And Carrie On

One of my beliefs as a marketing leader is that people inherently believe marketing is a good thing.

They want to partner with marketing to do good work.

However, we as marketing professionals don’t always make that process easy for people. It comes from being busy, resource-stretched, and trying to balance both the strategic and urgent of our work.

Regardless, it happens.

What happens when we do that?

Honestly, sometimes people go rogue and do their own thing. We’ve made it too difficult for them, so they just do the best they can with the tools they have.

One strategy I have used at a couple of institutions to help marketing support the university community in a meaningful way is through lunch and learns.

What is A Lunch and Learn?

This is a one hour session that is led by a member or members of the marketing team. The session showcases an expertise area they have and provides a common need that campus has.

Some of the topics we’ve hosted recently include:

• Telling a branded university story
• Taking photos on your iPhone
• How to be a media expert
• Content ideas for your social media account
• Using the on-demand design system

These sessions are offered on zoom and are recorded for future use. However, they give people attending a couple of things outside of the content area:

1. They provide insight into who are the marketing team members and who to reach out to when they have questions.
2. They help the campus see and understand the expertise marketing brings to the work.
3. They allow for marketing to hear questions and struggles that university community members are having, which helps to make future content better.
4. They help establish a network of marketing advocates and champions across campus.

Getting Started

If you are thinking about a lunch and learn series, here are a few strategies to help the programming be consistent.

Plan for the entire semester in advance – Work with the team and plan the entire semester at one time. The semester gets busy, and it’s easy to get sidetracked, so planning the semester of content helps ensure you have something regularly happening. We try for a session about once every three weeks, and that is divided up among the team. Most team members only do about one session each semester.

Be consistent on the time – Pick the same time for each session. If you’re doing in person, also choose the same location. It’s important to make sure that people can find where you’re located to get in the habit of attending the sessions. Moving times and locations minimizes the likelihood that people will remember and know where to go. We have selected the lunch hour on Friday because it it a little less hectic on campus.

Remind people monthly – Something that we have noticed (and must do a better job of) is announcing the schedule at the beginning of the semester and then doing monthly reminders for people. We’ve seen that folks sign up and the trickle off as the semester gets busy. I think more frequent reminders would be helpful.

What’s Next?

We’ve been doing this now for quite some time, and we have seen really positive results. I think we’re beginning to have discussions on how to make this program even better.

If you have ideas on how to enhance the lunch and learn program, I’d love to hear what you’re doing and how we can borrow some ideas to continue elevating the work.