Education

Educational organizations have more stories to tell, and more audiences to reach, than almost any other organization.

Students. Parents. Alumni. Donors. Faculty. Researchers. Educators. Professionals. Communities. Each audience has different expectations, motivations, and reasons to pay attention. The challenge isn’t simply communicating more. It’s knowing what matters to whom, and finding creative ways to make it meaningful.

For more than 30 years, McKenzie Wagner has helped organizations working across education communicate who they are, what they do, and why it matters. From student recruitment and institutional branding to advancement, research communications, educational resources, and community outreach, we’ve worked across the many ways education reaches people.

Our relationship with the University of Illinois began in 1996. Since then, we’ve worked with departments, colleges, offices, and affiliated organizations throughout the university — building relationships that span the campus and encompass an unusually broad range of communications challenges.

That experience includes recruitment materials for prospective students, advancement and donor communications, alumni marketing, research and impact reports, departmental branding, websites, environmental graphics, internal communications, event marketing and digital media.

But our education experience extends well beyond the university. We’ve worked with community colleges, universities, school districts, private schools, childcare organizations, educational publishers and organizations whose mission includes educating the public. From Parkland College enrollment marketing to Research Press Publishing’s educational resources, from school-system branding to a curriculum website for the Museum of the Cherokee People, the work takes many forms.

What remains consistent is the need to understand the audience, the subject, and the organization well enough to communicate something meaningful.

Our education experience isn’t defined by a handful of projects. It’s defined by the range and longevity of the relationships behind them.

At the University of Illinois alone, we’ve worked with numerous departments, colleges and affiliated organizations—from Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science to the Alumni Association, Extension, Fine and Applied Arts, Gies College of Business, Mechanical Science and Engineering, Technology Management, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and many others.

Our work has helped organizations recruit students, communicate research, build brands, engage alumni, support fundraising, promote programs and explain their impact. And the relationships have often grown along with the work. Our relationship with Illinois Computer Science began in 2016 and grew to encompass branding, recruitment, outreach, impact reports, publications, corporate initiatives and community programs.

Our relationship with the University of Illinois Alumni Association extended nearly a decade, encompassing membership strategy, creative, mailings, video, web and communications supporting its evolving membership model.

With Parkland College, our work has included media planning and placement supporting enrollment marketing, as well as presidential videos and environmental graphics.

With Research Press Publishing, we’ve helped market intervention resources for counselors and educators through brand development, product catalogs, mailers, advertising, direct mail, trade show support, anniversary materials and dozens of book covers and workbooks.

We help education organizations:

• Tell a bigger story by connecting individual programs, departments and initiatives to the larger institution and its mission.
• Reach the right students with messaging, creative and media strategies that speak to prospective students and those influencing their decisions.
• Make complex ideas accessible by turning research, academic programs, educational resources and institutional accomplishments into communications people can understand and care about.
• Build stronger brands by creating identities, standards and communications systems that bring consistency to organizations with many voices.
• Give advancement a reason to matter through compelling stories, design and messaging that inspires alumni, donors, faculty, and other stakeholders.
• Translate specialized knowledge into publications, resources, digital experiences, and other tools that help educators, students, and professionals do their work.

McKenzie Wagner doesn’t approach every education assignment the same way. We bring what we’ve learned from each one to the next.

A university department recruiting its next class isn’t communicating the same thing as an alumni association building lifelong connections. A research organization has different needs than a school district. A publisher has different audiences than a college. And a fundraising campaign requires a different kind of story than a student recruitment campaign.

But the underlying challenge is remarkably consistent: communicate what matters, to the people who matter, in a way that makes them care.

After decades of working across education, we’ve learned how to find the story inside complex organizations, understand what different audiences need to hear, and translate that understanding into communications that are clear, compelling, and purposeful.