Public Relations

Internal Controls

The Office of Institutional Advancement and the marketing department incorporate a wide range of checks and balances and internal controls to manage the accuracy of information in promotional materials. 

Overall Content Accuracy

Marketing requests are required to be submitted through the Marketing Request Intake Form.  The requestor is required to add his or her supervisor to the form. Marketing then routes all creative drafts and final copy through both the supervisor and original requestor. Prior to submitting the marketing request, the requestor must acknowledge four statement (three of which relate to internal controls): (1) My marketing request will not be started until I provide all relevant details, (2) I have appropriate approval for this request, (3) It is my responsibility for proofreading and content accuracy prior to print or publication/distribution.

As the subject matter experts for the content promoted to students (or other constituents), the requestor and supervisor are asked to be responsible for final copy accuracy. Once final copy is approved by the internal client(s), Institutional Advancement staff  review all information and assures that creative copy is consistent among all collateral in the promotional package and across marketing platforms (e.g. social media, digital screen signage, brochures, e-newsletters, webpage, banners, etc).   All messaging and collateral is additionally reviewed through weekly editorial and creative sessions and through the project management database workflow system (current vendor: Wrike).

Event Messaging

To ensure information accuracy for events, all requests for marketing support require two additional steps. The requestor must provide an approved Official Function Form and an approved 25Live event support form. These documents evidence that the event has been vetted and approved by both PC Administrators and the Facilities Department. Marquee messaging (visible from City of Phoenix streets) only includes carefully curated enrollment messages, enrollment event dates/times, other campus-wide events with a community focus, and campus closures (i.e. messaging on PC Marquees is limited to college-wide communication). 

Institutional Advancement can only be responsible for information accuracy of college events and programs. To this purpose, marketing maintains a strict policy of only promoting internal and co-branded events. This ensures that the activities are vetted by the District or internal Phoenix College staff/administration. If an event or promotion requested does not have an internal staff member to serve as point of contact and directly sponsoring or co-sponsoring the event with a contribution of both resources and staff, marketing will define the event as a third-party offering and relegate any promotional efforts to that third party organization.

Department-Level Promotion

Department and program-level promotion, by its very nature, typically requires more information and copy in the collateral. Marketing seeks to create print and digital marketing materials in as evergreen a nature as possible. To facilitate this, weblinks and QR codes are utilized to drive students and prospects to webpages for this additional information. This helps ensure that printed materials remain useful for as long as possible. When possible, webpages and QR links take users to web pages which are routinely vetted by curriculum staff and/or the Maricopa County Community College District.

Public Relations Support

All press release drafts written or edited by the Marketing Department are routed to either the original requestor or a subject matter expert (in many cases, the grant writer or faculty lead on a project) for accuracy of content before publication. Additional content and tone checks are accomplished through draft copy dissemination to Phoenix College administrators, as appropriate.