The Civic Story Is Your Strongest, Least Told Reputation Asset
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Show notes
What a university does for its place and what its place knows about it are often far apart. I explain why local audiences hold your licence to operate, and how to tell the civic story well.
- Make civic stories personal and local, not just economic impact figures.
- Brief MPs, council leaders and business groups, with a named contact.
- Ask which people in your city would publicly speak up for you tomorrow.
Read the article: The civic story is your strongest reputation asset, and the least told
Full transcript
Hello, and welcome to Marketing Greats in Higher Education. I'm Jonathan Sabarre, your host, and this is where we explore the ideas shaping how universities are seen, chosen and trusted around the world. Everything I share on this show is my own personal view.
I've lived and worked in the North East of England for most of my career, and I've seen what a university can mean to a region. Jobs and hospitals, start-ups and cultural life, regeneration, and thousands of graduates who choose to stay. Yet few people outside the institution know those stories. That gap, between what a university does for its place and what its place knows about it, is one of our sector's biggest reputational risks!
At Newcastle University, work with spinouts such as the National Innovation Centre for Data and the National Innovation Centre for Ageing helped bring more than a hundred and fifty million pounds of external funding into the region. But local residents saw the campus, the students and, occasionally, the headlines. Few connected the university to their hospital treatment, their son's employer, or the regeneration of their high street.
That disconnect matters more now than ever. Public confidence in universities has become fragile. Value for money, international students and free speech have made the sector a political topic. In that climate, the people who matter most to a university's licence to operate are often local: MPs, councillors, business leaders, hospital trusts, schools and residents. They're also the audience most universities invest in least.
Marketing budgets flow towards student recruitment and international reputation, because that's where the targets sit. Civic communication tends to rely on an annual impact report that very few people read. It's full of numbers, yet almost invisible to the people it's meant to persuade. A document can't sit in the room when a decision about your university is being made.
My board roles gave me a very different perspective. As a trustee of a community health charity and of Citizens Advice, and as a parish councillor, I've sat in rooms where people outside the sector discussed universities. The institutions that earned genuine goodwill weren't the ones with the glossiest reports. They turned up, listened, and made it easy to work with them. No impact report can do that job for you.
Telling the civic story well starts with making it personal and local. Economic impact figures alone don't move people. The nurse trained at the university, the local firm built on its research, the school whose pupils were mentored by students: those stories are far more powerful. Then brief the people who'll be asked. Give MPs, council leaders and business groups the facts, the stories and a named contact, so they hear from you first.
Civic reputation is built through presence, at local events, in local media and on local boards. Encourage senior leaders and academics to take those roles, and recognise them, because that work is too often invisible inside the institution too. And measure it. A simple annual survey of local residents and partners will tell you whether the story is landing, and where it isn't.
The strongest universities don't treat civic and global as competing priorities. They tell one story, in which global excellence and local commitment strengthen each other. An international student choosing a university in a welcoming city responds to both: the institution, and the place around it. A confident civic story makes the global story more believable.
Here's a question for every leadership team. If your university faced a difficult news story tomorrow, who in your city would publicly speak up for you? Write the names down. If the list is short, the civic story deserves far more attention, and it may be the most important reputation investment you make this decade. Your reputation begins on your own doorstep, so make sure your city is the first to hear your story!
Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode sparked something for you, hit subscribe, so you never miss the next one. And our full season, with guests from leading universities around the world, is coming very soon. Head to Jonathan Sabarre dot com and sign up, so you're the first to know when it launches. Until next time, keep building something great.