The Macquarie e-card is an animated GIF that you can insert directly into an email, accompanied by a personal message. Please see helpful steps below to set up your email.

The process for adding an animated GIF animation is the same as inserting static images into emails. Simply:
1. Download the Macquarie e-card to your desktop.

2. Click where you want to paste the image into your personalised email message, then:

• PC users – Click on the ‘Insert’ tab. Select ‘Pictures’.
• Mac users – Drag and drop the downloaded e-card file into the email body, or select the ‘Insert Picture’ icon.

3. Select the Macquarie e-card file from your desktop or hard drive. Click ‘OK’ after you have selected your file.

4. Test if the process was successful and by emailing the card to yourself first.

The first such system to be rolled out at an Australian university, GEM was custom developed to address the significant design and content disparity across Macquarie’s 10,000+ webpages – including more than 400 different fonts and over 13,000 broken links.

GEM’s positive impact is being felt in many parts of the University including the Faculty of Arts, who recently relaunched their webpages.

“With GEM we are able to showcase teaching and research excellence in the Faculty of Arts in a way that we weren’t able to do before,” says General Manager Neil Durrant. “It’s easier to find our people, engage with the faculty and promote our research.”

“The consistent look and feel, as well as navigation and overall experience, has meant our audiences are responding extremely positively, we are seeing more visits and more engagement with our content. GEM also makes it simpler for our staff to update and maintain our content to a very high quality.”

Macquarie joins names including David Jones and the City of Sydney as 2021 Gold Sydney Design Award winners, cementing the University as one of the most innovative brand marketers in the higher education sector.

“It’s fantastic to see the inspired and meticulous work of our digital, marketing and IT teams being recognised in this way,” says Group Marketing’s Director of Digital Andrew Jayatilake. “But, of course, our biggest satisfaction comes from knowing that we’ve made the digital experience at Macquarie much more enjoyable, both for our website visitors and all our web page editors around campus.

“We’re excited to have re-launched the About section of mq.edu.au last week and we’re looking forward to rolling GEM out across further sections of the Macquarie site over the next 12 months, with ‘Study’ the next section due for launch.”

Explore GEM (Global Experience Macquarie)

A new Social Media Toolkit is now available for staff, providing guidance on ongoing account management, content development and social media best practice.

The Toolkit, approved by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Engagement), also stipulates that any member of the University community wanting to create a new social media account associated with Macquarie is now required to first submit a business case to the Head of Social Media, Group Marketing (socialmedia@mq.edu.au), for prior consideration.

This change is due to the rapid explosion in Macquarie-affiliated social media pages, with close to 500 channels currently in existence, all with varying levels of account management in place.

Following wide consultation, the DVC (Engagement) has also recently approved a new Social Media Policy, which specifies the rights and responsibilities of staff when using social media in their capacity as an employee, to safeguard their reputation and that of the University. The new Policy supersedes the previous guidelines.

To keep track of all recent policy updates, visit the Policy Bulletin Board.

Called ‘squads’, these teams comprise of communication, digital and event specialists, delivering to 12-month marketing plans with the support and resources of the wider Group Marketing team.

“This new service model responds to the need across the University to have more direct access to our specialists in Group Marketing,” said Chief Marketing Officer Elizabeth Horbach. “It is a shift in how Group Marketing operates, to a new ‘Agile’ way of working where we divide our work into 90 Day Commitments, and collaborate deeply with our stakeholders to deliver on their needs.”

Meet your dedicated squad on the Group Marketing webpage >>

In addition to the dedicated squads, faculties and offices will also be supported by two new Planning Directors, Fiona Rooney (offices) and Mark Fallon (faculties), who will drive the delivery of the 12-month marketing plans.

A new way of working together

Group Marketing’s new service model is underpinned by the introduction of Agile Marketing, a set of processes and tools used by many leading organisations to bring greater efficiency, collaboration and responsiveness to their activities.

Macquarie staff should notice improvements, including:

• Increased speed and efficiency of execution through enhanced communication channels to Group Marketing, improved planning and project management processes, and more opportunities for optimisation of activities across cross-functional teams.
• Better response to customer needs and dynamic conditions through greater collaboration with stakeholders and more frequent feedback loops.

Elizabeth says feedback on the new model has been positive: “Stakeholders can clearly see how a more collaborative and planned approach to marketing will help them achieve their desired outcomes.”

How should I request work from Group Marketing in the new model?

The Group Marketing website outlines specific contact points for marketing requests in each faculty or office, but in general:

• Large campaigns should be discussed with the relevant Planning Director.
• Smaller projects can be briefed into your relevant squad.
• Small, ad hoc requests can be made via OneHelp or the appropriate self-service option.

Working out of the University’s digital ‘war room’, Group Marketing’s Digital Team and the Macquarie IT team have been hard at work overhauling the homepage, making it much easier for users to find what they’re looking for and strengthening Macquarie’s reputation as an innovative university.

Many people don’t realise the incredible amount of work that goes into a homepage re-design, as Digital Director Andrew Jayatilake explains.

“It’s much more than just giving it a new lick of paint,” Andrew says. “It involves months of site analysis, forensically looking at thousands of users journeys, over half a million data points and a staggering amount of user testing – every change we are making to the site is backed up by what our audiences are telling us.”

The site went through five key stages of testing, with designs being constantly refined throughout. Prospective students, current students, staff, parents, alumni and other audiences were among almost 500+ participants who gave feedback on designs via interviews and workshops as well as tests such as heat mapping (which measures click activity on a webpage), first click testing (where users are asked to perform a specific task on a web page) and five second testing (where users share their impressions after seeing a design for only five seconds).

One of the main goals for the new homepage was to simplify the steps that prospective students needed to take to find course information.

“There were 1.7 million visits to our course pages in the last year, and prospective students and their parents make up roughly 30 per cent of our site visitors,” Andrew points out. “Before it could take a student nine clicks to get to the course information they were after – in the new site, they can get to it as quickly as a single click from the homepage.

“We’ve also added information for other key audiences including potential research and industry partners, and of course our current students and staff will still have the information they need as well.”

With current school leavers being ‘digital natives’, and having high expectations when it comes to their digital interactions, it was important for the team that our new homepage showed off Macquarie’s ‘digital savvy’.

“There’s not much point marketing yourself as an innovative university – a university that developed the first WiFi technology and uses cutting-edge technologies in teaching – if your website doesn’t reflect that,” Andrew says.

“We’ve used modern design styling, an intuitive UI [user interface] and content choices that emphasise our position as one of the most modern universities in Australia.”

The new homepage will launch in mid-December just before HSC students receive their ATAR results and start hitting university websites to explore their study options. The new homepage is being supplemented with personalised web pages for school leavers that have preferenced Macquarie, making it easier for students to get the information that is relevant to them in making their choice about where to study.

“We’re really excited about what we’ve created and we’re confident our new digital resources are going to make a big difference for our audiences,” says Andrew. “It’s only just the very start of what we want to achieve for our digital presence and our audiences.”

Last month saw the launch of the University’s new brand campaign – a major milestone for the Shared Identity project. We asked James Barrow, Creative Director in the Group Marketing team, to answer some of the questions staff have been asking about the campaign.

What is ‘Shared Identity’?

Shared Identity (or ‘Shared ID’) is an ongoing project that aims to improve Macquarie’s relevance and distinctiveness in the higher education sector. Stage 1 of the project – launched in 2014 – saw the establishment of Macquarie’s new logo and visual identity.

Why did we need a stage two of Shared Identity?

A successful brand needs to be regularly tested and refined to ensure it continues to be relevant to its audiences. Our extensive market research revealed that Macquarie needed to more clearly articulate its position as an innovative university that delivers outcomes and impact, in a way that both differentiates us from our competitors and that is relevant to our many target audiences. By doing this we will become the preferred choice for more students, staff, researchers and industry partners.

What is actually changing with Shared ID 2.0?

Following quantitative and qualitative market research across all our external and internal audiences, we developed a new brand narrative that will help us better articulate our strengths to our various audiences and help us tie all our marketing activities together.

What is our ‘brand narrative’?

A brand narrative (also sometimes referred to as a ‘brand proposition’) defines what an institution stands for and usually expresses how the brand meets its target audience’s needs and how it is differentiated from competitors, so the audience has a clear reason to choose the brand.

The short-form version of Macquarie’s new brand narrative is:
“Macquarie is a vibrant university engaged with the real world. We foster collaboration across diverse fields of knowledge and human perspectives, pursuing innovative ways to address society’s complex problems and create a better future.”

A long-form version of the narrative can be found in section 1.2.6 of our brand guidelines.

What is a ‘brand essence’?

A brand essence is a distillation of the brand narrative, capturing what an institution stands for in just a few words.  A brand essence differs from a tagline in that it’s not used externally – rather, it is used internally to inform and bring consistency to marketing activities.

Our new brand essence is ‘connected intelligence’, reflecting Macquarie’s unique position in the higher education sector. While some universities celebrate innovation through technology, we are the university of human-powered innovation – innovation that is brought to life through collaboration and connectivity, and that seeks solutions for real-world challenges.

What is a ‘brand campaign’?

A brand campaign is an external-facing series of advertising and marketing activities that brings a brand narrative to life and motivates audiences to find out more . Macquarie’s brand campaign centres around the equation (YOU)^us (or ‘You to the power of us’) – a human equation for success. It highlights the power of human collaboration and our belief that when we all work together, we multiply our ability to achieve remarkable things.

Is our logo changing?

No, our logo and visual identity (including our brand colours and fonts) remain unchanged. 

Should I be putting ‘(YOU)^us’ or ‘connected intelligence’ on my newsletter/flyer/website etc?

No. All ‘(YOU)^us’ brand campaign activities (including a specific recruitment campaign highlighting Macquarie’s priority courses) are being managed by Group Marketing, in consultation with the faculties.

‘Connected Intelligence’ should not be used on external-facing material, though we welcome ideas from staff about how their work demonstrates this concept. Staff can use the Suggest a story form to alert the Group Marketing team to these ideas, or they can contact their relevant portfolio partner.

Where can I find the brand guidelines?

The current brand guidelines are available on the Group Marketing team’s website. The site also provides branded templates (including Word and PowerPoint), as well as a style guide that outlines the correct spelling and format of commonly used terms.

Have any of the branded templates changed?

There are new versions of some templates – they won’t look different to the previous templates, but do contain some bug fixes.

How can I make sure my material is brand compliant?

All material that features the Macquarie brand should be emailed to sharedidentity@mq.edu.au for a brand compliance check prior to publishing. You can learn  more about brand compliance on our website.

Does Group Marketing provide any training for creating branded material?

Aside from the advice provided on our website, we run various workshops on good marketing practice through the year. Staff should contact their relevant portfolio partner if they have a specific training need for their team and we’ll do our best to accommodate it.

Elizabeth takes over as head of the Group Marketing team on 3 July after finishing in her current position as Director, Marketing and Communication at the University of Newcastle.

Acting CMO, Shannon Kliendienst returns to her substantive role as Group Marketing Director of Communications.

Elizabeth began her career working in consumer goods where she obtained an excellent grounding in strategic marketing and brand management with organisations such as National Foods and Coca-Cola before moving to Lion Nathan, firstly as Regional Marketing Director then Development Director focussed on future innovation opportunities.

From there she joined Westpac, progressing over 13 years from Senior Manager, Brand, Sponsorships & Agency Management through various senior marketing and brand roles to become Head of Brand & Marketing for the Retail Bank followed by Director of Marketing for Westpac Institutional Bank.

Although not starting at Macquarie until July, Elizabeth has already spent time on the campus, meeting with her fellow managers and members of the Group Marketing team.

David Wilkinson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Corporate Engagement and Advancement, said: “This is a very exciting time for the marketing function at our University. The last few years have seen enormous change, and a lot of hard work from a lot of people, and our journey continues now with Elizabeth’s appointment. Elizabeth brings a rare breadth and depth of experience and expertise, from within and outside our sector, and is very well placed to lead Group Marketing in its evolution.

I am very grateful to Shannon for her interim leadership, which has been outstanding, and to the whole team for its continued hard work. I will be working closely with Elizabeth, and all in Group Marketing, in coming months to help deliver world class marketing for our University.”