The Politics of Storytelling in a Polarized Nation
Jack Martin came to higher education from politics. Before he ran marketing at the University of Washington, before he built one of the most admired storytelling programs in the field, he worked for Governor Kathleen Sebelius. He ran comms for a congressman. He spent the first decade of his career learning how to move audiences who didn't already agree with him.
Then he walked into higher ed and noticed something.
Nobody was polling. Nobody was testing the words. Nobody was asking what the public actually thought of the institution — they were just telling the institution's story louder and hoping it would land. Universities, Jack realized, are political actors operating in a politicized country, and most of them are flying blind.
In this episode of Higher Ed Icons, Jack walks Mallory and Volt through what it looks like to bring a campaign operative's discipline into a major public research university and what the field still doesn't understand about its own audiences.
He talks about Boundless, the immersive storytelling program at UW that set the standard the rest of the field is still chasing. He talks about the Big Ten We Are Here campaign — a $1,500 ad that landed 250 million impressions during football season — and why every conference should be doing the same thing. He talks about the moment President Robert Jones tested the phrase debt-free and watched public perception of a UW degree jump 20 points overnight.
And he says the thing nobody else in higher ed will say on tape: the academy is naive about politics, and naivete is costing the field.
🔑 What You'll Take Away
Why universities are political actors whether they want to be or not, and what that means for how comms gets built
How a $1,500 ad reached 250 million people, and what the Big Ten model means for every other conference
The polling discipline that turned one phrase, debt-free, into a 20-point gain in public perception
Why the job of a marketing leader is bidirectional, and why the inbound half is where the institution actually changes
How to make the case for survey research when the academic side thinks the data should speak for itself
What separates institutions still telling their story louder from the ones learning how to test it