The Beautiful Complexity (and Brutal Reality) of Higher Ed Marketing Leadership

Based on an original photo by Gene Yoon Photo + Films. Stylized for this post.

I walked into SimpsonScarborough's CMOLab in New Orleans at an interesting inflection point in my career. After more than 20 years in institutional marketing roles, I'm now building Apiarion while selectively exploring leadership opportunities that align with my experience and values.

I left with mixed emotions: inspired by the complexity and growth of what we do as higher ed marketers, but also sobered by the weight of expectations we carry and the structural challenges we face as a profession.

The Growing Complexity of Our Role

What struck me most throughout my time wasn't any single session, but the cumulative weight of what we're expected to do as higher education marketing leaders. The role has become almost impossibly complex.

We're expected to communicate regularly with all our publics, especially during crises. We have to do so across multiple platforms (news media, social media, websites, email, public gatherings) and for numerous audiences: current students and families, prospective students and families, alumni, community members, public officials, donors, faculty and staff. We have to do it swiftly and expertly.

We're expected to be polished, but also authentic. Sometimes we fight against leaders or colleagues who don't want us to share the whole truth because it might reflect poorly on some decisions, actions or inactions.

We increasingly have a seat at the leadership table, but we don't always get the respect or resources we need to do work beyond a narrow definition of marketing communications that amounts to little more than promotion, PR, advertising and news releases. Yet we're growing as strategic advisors, even chiefs of staff and chief strategy officers in some cases.

We might know our institutions better than anyone, understanding who we are and who we are not, yet we cannot always persuade others to focus on an identity that might require excluding some aspirations that others hold dear.

We struggle to be responsive to the marketplace while preserving our history, heritage and identity. And in recent years, we've been centered even more in culture wars against DEI, tenure and "wokeism."

"We're All Harvard in the Public's Eye"

Dan Greenstein's observation during the opening session, "Finding Stability in the Unstable," captured something I'd been feeling but couldn't articulate. No matter what type of institution we represent (community college, regional public, small private), we all carry the symbolic baggage of elite, expensive, out-of-touch higher education in the public imagination.

This connects to the broader themes that emerged throughout the conference about how higher education has become a proxy for cultural battles about elitism, values and opportunity in America. The challenge isn't just enrollment or funding. It's that we're fighting a narrative war where the terms have already been set by others.

As we explored topics around pluralism and political polarization, it became clear that drawing conservatives back into support for higher education requires more than better messaging. It requires rebuilding trust through local connections, reframing our mission around shared values like family and community, and honestly acknowledging where we've failed to listen.

The Personal Perspective

Being in transition between institutional and consulting work gave me a unique vantage point at this conference. I could observe both as an insider who understands the daily challenges and as an outside consultant who sees patterns across institutions.

When I attended CMOLab last year, I was fresh off leaving Stephen F. Austin State University. This year, with Apiarion growing and several interesting institutional opportunities in various stages of conversation, I found myself thinking differently about the challenges we discussed.

The conversations I had with fellow CMOs reinforced something I've been observing: this profession is at a crossroads. We're being asked to do more complex work with greater strategic impact, but the market for senior marketing professionals remains challenging and the expectations continue to evolve.

Many of us are questioning not just where we want to work, but how we want to work and what sustainable career paths look like in this field.

Why This Work Still Matters

Despite the challenges, professional and personal, there's something about gathering with this community that reminds me why I've spent more than 20 years in higher education marketing.

"We're not just promoting institutions. We're stewarding the idea that education can transform lives, that diverse perspectives make us stronger, that critical thinking and intellectual curiosity are civic virtues worth defending."

Yes, we're caught in cultural battles we didn't choose. Yes, we're expected to solve problems we didn't create with resources we don't control. But we're also uniquely positioned to rebuild trust between higher education and the communities we serve.

The question isn't whether this work is hard (it is). The question is whether we're willing to do the difficult work of bridging divides, reframing narratives and building the relationships that democracy requires.

Moving Forward

As I reflected on the conference afterward, I kept thinking about something that became clear through multiple sessions: we need to stop treating marketing as a department and start treating it as an institutional mindset.

This means:

• Being in the room when strategy is made, not just when it needs to be communicated

• Leading with listening rather than assuming we know what audiences need to hear

• Building narrative resilience through continuous engagement rather than reactive messaging

• Positioning ourselves as civic stewards of institutions that serve the public good

For those of us committed to this profession (whether in institutional roles, consulting, or exploring new models of engagement), the path forward requires both strategic thinking and personal resilience.

A Final Note of Gratitude

I want to close by acknowledging what SimpsonScarborough has created with CMOLab. As I wrote to the organizers afterward, this conference recaptures the spirit of intimate professional connection that's often lost in larger industry gatherings.

For those of us navigating career transitions, questioning our path, or simply needing encouragement to keep fighting the good fight, events like this provide more than networking—they provide renewal.

The work is hard. The challenges are real. But so is our collective commitment to making higher education more accessible, more valuable and more trusted.

That's worth fighting for, even when (especially when) the fight gets personal.