By Janus Boye
Tina Schmechel presenting on business as unusual at the higher education conference track at the Boye Aarhus 22 conference
If you follow the news, even just a bit, you can easily get the impression that we live in an age of self-centeredness and are more focused on our own success than helping others.
In her work as the Alumni Communications & Digital Marketing Officer at Imperial College London, one of the UK’s leading science-based institutions, Tina Schmechel gets to work with graduates from a variety of backgrounds and walks of life. Her experience is the exact opposite: people are supporting, encouraging and giving their time, energy and enthusiasm.
Tina has been with Imperial since just before the COVID-19 pandemic and previously worked in marketing roles in the high-end fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and luxury sectors, both in the UK and abroad. A journalist-turned-marketer, she’s authored one of Time Out’s most read articles on the 10 best rooftop bars in Barcelona and she wrote her thesis at Berlin’s Humboldt University on Banksy, the famous unknown street artist.
Tina is our expert of the month.
Language as a door opener to understanding the world
So, how do you get to be a bilingual higher education marketer that both completes successful alumni projects at Imperial and speaks at international conferences?
Tina didn’t grow up in London, but rather in what she describes as a very small village in northern Germany, close to the Baltic Sea. Everybody spoke German there and yet even as a child she was fond of languages and saw them as a portal to other cultures.
“As a child, the foreign language section of my local library always had a certain appeal to me, an aura of mystery. I remember feeling incredibly frustrated by this wealth of information that I had no access to as I didn’t speak the language.”
Determined for that to change, Tina started studying French and Spanish, and tried to brush up on her English whenever possible.
“I always had my electronic dictionary with me - we didn’t have smart phones back then - and was looking up the definitions of random words in songs I couldn’t understand. I was obsessed.”
Aged 13, she attended an international summer school in London and soon made friends from places as far flung as Kazachstan, South Korea and Israel - a life-changing experience.
“London is a real melting pot of diversity and cultures which I found terribly fascinating as a teenager, and I still do now. I felt like I had found my place in the world.”
Fast forward to her undergraduate degree at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Tina waited patiently for day two of her studies to turn up in the international exchange office looking for opportunities to study abroad. Not sure if that’s a case of the famous German travel ‘ache’ called Fernweh, but she certainly does like to travel. Following two Erasmus semesters at Middlesex University in North London and various internships and student jobs in the UK, Spain and Germany, Tina eventually returned to London to pursue an MSc in International Marketing at King’s College London.
When I spoke to Tina, she talked about how studying different languages and having international friends and colleagues has allowed her to see the world in a different light.
“Talking to people from different cultures and backgrounds can be truly eye-opening and help facilitate difficult conversations. We can be quick to dismiss someone else’s opinions without considering their social, political and cultural reference points and experiences.”
Another thing Tina is passionate about is digital marketing and leadership.
Digital landscape has become so much more competitive
When talking about Imperial’s big initiatives in 2023 and the digital landscape more generally, Tina was quick to mention that user expectations just keep going up, in particular when it comes to website performance and content.
“Long load times and websites that aren’t optimised for mobile simply aren’t acceptable anymore. Anyone working in digital really has to perform at a very high level and that includes your website content being top notch, easy to navigate and, most importantly, providing true value. The pandemic made a lot of companies really step up their efforts in this area.”
To Imperial and Tina’s work this means focusing on ensuring relevance and trustworthiness. It also means quality over quantity to ensure that they have a competitive edge.
“Imperial and our alumni have so many great stories to tell but content curation and finding the best angle for a story takes time. We try to take a thoughtful approach to every piece of comms and marketing that we publish. It’s not about getting it all out there just for the sake of it.”
She stressed the importance of knowing what you’re measuring and what success looks like before launching a new campaign.
“There’s so much data out there - we could be measuring all sorts of things. Assessing whether your KPIs are truly meaningful and deliver business value can be a tough question to confront but it is vital to running an effective campaign.”
As an example, Tina mentioned Plexus, the online community for Imperial alumni to connect, collaborate and discover more about their online benefits. Think of it a bit like LinkedIn, but only for Imperial alumni. With so many platforms out there already, including almost everyone being on LinkedIn, why should alumni go through the hassle of signing up for Plexus?
Tina at one of Imperial’s first post-pandemic in-person ceremonies at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
“There’s definitely a hesitancy to join new platforms, especially since the pandemic moved so many areas of our lives online and made all of us spend more time in front of screens than ever before. Our team had to take a hard look at Plexus and explore how it can be of benefit to people, how it can add to their lives instead of being just another distractor, a platform that requires their attention.”
In 2020 the platform went through a rather significant restructure with many technical and content improvements, ranging from clearer site navigation to the introduction of new functionalities - and the shelving of old ones. This increased the number of activated (and active) users by more than 20% in one year, shifting the approach from “being yet another social network” to offering alumni-exclusive content and benefits.
Together with her colleagues, Tina has been focused on continuing to meet those high expectations, so that alumni continue to be engaged with Imperial both online and offline.
Working in a highly collaborative environment
One thing that keeps Tina motivated, and is also a striking difference to some of her previous workplaces, is that the culture at Imperial is very collaborative.
At the HE Connect 22 conference in Manchester, Tina hosted a popular workshop and shared insights on the Milestone campaign at Imperial. The campaign was quite successful in re-engaging alumni. It also included a printed postal pack. See the slides for more: Re-engaging alumni, one milestone anniversary at a time (PDF)
Working with graduates and almost a quarter million alumni, no two days are really the same at Imperial. Tina finds herself using her expert skills promoting services, benefits, events and alumni profiles in dedicated newsletters and on social media, helping out with video editing and the printed Imperial magazine, and optimising website performance.
“It’s particularly exciting to work directly with alumni, many of whom are entrepreneurs who are inventing solutions to some of the biggest issues of our time. Just this past December, Imperial startup Notpla won the Prices of Wales’ £1m Earthshot Prize for their seaweed packaging invention - and there are so many other good stories out there. It’s a very inspiring environment to work in. People leave their ego at the door.”
Last year, Tina was also a part of the team that worked on the award-winning Time to Celebrate: A Milestone Campaign. In brief, Time to Celebrate is a powerful cross-team collaborative campaign that celebrates milestone graduation anniversaries from 5 to 70 years. Imperial’s Alumni Relations team created a celebratory milestone pack with commemorative pins, which they posted free of charge to alumni who completed an online form that included an ask for email consent. The campaign hit a nerve: many graduates got in touch to share their memories of Imperial, posted photos of their milestone pack on social media, donated to the College, or inquired about ways to support current students.
One of the projects Tina is most proud of, however, is Imperial’s annual Alumni Awards programme, which recognises the achievements of alumni who have made remarkable contributions to their field, the wider community and society.
“The career journeys of our winners are truly inspiring, and rarely without twists and turns.”
Tina is prepared for her own career to follow a similar trajectory - one that embraces challenges, change and lifelong learning.
“Learning can be so rewarding when you approach it with the right attitude. You don’t have to excel at every single thing you try. It’s not a competition, it’s about constantly expanding your horizons, growing, challenging yourself. Over the years I did a lot to improve my skills in various areas - video and photo editing, coding, public speaking, jewellery making, you name it! Even though I wouldn’t consider myself an expert in all of those areas, these experiences taught me countless lessons about myself, my own capabilities, and the world around me.”
Asked to share a recent example, she quickly said:
“I recently took an Introduction to Science evening class at Imperial’s Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication which explored key concepts in mathematics, artificial intelligence, medicine and applied sciences. Some of it went over my head but that’s what I find so thrilling about leaving your comfort zone to learn new things - the certainty that there is always more to discover.”
Learn more about Tina Schmechel
You can meet Tina in person in our London-based digital leadership group and she will also be in Liverpool in September for the HE Connect 23 conference.
Connect with Tina on LinkedIn.