Five years, five notable trends - Fine Point Communications

Happy birthday to us! This month marks five years since Fine Point Communications was founded, a longevity that only half of businesses achieve.

We’re thrilled about the milestone and deeply appreciative of people like you who care about improving independent school communications.

Nearly two dozen schools have called on Fine Point to assist in their work, and we’re grateful for every one of these engagements. We also look forward to the projects to come, including some upcoming initiatives that will benefit our field.

This anniversary, like any big milestone, also provides a chance for reflection. We’ve been thinking about several industry trends and what they indicate for schools:

Less interest in reading

Independent schools love written language. English curricula lean heavily on class readings of literature, newsletters and magazines are the media of choice to inform constituents, and career advancement within education often rests on an ability to write well.

But research casts doubt on whether parents and alumni hold the same affection: A recent university study found that only 1 in 6 American adults reads for pleasure on any given day, a statistic that shrinks every year. Previous surveys found a similar trendline. The proportion of students who read regularly for fun is even smaller.

With people less likely to read what schools send out, how should we respond? Embrace the approach of Smart Brevity: Write short messages that read fast? Shift the default from text to visual communications — graphics, photos, video? Or hold to our traditional and proven approach?

‘No-click search’ takes hold

Generative artificial intelligence has provoked every independent school, especially regarding its impact on instruction. But chatbots are also disrupting school communications.

The focus in our offices was initially on content generation — employing ChatGPT as a de facto freelancer to write and edit copy. We’ve argued and continue to believe that this approach holds more risk than benefit: Because chatbot “hallucinations” are common and unavoidable, a close fact-check of everything the robot produces is necessary, minimizing any time savings.

A bigger disruption came later: the “no-click search.” With AI summaries threatening Google’s search engine as the best way to find information online, publishers suddenly saw a sharp decline in website visits.

Not long ago, the web seemed like a mature, settled technology. But AI and no-click searches are forcing a reset and a new consideration of the medium.

With AI still developing, more effects may still come forward, such as deepfake school messaging. Communicators need to track big-picture trends that affect PR in all fields, not simply in education.

The rise of ‘school choice’

As state governments authorize tax dollars to fund private K-12 education, new models, including for-profit schools, have emerged to compete for the money.

The growth of “school choice” demands that communicators stay familiar with their school’s policy on such payments — not all institutions accept vouchers and the like — and perhaps the fine-grained requirements of tax funding.

The changes also shake up communications strategy: Novel partnerships and campaigns may be necessary to find and connect with new groups of prospective parents.

Meanwhile, public and private schools are starting to confront a decline in the number of K-12 students. About a dozen private schools have closed in the past six months over enrollment issues, while several large public systems have announced their own plans to close campuses.

An ever-broadening scope

The communications office at an independent school is more likely to feel like the “Other Duties As Assigned” department than one with a clear mission and function.

These days, anything that might touch communications increasingly falls to comms: admissions marketing, website optimization, online advertising, graphic design, extracurricular publications, branding, social media strategy, athletic PR, stationery ordering, apparel design, donor messaging …

As the scope grows, storytelling gets pushed aside. Not surprisingly, many schools are struggling to identify their unique value proposition, to illustrate the aspects that distinguish them from competitors and to bring these to interested audiences.

Schools are hiring creative PR professionals, then asking them to serve as project managers who take requests from other departments and dole them out to freelancers. This hardly seems like a model for long-term success.

Community among communicators

School communications can be hard, long and lonely work. The responsibility of the job requires discretion; sometimes it’s easier to avoid colleagues than to answer a difficult question. Independence is part of the DNA of our schools, which can make the pooling of information tricky. And there’s often an air of competition between neighboring schools, especially in admissions marketing.

Yet we see heartening signs of independent school communicators replacing walls with bridges — in a similar way to how heads of school, admissions professionals and development executives organized themselves.

One example: the NYC Independent Schools Communications Professionals, a long-lasting regional group that meets regularly to share information, joys and concerns. Several state and national associations have staged annual conferences where communicators can socialize and learn together. We’d like to see more of these in the future.

While PRSA and the American Marketing Association serve some of these interests, their aims don’t map perfectly onto independent school communications. A standalone association could elevate the stature of the field — as the Enrollment Management Association has done for admissions.

Fine Point Off-Site update

Registrations continue to arrive for our Feb. 25 conference in Seattle, the Fine Point Off-Site. Each sign-up represents a vote of confidence in our brand-new project. We also love seeing the messages of support along the way:

“Excited to see what you have in store for us.”
“I love that this conference is completely dedicated to communications professionals.”
“You are filling a real need!”
“You’ve put together a top-notch list of speakers.”
“Looking forward to the opportunity to meet and learn from colleagues from across the country.”

Our conference website has details about the program and introductions to each of our speakers.

We also explain what separates the Fine Point Off-Site from any other conference on the calendar.