Farewell to 2011—A banner year for mStoner

All told, 2011 was quite a year for mStoner. Here’s what I mean:

• The tenth anniversary of our founding.


• Our most successful year financially, ever.


• Exciting new projects that allowed us to expand the range of services we provide.


• New staff members who brought new energy and experience to our team.


• Major initiatives toward our ongoing commitment to share what we learn with our colleagues on campuses around the world.

I want to bid farewell to this banner year by calling out some highlights.

Happy birthday to us

I’m still a bit stunned by the fact that we celebrated our first decade in business in November.

Ten years: it’s hard to believe! We’ve grown a lot since early November 2001 when Voltaire and I stared at each other across the office we’d rented in an old factory not far from Wrigley Field and wondered what came next.

Here’s what happened, in brief: mStoner grew; we acquired our long-time technical partner, Global Image; we recruited an amazingly talented team; and we’ve worked for some of the best clients any agency could wish for.

I’d like to thank our smart, hardworking, and dedicated staff who are key to our success. I’m constantly amazed by my talented colleagues and the insights and energy they bring to our work. While it’s always bittersweet when valued colleagues leave, we added some new staff members last year—and they bring some exciting new talent and experience to us and our clients.

An institution’s website is its virtual campus—one of the most important representations of institutional life. As I look back over our first decade, I’m humbled by the number of institutions who have invited us to work with them on this most important element of their marketing, recruiting, advancement, business and learning/teaching presence. We’re often told by clients (and prospective clients) that we’re the best in the country at what we do. I don’t believe that it’s arrogant to say that I pretty much agree. Still, we learn a great deal from our clients and I want to thank the many great people we’ve worked with over the last decade: far too many to list in this post.

Clients and client work in 2011

This year, we launched websites for eleven institutions: Clarkson University, Elizabethtown College, Mount Mercy University, Alverno College, Middlesex School, Waubonsee Community College, Connecticut College, Trinity College, Loyola University Chicago Undergrad Admissions, and The University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. And we implemented these sites on an interesting mix of content management tools, including HannonHill Cascade Server, OmniUpdate, Drupal, Terminal 4, and WordPress.

Of course, it’s no longer good enough to have a great website (though that’s more essential than ever). With the advent of Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels, the web is a lot bigger than it used to be. You may know that we work with CASE and Slover Linett Strategies on a survey of social media in advancement, which explores how institutions around the world use and manage these essential engagement channels. This was the second year of our survey (here’s where you can learn about our findings).

Not surprisingly, our clients recognize that social media should be tightly integrated into their advancement activities and other aspects of campus life. In 2011, we developed social media strategies for New Mexico State University, Kenyon College, the Ensworth School, and Alverno College.

Another big theme this year was mobile: we designed mobile sites for ten institutions. Three of them are live (at Trinity College, UIC, and Loyola University). The rest are in production or nearly ready to launch.

Although we’ve built our reputation on our websites and online work, we work in other media, too:

• We worked on a branding strategy and a visual identity system for the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University (the Hofstra Law website will launch in 2012);


• We created videos and two beautiful viewbooks for The Ensworth School;


• We collaborated with the College of William & Mary on development of the innovative Ampersandbox (print and web) student recruitment campaign.

New colleagues
As some of our team members moved on to other opportunities, we were able to bring a number of talented newcomers to our team. Note that while these folks are new to mStoner, they have extensive experience in their fields:

• We got to know Susan Evans first as our client at the College of William & Mary and when a position opened up for a senior strategist, it was a no-brainer to hire her. Susan brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to mStoner—and to the clients she serves.


• Anne Glista joined us in October as a designer. She’s worked on projects for Widener University and Oakton Community College and has contributed a lot to the design of our new initiative, EDUniverse (see below for more).


• Kate Smith joined us in September as our controller. Already she’s made a huge difference to us by helping us rethink how we manage our business. Internally, we call her “Dr. No” because it’s her job to keep us running efficiently and profitably, which means saying no to everyone at some point. (In a good way, though.)


• Finally, Mallory Wood came aboard as our marketing manager in August. She’s responsible for our external presence, managing our blog and website, reviving our Intelligence email newsletter (you can subscribe here) and helping us to connect more effectively with the community we serve. We’ve already seen Mallory’s talents in action in many situations, but perhaps most memorably (so far) in planning the announcement and launch of EDUniverse.

Community service
Early in 2011, we began developing a major initiative that we announced at our anniversary celebration in Chicago. If you haven’t heard about EDuniverse, here’s the short version:

Find inspiration, learn how others have solved problems, and network with other .edu professionals at EDUniverse, the hub for education’s freshest ideas and latest content. Anyone can easily access and contribute resources like presentations, white papers, blog posts, and more. Create a profile to share your content and generate dialog by liking and adding to the discussion. EDUniverse strengthens education and provides resources to anyone who wants to learn more about marketing, web development, social media, and related topics.

You can learn more and and join the nearly 600 others who’ve signed up for notification when EDUniverse launches. And if you’re in Cambridge and don’t have plans for 24 February, join us at SCVNGR headquarters for our launch party (but please let us know you’re coming first!).

EDUniverse is a larger and more complex manifestation of our long-term commitment to contribute knowledge and share what we learn in our consulting practice with our colleagues in higher ed. We celebrated eight years of blogging at mStonerblog in 2011. And Susan, Mallory, Kevin Zink, Doug Gapinski, Mark Sheehy, and I presented at various conferences: HighEdWeb, CASE Social Media, CASE Summit, AMA’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, and others.

The year ahead
In bidding farewell to 2011, I also want to welcome 2012. We’re starting the year with a plethora of fascinating new projects for some new clients. Here are just a few glimpses of what lies ahead for us:

• relaunching mStoner.com and mStonerblog.com;


• Working with the Office of the President at Columbia University on a new initiative;


• developing new websites for Whittier College, Widener University, Webster University, Drake University, Miami University, UC Hastings College of the Law, and the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management;


• creating a social media strategy for The Pingry School;


• working with the communications staff at Georgia Tech do develop a strategy for recreating GaTech.edu;


• welcoming new staff members Monica-Lisa Mills and Fran Zablocki.

We’re excited about these projects—and others to come! And very pleased to welcome our new colleagues. Best wishes to you for a great 2012: and if mStoner can help your institution be more effective at recruiting students, engaging alumni, highlighting research, or achieving other institutional goals, please let us know.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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