case study: The University of Cambridge
Training and workshops for communications teams at a world-class centre of learning
Sectors: Education
The client
Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world.
The University has a different structure to most. Rather than everything being centralised there is a collegiate system, with 31 Colleges, over 150 Departments and six Schools for Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Humanities and Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Technology.
Each group within the University is made up of world-leading experts in their field, imparting invaluable information and promoting events of global significance on a daily basis.
The services
Training
The numbers
50+ sessions
150+ hours of training
1000+ people trained
The challenge
This structure translates into several thousand communications channels across websites, social media, audio and video, with more than 400 people running them.
For an extra layer of complexity, the marketing and comms teams range across all levels of seniority, from heads of communications to Fellows and undergraduate students.
This hierarchy makes it tricky to stay on top of best practice in digital and keep the output consistent across University communications.
The approach
We prepared a series of training sessions on writing for the web to ensure everyone was communicating in a clear, consistent way. This clarity in communication also has the knock-on effect of presenting the University as an institution which is open to all.
Our first session, attended by staff from a range of University bodies went so well that we were asked to run another. Then another. Then another. Our first series of workshops consisted of six sessions, training a total of more than 150 people.
Since then we’ve returned to lead sessions for multiple Colleges, Schools and Alumni organisations, plus the Cambridge Judge Business School and the University of Cambridge Museums group.
During the pandemic we took it online, with one session with at the Alumni conference reaching hundreds of people across the world, from Azerbaijan to Toronto.
The results
We have reached over a thousand people in communications connected to the University, with workshops covering:
· social media
· writing for the web
· email marketing
· communications strategy
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The use of relevant examples and actionable ideas is helping us improve our content already.
Sookio’s training sessions were really well-tailored to our staff. The use of relevant examples and actionable ideas is helping us improve our content already.
Head of Digital Communications, University of Cambridge