Client Spotlight: Joseph DiDomizio, University at Buffalo
Every day, we at heavy are honored to work with extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. One of those people is Joseph DiDomizio, Director of Digital Strategy and Communications in the Division of Advancement at the University at Buffalo, and one of the stewards of the Boldly Buffalo campaign which has recently announced its goal to one billion dollars. Rather than taking a traditional higher ed approach to advancement, Joseph determined that UB could get greater engagement by changing the way content was created, pushed out, and consumed. We sat down to pick his brain about his background and the success of the campaign.
Tell us about your background.
I didn’t come into higher ed. directly. After finishing my undergrad work in Media Studies and English, I went into the pharmaceutical industry as a marketer. After a few too many years there, I met my wife and she was working in higher ed. I started working for her university as well, in the career services office, until I went back to school at Syracuse University Arts journalism and then we moved back to Buffalo.
I saw how different the landscape of working in higher ed was to the commercial world of pharmaceutical distribution. I was looking for a different way to engage with my principles and what I wanted to do with my time. I had always loved to help other people achieve what they wanted to do and work towards their dreams. There are always opportunities for personal growth in higher ed, while also helping others become better. I’ve now been at University of Buffalo for the last six years.
What was your strategy behind creating content for Boldly Buffalo Campaign?
Higher ed is usually years behind commercial marketing efforts. For our University Advancement team, video was a way to tell the most vibrant and moving stories, and let people really connect with the people creating a bright future through the university. Looking at our landscape, while there are a lot of YouTube accounts university-wide there isn’t a lot of focus on that channel with discreet content. So how do we capitalize on the second largest search engine owned by the largest search engine in the world? How do we build out an expectation of quality content and make it work better?
To achieve the kind of success we want, our content has to align with our division goals while also resonating with our audience. So, we came up with this plan to segment our video strategy a little more, so we didn’t pack every marketing message into one video. We wanted to target our content to pipeline stages and audience interest to find our best guess as to where certain messages would resonate with certain audiences.
Through our efforts we were able to increase opportunities for awareness by having multiple touch points on the same theme over a period of time, but also find different opportunities for other mediums to interact with these videos as well. That was a great success.
The Boldly Buffalo Campaign was a huge milestone for SUNY schools. Such an ambitious endeavor requires an equally ambitious marketing and communication plan. What made you take a more consumer-focused approach to push out seasonal content?
It has been my experience that higher ed tends to only look at its peers or competitors at times, especially when you’re looking at marketing. The idea of “let’s steal that tactic and do it here because it’s working for them” is really common. But there are times when the universities do look towards consumer-based options and other kinds of broader strategic ideas instead of copying from the same industry. By pushing out seasonal content, we’re really targeting the value of our pipeline at different stages and applying some non-higher ed ideas into our strategic planning. I think that helps set us a
bit apart.
What were your goals for this campaign?
We wanted to find the pockets of donors in particular stages of their journey with us and be able to give them specifically targeted videos that may encourage them to think differently or take those next steps forward into considering a gift, be open to a phone call or volunteer. At the very least, watch the video to the end!
What’s the next step for the campaign?
Last year we made 88 different pieces of individual content for this initiative alone, which is more content than we ever made in a year on a single project and I think we’re going to make even more this year and make it work even better.
This year will also be the first time we were able to pull in our print magazine as well as our general email deployment schedule ahead of the game so that our annual report, our twice-a-year alumni magazine and our video series all share similar stories in the same subject. They’ll all be very interconnected and speak to each other over this longer period of time, so that no matter where you’re going, you know that these are our biggest stories of the year.
What have been a few things that you’re most proud of as part of this journey?
Our ability to literally be bold and reinvent our strategic distribution and take advantage of some of the out-of-the-box ideas. I don’t know if it could have happened the way it happened here at another place without the flexibility and willingness we have been given to move forward with these new ideas.
What do you hope is the impact of this campaign?
I hope people see UB as a good place to continue to invest in not only their future, but the future of the Buffalo area, the future of the region, and the future of the planet.
We want people to understand that an investment in a university like this, a public university that’s so focused on research and giving students an extraordinary education, can benefit not just the community that it is in, but also the world, as graduates go out and lead the charge.