Prospectus+ has agreed a three-year Headline Partnership with The College Marketing Network (CMN), building on several years of collaboration around research, events and insight for the Further Education sector.
There are some partnerships that start with a sponsorship package. This one didn’t.
We’ve been working with Emma Wilde and The College Marketing Network for a few years now, through events, research, workshops, roadshows and plenty of conversations about what colleges actually need from their marketing.
Somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling much like a supplier and sponsor relationship.
So we’re very happy to make it official: Prospectus+ is now the CMN Headline Partner of The College Marketing Network, as part of a new three-year partnership.
And, for us, the three-year bit matters.
“We weren’t particularly interested in just putting our logo on a few more things for twelve months. What interested us was the opportunity to commit properly to the relationship and think about what we could build together over a longer period.”
Matt Lees Co-founder of Prospectus+
More than sponsorship
One of the things we’ve always liked about CMN is that it creates opportunities for people working in Further Education marketing to actually talk to one another.
Not just sit through presentations, but compare notes, share what’s working, challenge ideas and talk openly about the problems they are trying to solve.
That fits very naturally with how we want Prospectus Plus to show up in the sector.
We want to contribute useful research. We want to share what we’re learning from the colleges we work with. We want to test ideas, challenge assumptions and hopefully help people make better decisions about how they communicate with prospective students.
That is why, when Emma first talked to us about becoming CMN’s Headline Partner, the interesting part wasn’t the branding. It was the opportunity to do more of the work with the community.
“Prospectus Plus has always been more than just a sponsor to CMN. Nathan, Matt and the wider team bring research, ideas and insight that genuinely add something to the network.
The Headline Partnership gives us the opportunity to build on that relationship in a much more structured way, and I’m really excited about what we can create together over the next three years.”
Emma Wilde Executive Director of The College Marketing Network
What the CMN Headline Partnership will involve
Over the next three years, Prospectus+ will be involved across CMN’s programme of activity, including its conference, awards, roadshows, workshops and member communications.
There will inevitably be some Prospectus+ logos involved too. But the bit we’re most interested in is what we can create together. Research will be a big part of that.
There are some genuinely interesting questions facing the sector.
How are prospective students actually consuming information?
What role should the prospectus play when so much of the student journey is digital?
Where does personalisation genuinely improve the experience, and where is it just personalisation theatre?
And how can colleges make better decisions when budgets, teams and attention are all under pressure?
“If we can contribute useful data, challenge a few assumptions and help college marketers leave a conversation with ideas they can actually use, that’s far more valuable to us than simply turning up with an exhibition stand.”
Nathan Monk Co-founder of Prospectus+
Building on something that already works
What makes this CMN headline partnership particularly nice is that it doesn’t really feel like the start of something new. It feels more like putting a name around something that was already happening.
Emma has been incredibly open to ideas over the years, whether that has meant collaborating on research, letting us experiment with event formats or simply introducing us to people when she thinks there is a useful conversation to be had.
And we’ve tried to contribute in the same spirit.
That matters to us, because the best partnerships tend to work when both sides are willing to put something into them, rather than one side simply buying access to the other’s audience.
That is very much how we want this one to work.
Three years gives us room to be ambitious
A one-year sponsorship inevitably encourages fairly short-term thinking.
But a three-year commitment gives us a different question: What could we create together that would actually be useful to college marketers?
We already have a few ideas. Some sensible. Some probably slightly over-ambitious. We think that tends to be how the good ones start.
For now, though, we’re just very pleased to make the partnership official. We’re looking forward to the next three years as CMN Headline Partner.
