EMPLOYMENT: President, Eduvation Inc; Webcast Host, Ten with Ken; Convenor, Canadian Higher Ed CMO Roundtables. Formerly: Co-Founder and Senior Vice-President, Academica Group Inc; Founding Editor, Academica Top Ten; President and Creative Director, steelecommunications inc.
EXPERTISE: Institutional brand positioning strategy; market research; environmental scanning and emerging trends; recruitment marketing and stakeholder communications.
Ken Steele is Canada’s best-known higher ed monitor and futurist, creator of the nation’s leading daily newsbrief and host of Ten with Ken, a webcast that examines global trends in pedagogy, youth culture, technological innovation, marketing and branding. Over the past 20 years, he has consulted with hundreds of colleges and universities, helping them plan and interpret market research, improve internal communications and media relations, understand their competitive context, and develop distinctive institutional brand positioning strategies.
For a decade, Mr. Steele enhanced and developed some of the largest higher ed consumer studies in the world, surveying millions of college and university students and applicants, and authoring dozens of articles, reports, and white papers on market research and institutional positioning.
Brand Chemistry™ is his data-driven conceptual model to make abstract value propositions tangible, and to build campus consensus around a focused brand strategy. Working from a finite table of possible brand elements, Mr. Steele helps institutions explore potential combinations, and arrive at a unique brand formula to guide institutional strategic planning, brand creative, and marketing efforts.
Mr. Steele earned his Bachelors in English Language and Literature from the University of Western Ontario, and a Masters in English Literature from the University of Toronto. His doctoral thesis, still incomplete, focused on computer-assisted analysis of Shakespearean quarto and folio texts.
Swail Landis 