SimpsonScarborough is the data-driven partner for higher education marketers. 

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Food, families, giving, reflection, and the celebration of the glorious algorithmic geniuses behind Spotify's "Wrapped" telling me how I reflected on the year through my musical choices. I'm a huge music person. Always have been. It was kinda soul-crushing when—given limited storage and the realities of digital music at my fingertip—I recently traded in seven large file boxes full of thousands of CDs only to have the kind folks at Amoeba Records accept a single box. The rest met their fate at the recycling center. But Spotify's "wrapped" was exactly what I needed to soothe my broken music heart.   My music choices are likely a lens into my head and heart. I'd like to think that I'm a searcher, a wanderer. Someone who is always looking for depth, meaning, and inspiration. For a long time I summed up that self-realization in what I declared was my theme song, "I Love the Unknown," by songwriter Eef Barzelay (who also leads the band, Clem Snide).   "The doctor asked him what he was afraid of? What was he running from? And he said it's not a fear of success nor of closeness. But of going through life feeling numb."    So what would "Wrapped" tell me about how this year went? How I was feeling? Well, my audio aura was wistful and focused . Yes! I get it! There was a lot of hope for 2021. Many of us entered the year yearning to be together again. That travel might resume. That we wouldn't be fearful of getting sick or infecting someone else. For a bit of grace following a completely wrecked 2020. For SimpsonScarborough, we were hopeful that the glimmering positive signs for our agency would lead to greater success and a vision of working with our clients to help make both them and their institutions better.   → Read Jason's Latest Series on Performance Driven Brands   And what was I listening to? Well, a lot of Taylor Swift apparently. I'm a 51-year-old dad who is a non-apologetic Swiftie. I'm proudly in the top 4% of Taylor Swift listeners according to Spotify. And what was my top listen for the year? Wait for it ... Taylor's " This Is Me Trying ," a song released in 2020 but one that really summarizes what many of us felt much of 2021. For Taylor, it's a song of yearning. For most of us, it's a line that summarizes how we went through the year.    Person: Hey, do you remember that one Taylor Swift song?Me: I remember every Taylor Swift song, go on.    Taylor Swift Smile GIFfrom Taylor Swift GIFs Original Meme Credit: Lark Normandy     Earlier this year one of our agency faves, Adam Grant, seemed to hit the nail on the head when he noted that we were all languishing through 2021 . That's how it felt in April. Things were seemingly getting better. At SimpsonScarborough, things were really heating up as we brought on new clients and projects, new team members, and new capabilities. But much was still missing. We hadn't been together, hadn't been with clients, didn't have any moment to celebrate, and while so much was different so much felt like the exact same thing over and over and over.   I know that many of our clients felt the same. They were trying. Languishing. And coming to a realization that maybe they just couldn't continue to push the boulder up the hill in their current role or at their current institution. The "Great Resignation" has been caused, in part, by the "Great Meh." But I know I'm not the only one out there that loves the unknown. Seeing the twinkle from a new idea, a colleague that embraces a new opportunity, or a client with a big challenge is just the little motivation that many of us need.   As I look ahead to 2022 that twinkle and that fire has grown brighter. It's fueled by our fantastic team,  including a wealth of new hires we've made that have richly added to our culture and given those of us that might have been languishing a bit of a recharge. It's made deeper by amazing clients and opportunities to do work that matters. The "meh" has transitioned into a shared confidence with our clients of "let us show you what this would look like if we shared the confidence to take a risk." We all could use a bit more of that.    So thank you, Spotify, for the peek into how music reflected my year. And, thanks, to all of you for helping us thrive in an otherwise "meh" year. We are so ready to celebrate alongside you and be your biggest cheerleaders in the year ahead.   ... Btw, check out our agency's collective 2021 songs of the year. It's eclectic, but we have some great taste in music.      — Jason is CEO & Partner at SimpsonScarborough. Before coming to SimpsonScarborough in 2014, Jason led the marketing communications teams for the University of California System and North Carolina State University. In 2013, he was named Higher Education Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association. Known for being our chief Peloton evangelist, he and his wife, Meredith, live in Oakland CA with their daughter, Amelia. Learn more about Jason here.

We're proud to share the following advancements and new additions to our growing team. Read on for a bit of background on each person, and be sure to reach out to congratulate everyone on their new (or expanded) positions.

Honestly, you never know how good you've got it until you're talking with your friends one night and realizing how one big decision can really shape your whole life. This may sound a little corny, but that's all it took for me to realize how impactful my decision to go to community college was. No one really tells you about all the different benefits that community college can offer you. In fact, the prevailing stigmas can prevent many students from ever seriously considering it (myself included).  "You're not going to get the real college experience." "Community college is for stupid people." "If you go there, you'll never be successful." "Why would you settle for community college?" "Did you not try in high school?"

Editor's Note: One of the fastest-growing divisions at SimpScar is our user experience team (shameless plug — there's another opening), and we recently spoke with our Director of UX, Lex Hade, who provided this overview for the Google HEART framework and how it can be adapted for use in your digital strategies. This framework is a great example of how Lex and her team are leveraging data to create digital experiences that deepen human connection. 

Throughout much of the year, our team has been asking the question, "What's the future of higher ed marketing communications?"  We've shared ideas, perspectives, and research on what's contributing to the maturation of the practice. After all, across all industries, marketing has changed rapidly in the last decade. But in higher ed, that change was combined with significant shifts in demographics, diminishing enrollment, and growing public distrust — to say nothing of all the challenges forced on the industry by COVID-19.  In Performance Driven Brands, Pt. 1, I covered the environment that has led to a reality focused on performance-driven branding. The first key to achieving success is leading your institution to recognize the importance of marketing's role in achieving strategic institutional goals. Once over that hurdle, it's time to pounce on the two remaining pieces imperative to a strong marketing program: the never-ending quest for resources and a critical need to build deeper digital acumen.  I recently presented to senior marketing leaders at the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Ed session entitled CMO of the Future. And that conversation began with the elephant in the room—higher ed marketers don't have the resources or talent to meet the expectations within their own institutions. In our most recent CMO Study data, more than 70% of respondents indicated they did not have the budgets necessary to meet the expectations they face. 70% of higher ed CMOs report that they do not have the budget necessary to meet the expectations of institutional leadership.   The State of Budgets & Staffing in Higher Ed MarCom In analyzing the data from our 2021-22 CMO Study, we first looked at trends by Carnegie Classification. Across the board, marketing leaders generally reported net increases to their budgets. But that all changed when we examined the data by tuition dependency. Highly tuition-dependent schools (defined as 67%+ of their operating budgets coming from tuition revenue, according to IPEDS) reported their budgets are down nearly 10% since our 2019 CMO Study. That's not even the most alarming figure — those same institutions are reporting staffing levels are down nearly 15%. Industry leaders are also keenly aware of the challenges they face amid "the great resignation," where they are losing top talent for a number of reasons.  Tuition-dependent institutions are reporting budget declines of nearly 10% and staffing declines of almost 15%. If budgets are insufficient and talent is fleeing, we must work more efficiently. And this is where the current design of our organizations fails us. As our founder, Elizabeth Johnson is noted for saying, "organizational structure is the greatest barrier to integrated marketing and branding on college campuses." That's a reality many of us have lived for far too long, but centralization isn't a panacea either. Regardless of institutional profile, every school faces this challenge, and we often hear, "but we're really decentralized" as a badge of honor sometimes used to hide more resolvable shortcomings. Respondents to our study reported that 73% of schools now have a senior marketing leader that sits on the university cabinet, and 63% report directly to a president or chancellor. While it's growth in the right direction, it's not nearly enough. While higher ed slowly works to organize itself more efficiently and collaboratively, the corporate world continues to adapt to a rapidly changing world. According to a 2020 Gartner study, 25% of fortune 500 companies will have sales, marketing, and customer experience in a single department by 2023. Worth noting — the average fortune 500 company has more than 60,000 employees. Organizational changes of this scale are neither easy nor cheap. To have such a high rate of adoption on such an aggressive timeline indicates how necessary they are.  What would a similar organizational realignment look like for higher ed? Integrated marketing, enrollment, advancement, and student affairs units. It's hard to imagine that level of centralization occurring, so marketing leaders will need to continue to be coalition builders. Better Partners Equals Better Results Agencies and technology partners also bear responsibility for creating more effective partnerships alongside your efforts. For too long, partners have offered point solutions, happy to sell to anyone in the university willing to buy and not sharing responsibility for your performance goals. Before coming to SimpsonScarborough, I oversaw marketing communications for the University of California system and was often frustrated at the amount of time I spent managing our agency and technology partners — in large part because of the number of single-problem solutions. That problem has grown exponentially over the years, relegating many talented CMOs and their staff to spend far too much of their time managing various vendor solutions. CMOs don't need more point solutions; they need more strategic partners who enable them to accomplish their strategic goals with increasingly constrained resources and staffing. The Need for Digital Acumen Regardless of reporting lines and centralization, it's clear that mature marketing operations must have leaders with a high degree of digital acumen to ensure their teams continually measure, iterate, and integrate. Data from our latest CMO Study reveals that just 3% of higher ed marketing budgets are spent on martech tools. Meanwhile, according to the latest Gartner CMO Spend Survey, martech accounts for 27% of total corporate marketing budgets. Not to belabor the point, but these budgets are also significantly larger both by volume and by the percentage of organizational revenue. Yet, even with nearly 9x the level of dedicated investment of higher ed, the CMOs in Gartner's survey reported they capture only 58% of their martech stack's capabilities. How much less effective are martech stacks in higher ed with significantly lower investments?  Just 3% of higher ed marketing budgets are spent on martech tools compared to 27% in the corporate world. One of our benchmarks in assessing digital acumen is the integration between an institution's CMS and CRM. In our 2019 CMO Study, we found that only 32% of all institutions had these tools integrated, though an additional 35% planned to integrate them within the next 12 months. Yet, the State of Higher Ed Website & MarTech research data collected earlier this fall showed that only 35% of institutions reported these platforms were integrated in 2021. The silver lining from that research is that there is no particular institution type that has an advantage over another in this arena. While there is an inextricable link between leadership and resourcing, those with both are better positioned than their counterparts. And that's good news because, with greater investment, a focus on digital transformation, and the right mix of staff and partners, a future in which you're truly able to measure and report on the impact of your work (rather than just the reach) is just on the horizon. The Higher Ed CMO of the Future In preparation for our presentation at AMA, we took this framework about performance-driven brands and combined it with the data and insights from our Web & MarTech research and our soon-to-be-released 2021-22 CMO Study, and drew some conclusions about what all of this means for the CMO of the future. After all, while we know that resources are a constant battle in higher ed marketing, they're still only one-half of the equation. Higher ed needs transformational leadership, and these are the qualities needed to not only endure the current levels of volatility but to leverage this moment to position the institution for success long term. Below are the five qualities we believe the higher ed CMO of the future must possess. While full of challenges, higher ed marketers have made tremendous strides in professionalizing marketing within their institutions. I am proud that SimpScar stands alongside so many of the industry's best marketing leaders in championing the role and impact you have both on your campus and throughout higher education. Our hope is that the data from our research studies, articles and opinions, and impactful stories of success give you things you can use to make your case or inspire your efforts. → Download Jason's CMO of the Future Presentation — Jason is CEO & Partner at SimpsonScarborough. Before coming to SimpsonScarborough in 2014, Jason led the marketing communications teams for the University of California System and North Carolina State University. In 2013, he was named Higher Education Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association. Known for being our chief Peloton evangelist, he and his wife, Meredith, live in Oakland CA with their daughter, Amelia. Learn more about Jason here

The demographic cliff. COVID-19. Social and racial unrest and a renewed focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Challenges to mental health and the rise of the student voice. The elevation of the CMO. There were likely some before. And some that I'm forgetting.    These are the issues that may finally bring about change in higher ed. Waking up our stakeholders to the strategic value of marketing. Mak ing them realize that an institution's brand is more than a logo. And leading them to finally u nderstand why marketing, communications, and brand management must be centralized — or at least-center led.    Earlier this year, we launched our series asking, "What's the future of higher ed marcom?" We looked at everything from the higher ed marketing jobs of the future to the role of gamification in advertising to the future of campus events . But the longer we sat with the question "what's the future of higher ed marcom?" the more we developed our own answer to the question:  The future of higher ed marcom is performance-driven brands.  Duh, right? The rest of the marketing world has been focused on ROI and performance for some time. Advertising has been changing rapidly with social and digital marketing to be hyper-focused on optimization and personalization far more than it's been about creative campaigns and taglines.  And for good reason. Consumer habits are changing almost as rapidly as the makeup of our labor force. Entire industries are being disrupted through the increase in digitization. Rising income inequality and increased polarization have led to declining confidence in the public institutions that underpin our society — higher education notwithstanding. Now add back in the demographic cliff, social & racial unrest, a deadly pandemic, and fractured student mental health, and you can understand why higher education marketing must embrace transformational change — now.  But transforming your higher ed brand to focus on performance rather than mere promotion is no easy task. It begins with a clear focus on three key components: Developing a Cultural Orientation to Strategic Goals The Organizational Capacity & Capabilities of the Marcom Function The Holy Grail of Data + Digital + Measurement For now, I'll focus on the cultural orientation to strategic goals. Next month, I'll do a deep-dive into org capacity & capabilities, followed by unpacking the holy grail of data + digital + measurement, where I'll build on the results from our latest research study on the state of higher ed website & marketing technology.  → Download the Web & MarTech Study and our other recent research Developing a Cultural Orientation to Strategic Goals Most companies and corporate brands have a singular focus on products or services with a clear benefit to a target audience. It's not as simple in higher education. With a multitude of stakeholders, funding priorities, business lines, and customers, it's more akin to enterprise marketing, healthcare, non-profit and cause marketing, or even politics and public advocacy than traditional B2C marketing. Adding to the challenge, higher ed's lack of differentiation, decentralization, deficiencies in budgets and marketing technology, and siloed org charts make focusing on performance seem like a pipe dream.   Institutions must build more of a cultural orientation to becoming performance-based organizations than managing to shifting culture, crisis, and flashing objects. To do so, institutional leaders, boards, and strategic plans have to articulate specific goals and objectives they want marketing and branding to support. And marketers must root their work in metrics beyond reach, frequency, social engagement, or top-of-funnel marketing awareness. We need to develop a shared understanding that brand strategy is institutional strategy. Full stop.   In a recent whitepaper, "What Makes a Strategic Plan Strategic," RHB's Rob Zinkan and Aimee Hosemann studied more than 100 strategic plans across higher ed. Marketing was mentioned in nearly 50 percent of the plans, but "mentions of marketing were predominantly in the realm of 'promotion,'" presenting a limited, less-strategic view of the marketing function in higher education. Even more troubling, only 27% of the plans provide clear success metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) at all. And of the 73% of plans that do not include specific measures of success, vague language like "enhance" (most commonly), "broaden," or "strengthen" replace finite goal setting and measurement (i.e., performance metrics).  Overall, approximately half of the strategic plans (48%) explicitly mention marketing (or marketing and communications). For comparison to other constituent-focused functions, 68% of the plans reference advancement or fundraising, while 73% include mentions of alumni, alumni relations or alumni engagement. - RHB As RHB wisely notes, "A goal to which no action or assessment is assigned is not actually achievable." CMO's have an important voice in shaping these goals, not just for marketing but insisting that other institutional priorities can be measured and that the work their teams are focused on supports those goals. Doing so enables a performance-based branding focus. Beyond shared focus and understanding of the goals and metrics marketing is to support, institutions must also become more agile and collaborative while ensuring that stewardship of the brand is not just a "marketing problem." Too often, the silos in higher ed have prevented bringing the right people to the table, sharing data that would make marketing more effective or better enabling marketing to truly measure the impact of the effort. As SimpsonScarborough founder Elizabeth Johnson is quoted in Terry Flannery's book, How to Market a University, "Organizational structure is the greatest barrier to integrated marketing and branding on college campuses." Organizational structure is the greatest barrier to integrated marketing & branding on college campuses. (Read Elizabeth's full perspective on why the time for marketing integration is now.) The response to the pandemic has forced the issue and areas of the institution are collaborating more than ever before. We can't afford to let this momentum slip. Gartner recently reported that 25% of the Fortune 500 will integrate sales, marketing, and customer experience into a single department by 2023. That level of penetration on such an accelerated timeline should give some clues as to how seriously the corporate world is taking this transformational change. Of course, this begs the question: Is there a similar higher ed equivalent? Recently, several CMO's have also taken over responsibilities of leading advancement and fundraising units where it used to be the other way around . Others have taken over enrollment responsibilities — again, inversing the traditional structure . Could we see a future where admissions and enrollment or student success and support are a part of a lifecycle approach to marketing? And we might not be that far away from a President or Chancellor with marketing communications administrative experience. We know substantive technological barriers must be addressed before that change could realistically happen in higher education, but that's precisely why we started with cultural orientation: It will never happen if specific, measurable goals aren't set and workloads adjusted to enable the institution to achieve those outcomes.       This may be the moment higher ed's marketing efforts shift from focusing on "telling our story" to aligning institutional values, goals, and the real-life experience happening on campus in measurable ways that actually transform institutions amidst a complex and volatile world. We shouldn't accept anything less. → Read Performance Driven Brands, Pt. II — Jason is CEO & Partner at SimpsonScarborough. Before coming to SimpsonScarborough in 2014, Jason led the marketing communications teams for the University of California System and North Carolina State University. In 2013, he was named Higher Education Marketer of the Year by the American Marketing Association. Known for being our chief Peloton evangelist, he and his wife, Meredith, live in Oakland CA with their daughter, Amelia. Learn more about Jason here.

Imagine you are a writer, by trade and by passion. You’ve spent years in the word processor trenches, honing your skill and maybe occasionally crying (just a little) over editing feedback.

Another month of adding dynamic new team members and recognizing the incredible people around our agency with well-deserved promotions. Read on for the updates and be sure to reach out to congratulate everyone on their new positions. 

Hira Siddiqui is SimpsonScarborough's recently promoted Senior Research Analyst, overseeing everything from survey instrument design to data analysis and insights building. In her new role, she'll expand her leadership responsibilities and help mentor our growing Research & Analytics team.    We sat down with her to learn about how research and analytics have evolved as SimpsonScarborough has grown, hear about some of the favorite projects she's worked on, her involvement with our people & culture committee, and what she wishes more people understood about the role and purpose of rese a rch in higher education marketing.    Malachi: First off, congratulations on the promotion! I think I speak for everyone at SimpScar when I say that it is well-deserved. Why don't you start by telling us a little more about your new role and what you're looking forward to?    Hira : Thank you! The most significant change is about stepping into a role that allows me to spend more time training and mentoring our new analysts. We recently hired a new junior analyst and have another one starting soon, and I'm excited to be part of the process of welcoming them into our team and really digging in and understanding where their interests lie. I feel like I'm paying it forward because I was lucky to have people do that for me as I've grown and evolved in the company.   Malachi: Let's dig into that a bit more. Can you give us a little background and how you first came to SimpsonScarborough?    Hira: I went to the University of Richmond (UR) and double-majored in Leadership Studies and Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing. Some of my favorite classes were studying Group Dynamics, Consumer Behavior, and Marketing Research, so looking back, it's no surprise that I am where I am now, but at the time, I was strongly torn between getting my master's in higher education and working on a college campus or pursuing a role in a marketing function.   I was deeply involved in working for Admissions and Advancement, but my job at the Student Center for Equity and Inclusion in particular really helped me find a passion for higher education. We served first-generation, low-income, LGBTQIA+, and multicultural students in providing community-building events and resources. As a South Asian and first-gen student on a predominantly white affluent campus, it helped me find my own sense of belonging at UR and opened my eyes to the waterfall effect of positive change that can happen from interactions on college campuses. So anyways, graduation comes, and I'm still conflicted on what to do. Then, one day, shortly after graduation, I got an email to take a survey for the University of Richmond — from SimpsonScarborough.   Malachi: Ok. Lots to unpack there but I like where this is headed.    Hira : Right, so I see this survey, and I'm intrigued because it's this intersection of higher education and marketing — the two things I was trying to decide between. And so I looked up the company and sent an email to Chelsea (now our AVP of Operations, but Director of Project Strategy at the time), and ... I don't hear back.   Malachi: Ok, Chelsea's in trouble.    Hira : Yeah, my initial outreach was asking if I could chat and learn more about what SimpsonScarborough does. I later followed up with my resume and heard back from Chelsea, agreeing to a phone call. We hit it off immediately, and I became even more interested in SimpScar, but she told me that they didn't have any openings as much as she would love to work with me. A few weeks go by, and she calls me to say... "You'll never guess what we have for you."   Malachi: This story has so many parallels —   Hira : To Elizabeth's! I know! And what's funny is that I didn't actually know that until she was on the Enrollify Pod and told the story of getting her first market research job out of college, and it's like the same thing I did. So I don't know if that weighed into the decision at all, but it's so funny. Either way, I started a few weeks later — February of 2017, almost five years ago!   Malachi: What was your role back then? Because you didn't start in the Research division, right?    Hira: Right, so I actually joined as an Assistant Project Strategist, which was a mix of everything we did from research to strategy to account and project management. I worked on client kickoffs and discovery audits, wrote survey instruments and qualitative research reports, and performed brand and competitor assessments. At that time, we were only 15 employees, so you could really get your hands dirty in developing all these different deliverables, and because you worked so closely with leadership and the partners on every project, you could just learn so much. It was honestly kind of a dream scenario for a new graduate.   Malachi: And how did you make the transition over to the Research team?    Hira: As the agency grew, we were shifting from defining ourselves as a market research firm to a full-service marketing agency and expanding our deliverables from research through strategy and creative. As a result, my role started shifting and I realized there were certain aspects of my job that I really enjoyed more than others and was able to open a dialogue about where I wanted to focus in some honest conversations with Mere (our VP of Research) and Chelsea, who was my manager at the time.   Malachi: What were those things you enjoyed the most?    Hira : I found the most joy in digging into survey instrument design, presenting research findings to clients, and generally managing other parts of our research projects. As the SimpScar team and deliverables expanded, I thought it might be an opportunity to specialize more, so I asked Chelsea if I could shadow our analysts to see if it was a good fit. Our qualitative research was a strategy deliverable at the time, so I had lots of experience with that side of research, but I also had some quantitative experience from college. I took the same Marketing Analysis and SPSS course at UR that Mere did 10 years earlier — the same professor and everything. And that was the specific class Mere took that made the light bulb go off in her own head that this was the work she wanted to do, so it was cool to share that connection.   Malachi: That's a great story. Not just you & Mere taking the same class at the same school from the same professor, but also that you were empowered to explore other areas and eventually make that transition to the Research team.   Hira : It really was. I'm really grateful that SimpScar supported this exploration and that I got support not just from my direct supervisor but also from the research team and the partners themselves. They allowed me to go slowly and make sure this was actually the right decision for me. And once I knew it was, and the timing made sense for the agency and our workload, I moved over, and it's been so great. I think that's one of the things that's always been great about SimpsonScarborough — once you're here, everyone wants you to succeed. They want you to grow and pursue your passions and empower you, wherever that takes you.    Malachi: Ok, so Chelsea gets some redemption from earlier. Can you tell me about some of your favorite projects you've worked on?    Hira : One of my favorites has been working on the replication study for the University of Richmond — the exact survey that helped me find SimpScar in the first place. Obviously, that one just means a lot. But it's also been incredible to see the impact of our work with my alma mater. For example, our research study was pivotal in getting their central marketing function appropriately funded. Eliz presented the data from our first study at their board meeting, and they immediately saw the need for a proper investment in their marketing function. It's paid dividends for them, and it's something I'm really proud to have been able to work on.    After 5 years of working closely with Butler, it's hard not to call them one of my favorite clients. One of my first projects at the agency was helping to refresh Butler's brand and building brand architectures for each of their colleges. Even now, I'm currently working on a project designing a brand equity tracker, but there've been quite a few projects in between.   One is the project we cover in our Butler Case Study. I remember a round of applause on campus after Kristen and I presented the slide that showed a jump from 30% to 58% of alumni associating job preparation with Butler between 2014 and 2018. Following the presentation, there was a Marcom pizza party to celebrate the upward movement of many of their brand equity measures. Stephanie (Butler's AVP of Marcom) says we changed the trajectory for Butler, but I think Butler has been key to our company's trajectory as well. They're not afraid to try new things and are incredible collaborative partners; we both push each other to be better.   Malachi: That's so true, but that's honestly the first time I've heard it articulated that way. We always talk about the clients who let us push them outside their comfort zone, but having clients who do that back to you is special.    Hira : Exactly. And honestly, there are so many great projects I've been fortunate to be a part of over the years. I could go on for a while.    Malachi: What do you wish more people understood about the role of marketing in higher education?    Hira : Research is a force-multiplier. It's a leverage point. Clients usually come to us with a specific issue, decision to make, misperception to tackle, or knowledge gap they want to address, but they don't always know the underlying cause of the issue. An everyday example is when a student doesn't hand in homework or participate in class; some may think the student lacks motivation, but we know that there are many other contributing factors. Does the student have a part-time job that prevents them from studying? Do they struggle with the material but are too embarrassed to admit it or get help? It's critical to accurately identify the underlying causes that might be at play because, without a well-defined problem or objective, you're likely to end up with unfocused or less valuable data.   More often than not, our discovery and research processes shift our client's perspective on how they may have initially perceived the situation; it helps clarify the problem or uncover an underlying cause they may not have thought of. That's not an indictment of their talent or sophistication; it's indicative of the complex nature of higher education marketing. But that's what's at stake when you skip research — you don't have a chance to let data inform your strategy and can end up wasting so much time and money trying to solve a problem using incorrect assumptions.   Malachi: How do you get at the root cause of the problem?   Hira : This is where great instrument development comes in. It's also why we're investing so much into our Analytics function now. We're now the Research & Analytics division at SimpsonScarborough, and that's transforming the way we're able to answer our clients' most pressing questions. Leveraging analytics helps us to develop tighter, more focused survey instruments. Talk to any researcher, and they will tell you that the key to uncovering the most actionable data is to design an instrument that is highly focused.   Malachi: Can you talk more about the integration of Research & Analytics?   Hira: The key is in how we marry the insights gained from each to make for deeper, more meaningful insights and stronger recommendations. For example, surveys can help us get a read on awareness, perceptions, and appeal while analytics can dig into actual behavior patterns. So it's bigger than just research and analytics, it sort of flows seamlessly between our digital work and media planning and back to research and analytics again. I think that's actually the most exciting thing about our growth — as we grow, our work gets smarter.    Malachi: What does that look like in practice?  Hira: A great example is how we're using analytics to help inform discovery. We joke that our discovery process goes deeper than most agencies' entire research process. Historically, the discovery process involves having a bunch of conversations with key stakeholders across an institution. Through analytics, we're able to bring some powerful data & insights into those meetings which enables those conversations to go much deeper, be much more focused, and really start to uncover the core issues. That has a waterfall effect on strengthening all of the work that follows.    This happened recently with a client of ours where they believe they had problem X and thought it was caused by issue Y. They called us in to help them test their hypothesis and strategize a solution. A deep dive into their Google Analytics and a UX audit cross-referenced against their peers uncovered that the issue might be different than they initially thought and likely have other underlying causes. That process allowed those initial conversations to be much richer and allowed us to design research tools that directly addressed the underlying causes.   Combining analytics, primary research, and secondary research sources together allowed our team to provide strong tactical and directional recommendations that we wouldn't have been able to do if we'd only used only one form of analysis. And that's when the magic happens because now we have a better grasp on what's contributing to the problem and can leverage that research to design data-driven strategies to actually address it. That may sound like an extra step, but in reality, it saved them a bunch of time & money they would've wasted designing strategies to tackle a problem they didn't have. And I think that's the most important thing of all: that data inspires confidence. They now have a clearer idea of what their problem is and how to address it.   Malachi: I think that's what Eliz used to say — we don't sell research, we sell confidence. We enable the CMO to go to their board of trustees and, with 100% confidence, say: "Here's our problem, here's how we fix it, and these are the resources we need to do it."   Hira : Exactly. You've heard the Abe Lincoln quote about chopping down a tree?    Malachi: About sharpening the axe?    Hira : Exactly. Research is sharpening the axe.