, including design, writing, social media, web design, analytics, events, market research, strategic planning, customer relationship management, media outreach, and more. The team also acts as stewards of the Michigan Ross brand by maintaining the school’s Brand Style Guide, which sets distinct guidelines for maintaining brand identity across all aspects of the school.

To learn more about the Marketing and Communications team, we asked Monaghan to answer some questions about the team’s culture, significant projects, and how they support the school’s mission to build a better world through business.

How does your team support Michigan Ross?
We work with every degree program team and many internal units to help them meet their various goals. For instance, we work with an advertising agency to plan and place paid media targeting prospective students to generate leads for the program teams. Another example is that we design and send over two million emails yearly to prospective students using our Salesforce marketing cloud tool. We also work with faculty by arranging media interviews with our faculty experts, and we host the Business and Society podcast that brings a roundtable of faculty together to discuss their research and its intersection with important societal issues. In addition, the Events team plans and produces all of the school’s signature events, such as Commencement and the Handleman and Mitchell Lectures, as well as many other events.

Are there any big projects your team is currently working on and excited about that you want to make the rest of the school aware of?
We are still designing work to celebrate the Ross Centennial. We are so proud of the work we have done creating logos, videos, signage, web pages, and SWAG. Our centennial runs until Dec. 31, so there is more work to be done. 

What are the biggest challenges that your team faces?
Our biggest challenges are a finite amount of resources (people and budget) and negotiating competing priorities across the school.  

In what ways does your team collaborate with other units across Ross?
We work with every degree program team and many internal units on marketing initiatives to help them meet their varied goals. We always begin by building a strategy and agreeing on what success looks like as we work together. The work usually begins with a meeting with a member of the brand team and will evolve to include members of the creative, content, web, and marketing intelligence teams, depending on the complexity of the work.  

How does your team collaborate with units across the university?
Several team members participate in various task forces across campus depending on their area of expertise. Because our work is very complex and sophisticated (compared to other schools/colleges on campus), members of this team are often asked by the Office of the Vice President for Communications to present case studies to other marketing units. Also, because of the connectivity of the marketing and communications teams on campus, we have worked with many people in the other schools and colleges, which makes for easy cross-university relationships. 

If there is one thing that you would like other staff and faculty to know about your team, what would that be?
Every single person on this team is a strategic marketing and communications or events  practitioner. Many have long careers in this discipline and are experts in their field. And we all love the Michigan Ross brand. Additionally, we are an award-winning team — we have won numerous peer-judged awards and accolades for our work.

Are there any traditions or team-building activities your staff likes to participate in?
We definitely like to have fun — we need an outlet for all that creative energy! Every year, we host two all-team offsite retreats where we celebrate our work and each other, enjoy good food, and participate in friendly competitions of some sort (scavenger hunts, murder mysteries, gingerbread house building, games, etc.). We also like eating lunch together and doing other fun things throughout the year, like hosting our March Madness bracket challenge. 

We also love the pumpkin decorating contest (did I mention we are competitive?).