“The Curious Storyteller”

Dean Gould, CMO at Southern Cross University, started his career as a journalist and has taken that storytelling craft into bold new areas.. Today, he tells stories through various marketing and media platforms.

“Southern Cross University is a multi-campus university on Australia's east coast. We are proud of our reputation as a progressive institution, engaging with the communities we serve to create change that has an impact around the world.”

“Sometimes it is long prose, more often it is a 30-second video or even a headline on a social media tile. But each piece is a story,” says Dean. “I feel pretty strongly about the storytelling in marketing, because we have to be curious and restless.” According to Dean, the modern marketer has to be curious about new technologies, new markets, trends, the resurgence of retro, whatever is making an impact on your audience.t.

Dean thinks complex and robust organizations like universities can only survive by working in a 360-degree of touch environment. “It’s how people consume messages now. The linear delivery of information disappeared a long time ago. So whether you’re a small business or a $300 million enterprise like Southern Cross University you need to be in the conversations – and they happen everywhere,” says Dean. “Information is omnipresent now so there is no rest for your messaging. You can pulse it in and out as required but you have to be in multiple places at once because that is how people read, consume, buy and communicate. Marketing has to be that nimble too.”

He further elucidates, the speed at which people move in and out of issues or topics is remarkable, and while this may not t be good for the social fabric, it does mean people can get behind a worldwide cause by their millions and then in a month have left it behind completely. The surge of the crowd, as Dean addresses it, is astounding to watch, but it is also a big challenge for marketers because to be involved in those surges one has to be incredibly aware and responsive. “On the other hand, there are so many options that I see a lot of marketing complicating itself,” he adds. “That’s where my journalism background helps a lot. I had a lifetime distilling thing down to 25 words! The discipline of simplicity is essential in 2020.”

Today, under the aegis of Dean, Southern Cross University is constantly moving the line forward and raising educational standards. “My role as CMO is to celebrate the very best of the University. We are the first university in Australia to offer a Regenerative Agriculture degree; the first to offer a Naturopathic Medicine Masters degree, the first to offer the new Business and Enterprise degree based on responsible business practice,” he adds. “It is a university that operates at the edge of knowledge that is changing the world.”

The University, operating in one of the most beautiful parts of Australia in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales and Queensland’s Gold Coast has a constant drive for improvement at its center.

Dean and his team are working towards building a new brand position for Southern Cross University. In recent years, student acquisition or recruitment messages have dominated their marketing, while teasing out the brand narrative.

“We have just seen a 35% increase in enrolments arising from our last campaign so it is a good opportunity to build the full brand position on the back of this demand,” he says, from his beachside campus next to the Gold Coast International Airport.

“The impact of the COVID-19 crisis is significant and Australian universities have all been hit hard, as has the whole country. But we will get through it and emerge as a renewed institution.”

In a final reflection, he sees technology and creativity jockeying for ascendancy in the marketing world at the moment.

“Creativity wins every time, but there are so many great technicians out there – and we need them – that it is easy to think that adept use of a platform is ‘marketing’.

“It’s only part of it.

“The soul of marketing is the central idea, the connection with the customer, the story that resonates. “We need the technology to amplify that, absolutely. But I’d like to see less dross amplified and more great story lines,” he adds.IE