When you think ‘PR’, one would typically think about what PR can achieve for consumer and corporate brands – big and small – across industries. But of those industries, education isn’t one that springs to mind immediately – right?
Let’s take a step back before diving into why PR is a powerful tool to drive reputation for educational institutions.
The pandemic was a life changing episode for us all – personally, professionally and for all businesses and sectors. For education especially, the pandemic globally changed things up and intensified how schools and universities adapted to ensure education continuity for younger minds. There was a lot of pivoting for students, teachers, parents and entire curricula. One of the ways this was communicated during this difficult time was through PR efforts — and the value of communications unfolded thereafter.
This is where PR comes in and is taking on a crucial role in helping education institutions raise funds and become more visible among broader stakeholders, beyond targeting parents and students.
Now, with the pandemic behind us, let’s talk about the priorities of today. Building an international reputation and creating a strong network of academic peers for collaborations is really shifting the quality of how education is imparted, and the value add to the leaders of tomorrow. Global exposure and tie-ups with foreign universities can really set apart a university for prospective students. Global university rankings, such as the Times Higher Education, are a huge motivator for institutions to enhance their reputation. But beyond rankings, specialisation courses, showcasing a cool campus, being known among your stakeholders, and just the ability to hold influence to shape your oranisation’s and your students’ future requires a lot more externalised work. This is even more true and important for Hong Kong.
The ranking of Hong Kong in the education sector has impressively improved in the last few years. Notably, Hong Kong improved its ranking from 14th to 10th position among the best education systems in the world (source). This is an amazing feat for education. Hong Kong is a world leader in base research – and a very competitive education market.
Education is a sector where PR can bring true value if done over a long period of time and consistently. PR can effectively propel a university’s perception among key audience groups that include aspiring students, alumni, recruiters, in addition to building loyalty and pride among faculty and existing students. Add social media to the mix and the opportunity expands to target your young audiences, their parents, prospective student and parents, recruiters and policy makers online – really creatively!
It really boils down to having the right PR partner on your side, who can help you strategise and implement a programme that would marry your institution’s academic and business objectives and drive storytelling that is relevant to the media and your audiences. I’ve observed that the biggest challenge usually comes down to content that can be made media worthy. Universities have hordes of knowledge, insights and research that needs to be transformed into content that makes sense to their important stakeholders and can help solidify their leadership and reputation. It takes a special knack to create a content engine that caters to this need. To add, a robust PR programme to drive institutional reputation should also outline and promote community engagement, crisis management, alumni relations, partnerships, DEI initiatives, student successes and parent communications.
Our work at Sinclair for our education sector clients has been nothing short of rewarding. Take Hong Kong Baptist University’s Research Office and their Business School. We created a communications plan that was built on the goal of enhancing their regional reputation as a top-notch research hub in Asia. We have interpreted in-depth and lengthy research papers from scholars on complex but important topics and made them pitchable to land top tier media coverage in general, education, and topic-based niche publications. We worked closely with the faculty to profile top professors – a core focus area – on their LinkedIn and in the media with our efforts paying off toward thought leadership building.
For The Chinese University of Hong Kong, we implemented an online reputation building strategy through creative social campaigns on their LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram channels to reach international communities. Our creative and eye-catching visuals told CUHK stories from different perspectives, leveraging the people and CUHK’s legacy, with very successful results.
Then for APRU (Association of Pacific Rim Universities), our objective was to grow brand awareness in the APAC region, to build APRU’s thought leadership position as the gateway to the best minds in the Pacific Rim. We did this by highlighting compelling insights from their industry-leading academic research and workshops.
These are just some ways we can see why PR is a key tool for the education sector to take note of.
When it comes to education-related events, PR can help in a big way even if it’s a project format. Case in point, our work with Croucher Foundation’s Croucher Science Week – a free festival that brings science closer to the everyday lives of young people. Our remit was to make science fun, exciting! Our integrated programme helped generate awareness, buzz and solidify the reputation of this annual educational festival.
Recently, John Lee shared in an interview with RTHK that Hong Kong is well on its way to become an international education hub. The goal is to diversify focus areas and courses, grow in different areas so that students from around the world can be tapped into and encouraged to choose Hong Kong to build their future.
I see huge opportunity for Education PR as universities recognise how they can be supported to move forward toward growth and nurturing tomorrow’s talent. Not to mention that given the recent student and teacher exodus, there is added impetus to woo stakeholders to support this industry’s future. This will need awareness and brand building programmes through experienced, tested and smart PR approaches.
