Marketing Toolkit

A set of defined good practice in communications about knowledge exchange in the social sciences – to academics, universities, and private sector stakeholders – can be hard to come by. The communications and knowledge exchange COP (KE comms) recognises that many elements of research communication, business engagement, and entrepreneurship need high quality communication to support success. For the social sciences in particular, these elements are challenging due to a lack of understanding about the potential value of the social sciences to businesses. Many elements of research commercialisation need high quality communications to support them. The Marketing Toolkit project aimed to develop a series of guidance/good practice cases for the communication needs associated with social science commercialisation.

Resources were created to address the challenges described above, primarily via the outcomes of two workshops and corresponding surveys run by the KE comms COP. These workshops were designed to gather good practice, example case studies, and sticking points of communicating the value of the social sciences within academia and as part of academic engagement with business.

• Workshop 1 discussed how to best communicate the value of social science to partners and organisations outside of universities, but also within and across the university.

• Workshop 2 explored ways to increase academic engagement in knowledge exchange and commercialisation.

Key outputs from the workshops project are below:

1. A case study template containing a series of questions aimed at helping individuals create case studies for communications and knowledge exchange.

2. A diagram illustrating the stages of communication.

3. A summary of takeaways from the two workshops which includes tips on:

• Dedicated Social Science Support and Messaging

• Frameworks to Understand opportunities

• Role models and visibility through social media

• Event and themed based opportunities

These outputs have also been incorporated into the Aspect Toolkit, a ‘good practice’ resource that cuts across Aspect’s four COP areas. Explore the Toolkit here.