University of York: research communications

The University of York was faced with a challenge that lots of higher education institutions have to tackle: how should they communicate the real-world impact of complex research?

Pickle Jar Communications was brought in to help address this issue. We started by holding a series of in-depth discovery conversations with academics involved in the University’s key research themes:

• Mental health

• Digital creativity

• Bioeconomy

• Safe autonomy

We then used the findings from these discovery sessions to inform a phase of keyword and content research. In this part of the project we were attempting to find out how people on the internet might come into contact with the research areas York focuses on – what search terms would they use? What questions might they try to answer? How do they like to access that information – do they want to see a video, or read an article, or something else?

At the same time, we carried out some competitor or “best in class” research. We looked at other institutions and research organisations who specialised in similar areas to the University of York, both for content inspiration and for examples of particularly successful communication tactics.

The combination of these two elements led to a recommendations report, in which we proposed how York should frame their communications on these topics. This included how they should talk about the research, what kind of questions their content should offer answers to, and what formats to use to aid organic discovery of the content.

Following this we moved on to content production. We used the earlier phases to inform a series of videos that covered the research themes. We scripted and planned these videos, then used existing assets provided by the university to create new videos that would address the questions we identified in our research.

If this sounds like something your team needs help with, get in touch and find out how we can help you.