Higher Ed Communicators Are Stuck in Crisis Mode. Heritage Branding Can Help Reclaim the Story.

Higher education’s value story is getting drowned out by crisis response, political scrutiny, and the rush to sound current on AI. Communications teams are spending so much time answering the latest flashpoint that the more important work gets pushed aside: reminding audiences who the institution serves, why its work matters, and what makes its promise credible. That vacuum has consequences. When universities stop telling their own story clearly, critics are more than happy to write it for them.

Jessica Stallone, Senior Director of Brand Management & Communications at Stony Brook University, oversees institutional reputation and brand strategy for one of the country's major R1 research universities, translating campaign performance and audience data into C-suite decisions. Her background spans tech founder to multimedia reporter for CNN and Newsday, giving her an editorial instinct for where narratives break down and why. She believes the way back is through brand fundamentals, anchored in who an institution actually serves rather than what is currently trending.

"Your core brand messaging, in its authenticity, lies in your audience. No matter how you spin it or try to make it trendy, it always has to resonate with that core group," says Stallone. That conviction shapes everything from how she builds campaigns to how she responds when they fail. She watches communicators reach for buzzwords and forward-looking abstractions as a substitute for direct answers, whether the subject is AI's promise or the political moment on campus. When the noise gets loud, she goes back to the data and to what audiences are actually asking.

Losing the plot on the value story

Higher ed communications teams are stuck in response mode. Every new issue eats time that used to go toward telling the school's story, and after enough cycles, reacting becomes the default. Stallone, a First Amendment proponent, is honest about the cost.

"That shift into crisis mode has had its own backlash because the story of higher education's value isn't being told anymore," she says. "The narrative is now controlled by people who think that research funding should be limited and education should have funding reduced."

After proposing to slash NIH funding by nearly $18 billion in fiscal 2026, only to be blocked by Congress, the administration has returned with a fresh round of proposed cuts for 2027. Institutions that cannot articulate what they do and why it matters hand that argument to their critics. As university presidents grapple with rebuilding public trust, the communicators behind them are working with thinner teams and tighter budgets.

Heritage outlasts the hype cycle

Stallone's prescription is a return to what she calls heritage branding, messaging rooted in deep psychographic research and anchored to the core audience an institution has always served. For a public research university, that means leading with what is honest and plainly defensible, rather than chasing whatever positioning feels current.

Her pitch for Stony Brook is direct: "You're going to walk away with a degree that costs less than the car you're driving. Our bucks are small. Our bang is big." Fewer than four in ten U.S. adults aged 25 and older held a bachelor's degree or higher in 2024, meaning most people in the country have never completed a four-year program. That gap is the argument. For a state school, affordability is a fact worth repeating plainly, and authentic brand positioning is what keeps that message from being drowned out.

The same skepticism runs through how she reads AI. Stallone uses the tools but scrutinizes the claims, and she sees a consistent pattern in which industry leaders reach for vague, forward-looking language rather than addressing what AI can do today.

"We saw the dot-com bubble years ago, and this is similar," she says. "What AI can promise and what it can do in its immediacy are two separate things." Defaulting to the future, in her view, is a way to avoid answering questions about the present. It signals unfamiliarity more than vision.

Data mojo and the ego problem

The same rigor she applies to brand applies to every campaign decision. Before a launch, she does a year-over-year analysis of past performance to understand what delivered and what quietly failed. Once campaigns go live, she monitors in real time and pivots fast. The question she asks is whether a given term actually helps people find what they are looking for, not which terms have the highest search volume.

Most marketers can pull the report. Acting on what it says is a different muscle. A data-driven communications approach only works when the person running it is willing to act on the numbers, even when that means walking away from something that took months to build.

"My ego is not in it when I do this," Stallone says. "You are putting money on something and taking somewhat of a risk by changing what has been done the year before. You have to take your ego out of it the entire time and be willing to say, that didn't work out, let's shift quickly."

"I equate it to the stock market. Your stock could be tanking, and if you're arrogant and you think that it's going to rise, why gamble in that way?" Reading the signal and moving on it, without defending the prior call, is what separates campaigns that adapt from ones that drift quietly toward the next planning cycle.

Believe what you sell

Rigor keeps campaigns alive but it does not keep people in the room. Stallone has watched colleagues sign on to sell things they privately do not believe in, and she has watched what that costs them over time, in the quality of their work and in how long they last in the job.

"In marketing, you could easily sell your soul to these industries," she says. "You are creating narratives that impact people day-to-day and trying to convince them of things. It should be for something that you truly believe in."

For communications leaders, that belief shows up most clearly when things get uncomfortable. It is what keeps someone in the positioning when the call comes to react and consistent in the work when consistency is the harder choice. Stallone thinks institutional communications demands more of that than the industry acknowledges.

What is happening in higher education is playing out across industries. Outside voices fill the space that organizations leave open, and reclaiming that space is harder than holding it in the first place. Communications leaders who stay ahead of that dynamic tend to have one thing in common: a message they were already telling clearly before anyone pushed back.

As federal and state funding pressures mount, the institutions still telling that story clearly are the ones that never stopped. "The story of higher education's value isn't being told anymore," Stallone says. "And if we don't tell it, someone else will. And they already are."