David Gibson is vice president for communications and marketing at Middlebury, where he oversees public affairs, marketing, internal and crisis communications, branding, web strategy, social media, creative services, and print and mail operations. He has three decades of experience advancing the interests of mission-driven institutions and has built programs clarifying their value in the world and bringing deeper engagement with stakeholders. He has held staff positions at Hampshire, MIT, and Dartmouth and was a vice president of strategic communications for the international consulting firm Grenzebach Glier and Associates. At Cornell, he and his team won two Sibley “magazine of the year” awards. As its managing editor, he helped Yankee earn its first National Magazine Award nomination for reporting.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- How David's career led to higher education marketing, and how his background in magazines has helped inform his career and given him a unique marketing perspective
- Why articulating who your institution truly is in a conversational way lies at the heart of higher education marketing's impact
- Why David sees his role as “curating and collating” an institution’s messaging as much as “creating” content
- Why getting stakeholder buy-in is really just about having conversations with people and listening to their thoughts
- How David defines "engagement", based on enabling an audience to emotionally feel something that can motivate them to do something in partnership with the institution
- Why identifying and repurposing content is a powerful way for especially small higher ed marketing teams to expand their reach
- How David learned "the business of philanthropy" through a new career change, and what key lessons about giving and communication he learned in that role
- What wisdom David has to share with higher education marketing professionals seeking to master their communications skills
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