NYU Tandon

44 in 15: How Marino Helped NYU Tandon Rise in the Rankings

Public Relations
Media Relations
Digital Strategy

130+
Media Placements
580M
Media Impressions
15M
Social Media Impressions (2018-2022)

Marino was engaged with the NYU Tandon School of Engineering ecosystem for nearly 15 years. As a long-term partner, NYU Tandon came to trust Marino as an exceptionally attuned and integrated collaborator, strategist and consultant, resulting in consistent and impactful tier one media placements highlighting several initiatives and a successful digital strategy that brought the school more exposure than it had ever seen before, enabling NYU Tandon to leap 30 places in the U.S. News and World Report engineering graduate school rankings over the span of a decade, a key benchmark and KPI for the engagement.

Fulfilling NYU Tandon’s Potential Through Brand Recognition

As NYU Tandon continued to evolve and grow, so did Marino’s strategic approach to accomplishing key objectives. With several name changes and an insignificant brand identity, the school needed to establish itself in a relatively short amount of time.

Marino began by laying the foundation for NYU Tandon’s highly acclaimed research institutions and programs by securing on-message media placements and educating key stakeholders on the NYU Tandon expansions and investments while also building positive relationships with local Downtown Brooklyn community.

The agency’s overall approach and strategy incorporated a focus on the primary areas that are taken into consideration for program rankings and was executed in a manner that ensured the cultivation of a more clear-cut identity and elevation of key moments and initiatives that would set Tandon apart from other programs and subsequently push them up the rankings significantly.

Cultivating Key Moments

Marino oversaw critical milestones in NYU Tandon’s growth, including its merger with Brooklyn Polytechnical Institute, the NYU2031 Initiative, the development of its 370 Jay Street campus and the introduction of the school’s first female dean. In each successive year, Marino’s scope of work grew, ties within the school strengthened, and the quality and frequency of media placements excelled.

Establishing Areas of Expertise

The arrival of the school’s first female dean brought a clear vision of the future of NYU Tandon. She helped to define the school’s areas of research excellence – – cybersecurity, data science/AI/robotics, sustainability, emerging media, communications/IT, urban development and health – and brought more emphasis to Tandon’s goals of increasing the number of women and minorities in STEM fields. Marino utilized her arrival to educate the media and other target audiences about NYU Tandon’s vision, values and areas of expertise.

Throughout the partnership, the agency also collaborated closely with faculty to support their research and bring awareness to the groundbreaking work being done at NYU Tandon, all while becoming knowledgeable about their specific specialty areas, which allowed the Marino team to leverage current events and ongoing relevant news to establish Tandon faculty as expert sources and thought leaders in their respective fields.

Integrating Digital Programming

To better support NYU Tandon’s marketing and communications objectives, the collaboration between the school and Marino expanded to a digital campaign that built a targeting and promotional system to ensure the full narrative and key messages were reaching peers and decision makers across the field. This ensured the previous work across earned media and strategy were communicated effectively beyond the press.

The implementation of the digital strategy led to three major milestones over the course of a year:

A comprehensive ecosystem that ensured those who matter to NYU Tandon received and understood the school's narrative.
The collection of approximately 350 subscribers to the NYU Tandon newsletter
Over 200,000 engagements, including hundreds of comments achieved by capturing our target audience's attention and enticing them to join the conversation

Longstanding Partnerships Foster Positive Results

The robust institutional knowledge developed by Marino over the years allowed for a comprehensive understanding of NYU Tandon and a proven ability to tell the most impactful stories about the groundbreaking work, progress and research the school is creating in and around the engineering fields