Meet the new guy

20 May 2026

Ian Hawkings can’t help thinking that at business schools, marcoms is stuck on the outside looking in, and AI won’t help

I used to work very closely with marketing and communications teams at business schools, and one thing that always struck me was how marcoms often seemed to be on the periphery when it came to institutional decision making. Almost like a second-class citizen. Interesting to those in leadership, but not critical to overall direction.

Looking at some of the data from our recent Knowing Me, Knowing You study, produced in partnership with Roe Communications and EFMD, one slide in particular brought this feeling back.

When asked about the role of marcoms within their school or university, 58% of respondents said that they felt marcoms was recognised as a strategic function. 63% said that leadership actively supports marcoms. And 68% said they felt marcoms had sufficient influence to shape institutional messaging. But only 29% said that marcoms teams were involved early in institutional decision-making. 58% actively disagreed with this statement.

I might be wrong, and I am sure there will be exceptions, but this feels a little like marcoms teams being gaslit by leadership. This theory is lent a little extra credence when you look at what makes marcoms professional’s jobs difficult. When asked about the challenges they face in their jobs, two of the top three answers were ‘insufficient budget’ (59%), and ‘not enough staff’ (46%).

Surely if marcoms is recognised as a strategic function, and supported actively by leadership, then they’d be at the table when strategic decisions were being made? They’d be supported better financially, and have sufficient staff?

A reasonable caveat might be that we are going through lean-times, global uncertainty means everyone is feeling the pinch, and it’s difficult to invest any more. Except these are consistent concerns – raised by marcoms professionals through the good times, as well as the less-good. So what’s changed?

One other piece of data that jumped out might be the answer. 69% said that they use AI ‘daily’. When asked what they used it for, 75% were disarmingly honest and said ‘content generation’.

So perhaps here’s the rub – while universities and business schools are contending with increasing financial pressures, lobbying leadership for more staff might prove difficult if a new guy called Claude is banging the work out - and never asks for a pay-rise...

The Knowing Me, Knowing You report will be published by Roe Communications, EFMD and CarringtonCrisp in late June 2026 and will be available to download free of charge from the publishers.