Specialties & Services

Communications strategy

Building a communications strategy is the important first step to a project or campaign. We work with our campus partners to plan out the most successful path forward by asking: What is your communication goal? How can you reach it? And how will you know you achieved it?

Strategy is all about planning. To get started, we need to determine:

• Message
• Audience
• Best communications tools/channels to reach that audience
• Tone and style
• Budget
• Deadlines
• How to measure success

OCM can guide you through the process, advise you on tactics, and work with you to create your final strategic communications pieces.

Internal communications

CC is committed to transparent, collaborative, and consistent communication with our internal shareholders. Effective internal communication helps create a connected campus community where individuals and initiatives can thrive, enhancing the important work that each of us contributes to CC.

We strive to maintain an ongoing dialogue for our campus community, working to build relationships, enhance organizational efficiency, and create a culture that is as dynamic and meaningful as the CC experience itself. The internal communications team can provide you with guidance and support, including: 

• Communications strategy and planning for major College initiatives, programming, and events
• All-College messaging—content development, timing, and distribution
• Developing opportunities for various constituencies on campus to collaborate on relevant projects or educational opportunities
• Curating and creating content and features for the “Around the Block” all-campus newsletter
• Developing and implementing opportunities to foster efficiencies through effective communication processes, strategies, and trainings

Executive Communications

We help the College president and senior leaders communicate in ways that are authentic, steady, and responsive to the needs of the College and its audiences. Through strategic counsel, speechwriting, campus communications, and public-facing messaging, we support leaders in articulating vision, guiding through change, and fostering connection across the institution. We also coordinate presidential visibility and engagement opportunities that deepen relationships with students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, and external partners in support of Colorado College’s mission and future.

News and media relations

We love to tell CC's amazing stories and College news relating to faculty, students, staff, initiatives, programs, new publications, and awards. If you know of a great CC story, please let us know!

College news is posted on the CC website, distributed to media, included in various newsletters, shared via social media, and considered for inclusion in The Peak.

All media requests should come through OCM, as we serve as the liaison between media and the campus. If you're contacted by the media, please let us know.

Resources:

• News release archive: A record of all news releases
• CC in the news: A collection of major news stories featuring CC

Visual communications

We are dedicated to designing high-quality products that meet your communications goals. We believe a successful product effectively delivers your intended message, has strong visual impact, and represents and promotes the College visual brand in a strong and consistent manner.

We provide strategic visual communications and professional graphic design in collaboration with CC’s offices and departments. We focus on bringing visual life to projects you’re working on with our OCM colleagues, including writing and editorial messaging, web and digital media, and video and photography.

The types of high-quality printed materials we collaborate on include:

• Posters, flyers, and table tents
• Brochures
• Postcards
• Multi-page publications
• Event and series materials
• Promotional products
• Special cards
• Signage
• Still graphics for digital media (web and email)

Web and digital media

The OCM web and digital media team promotes awareness of CC through the College website and other digital media. We manage the overall digital look and feel, functionality, architecture, and user experience. Our focuses are to:

• Manage and maintain the content on the College's homepage and 30-40 primary landing pages and associated subpages
• Produce high visibility sites to support strategic initiatives
• Maintain the primary social media channels for the College
• Provide oversight and direction for web strategies

Writing and editorial

In the daily rush to communicate, sometimes the written word can suffer or the overall strategy can get lost in favor of "just getting it done." Unfortunately, when strategy, spelling, grammar, syntax, or style are neglected, the message gets muddied and the outcome can miss the desired mark.

OCM is here to help other CC departments with editing, writing, and creative communications. Working in partnership with you, we are available to help plan and execute a wide variety of written content projects to serve many communication needs. We can help you brainstorm, strategize, plan, write, edit, and prepare for the production of promotional and marketing communications and advertisements.