Our Work: Community College System of NH
Community college communications and higher education public relations
CLIENT: CCSNH
Cookson Communications and the Community College System of NH (CCSNH) partnered back in 2016 to initially review the business partnerships the seven colleges had in place and develop profiles of these partnerships for public relations purposes and web copy. Since then, we identified and promoted over 100 partnerships and received hundreds of media pick-ups.
The role has expanded since then and we’ve placed dozens of op-eds, helped with communications strategy, designed posters that profiled the business partnerships, produced COVID-related materials and helped with overall branding. In 2018, we began producing a high-end annual report that has been very well-received.
What We Did
- Public relations
- Communications & op-eds
- Branding & design
- Annual report production
Public relations, communications and op-eds
We created a template for capturing partnerships between businesses and CCSNH colleges often around custom training programs created by the colleges that helped the business or organization upskill current workers or train new workers. These stories have been very well-received and are showcased on the college websites, in posters around the colleges and in annual reports and through social media.
We have provided communications advice and counsel to the colleges and the system office and have drafted and placed numerous op-eds for the presidents to help raise the profile of the colleges within their communities.
Branding and design
Our design work with CCSNH has spanned across multiple areas, including posters, flyers, icons, print and digital ads, email marketing templates and infographics. During the pandemic in 2020, we worked with the team to develop a suite of materials on COVID-19-related information for each of the seven community colleges.
We have also taken a consulting role on branding and best practices, running team brainstorms and creating style guidelines for community college campaigns.
Annual report
Starting in 2018, we developed a model for a comprehensive and informative annual report and have been designing and producing it annually since then. To accompany the report, we produced a set of one-page inserts for each college that profiles alumni and business partnerships.
Cookson Communications has become an extension of our internal team, enabling us to develop, hone and amplify our message well beyond anything we could have done internally. Of particular note is their ability to work with stakeholders across our organization to capture and develop a wide variety of content and deliver it in a way that supports a central message. Their design expertise has led to the creation of visually compelling pieces that include collateral and web. Account service is highly responsive, helpfully proactive and undertaken with a well-honed understanding of our mission and needs. The team at Cookson Communications has provided a very significant quantitative and qualitative value-add to our public relations efforts.
