Sofia Lloyd-Jones on UNSW’s 10 year strategy
What does it take to lead marketing through one of the most turbulent periods higher education has ever faced?
For Sofia Lloyd-Jones, Chief Marketing Officer at UNSW Sydney, the answer is both/and: holding a big, purpose-driven vision while building systems that help teams deliver it at scale.
In a sector reshaped by the pandemic, shifting government policies, budget constraints, and the rise of AI, Sofia’s leadership is redefining what it means to market a university not just as an institution, but as a national force for progress.
Holding a vision for the nation
UNSW’s “Progress for All” campaign emerged from deep engagement with students, staff, and researchers, revealing a shared desire to find opportunity in challenge. “When you're seeing these massive shifts in society, there is a lot of fear but there's also a lot of opportunity... For us [it] is making sure that nobody gets left behind. It's no point having the brightest minds if people are getting left behind. We're seeing that around the world. The greater the divide, the greater the challenges, I think, for society more broadly,” said Sofia.
“It’s not just about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about making sure everyone can benefit from that.” The campaign now anchors UNSW’s 10-year strategic plan, signalling an expansion from academic excellence to include societal impact at scale. UNSW’s strategic pillars include sustainability, health equity, and economic inclusion, with initiatives like the Gateway Admission Pathway and free legal clinics for vulnerable Australians. These efforts reflect a broader ambition: to educate the nation with the skills it needs to thrive in a future shaped by climate change, AI, and globalisation.
Technology and teamwork in tandem
Bringing this vision to life at scale is not a trivial exercise. Leading a team of 190 within a university of 8,000 staff and 80,000 students, Sofia emphasised the importance of keeping the team working in parallel with the technology. "[We’re] thinking about not just the tech but the operating model... We started even our current phase of technology investment with a much wider scope. Through the process of prioritising, taking people on the journey, we've got a really clear focus now on the lifelong learning opportunity as our primary use case,” said Sofia.
At each stage, the team is upskilled alongside the rollout of new tools, so they’re ready to use them effectively. This roadmap-style planning helps UNSW get the most out of its technology while keeping the team engaged and aligned with the university’s long-term goals “We are thinking about it as a roadmap... What do we need to do to upskill the team while we're building the tech,” said Sofia.
Rather than deploying tools in isolation, UNSW’s marketing transformation is built on cross-functional collaboration, agile experimentation, and a roadmap that prioritises lifelong learning as a core use case. AI and automation are central to this strategy, not as a threat, but as an enabler. Sofia’s team is exploring workflow automation to free up content creators for high-impact work, while investing in governance to ensure ethical use of generative AI. “Trust is key,” said Sofia. “We want to be seen as a trusted source of truth, especially in a world of misinformation.”
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This episode of The CMO Show was brought to you by host Mark Jones, producers Kate Zadel and Kirsten Bables and audio engineers Ed Cheng and Daniel Marr. This is an edited excerpt of the podcast transcript.
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Mark Jones
One of the biggest enduring tensions in marketing is a big picture idea, like a brand platform, and then small detailed things like execution and driving leads. It's holding two big things in tension. The question is not just so much, how do you do it? But how do you keep it up over time? Hello, Mark Jones here. Thanks for joining us for another episode of The CMO Show, brought to you by ImpactInstitute with our friends at Adobe.
Now, I want to talk to you about a really interesting idea which kind of taps into what it means to be human. Cognitive dissonance is the fancy word. It just really means holding two competing or opposite ideas, intention, holding it at the same time. It's actually also a big thing that we face in marketing. We have a vision. Maybe there's a big corporate platform that speaks to the future where we're going as an organisation. But in the day-to-day, you've also got to drive leads. You've got to keep this busy marketing machine working.
What gets really tricky as your organisation evolves is that it becomes more and more complex. The more people you introduce, the more customers you introduce, the harder this job gets. So my guest today offers some really fascinating insights into this world of holding two big ideas, intention. Her name is Sofia Lloyd-Jones. She is the CMO at UNSW. She's got a long period of work under her belt, so to speak, at UNSW and a corporate career before that. We're going to talk about how we understand the role of technology working with teams, how to build systems and processes that sustain everybody to keep the machine working. And also, what does it take to hold a really big idea for the whole country? What does it actually take to look beyond your current horizon and to really dream big? It's a great interview. Let's get stuck into it.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones, CMO at UNSW. Thank you for joining me.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Thanks you for having me.
Mark Jones
I want to just start with a bit of context setting. Tell me about your role, the size of the uni, the size of your team. Just paint a picture for us of the universe that you inhabit.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. Sure. Yep. So I look after the marketing and digital experience portfolio. So we have a team of 190. And within the university, there is over 8,000 staff so it's a really complex organisation. It's a bit like a suburb in itself. We have a number of campuses. We have eight faculties and about 80,000 students and we have over 380,000 alumni as well.
Mark Jones
And for anyone who is not deeply familiar or tracking the tertiary education sector, it's been... How shall we say? Traumatic or at least tumultuous perhaps in recent years?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. It's definitely been a very dynamic time. Certainly, I think through COVID but even coming out of COVID. Certainly, the last 12 months have been very dynamic with policy shifts and changing market dynamics. And of course, my team looks after domestic and international student recruitment so we are right at the forefront of the rollercoaster. Yeah.
Mark Jones
What is the executive leadership of the uni saying to you or what is the conversation in terms of domestic versus international? And really, I'm asking, what's the demands they're placing on you? Because obviously, marketing has got to do a lot of heavy lifting, right?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. Absolutely. Look, we are shaping the demand conversation as well. So through our data and market insights, audience insights, we are shaping the future demand and we are responding to the signals that we see. So we have a pretty sophisticated forecasting process that we look at. And so, look, for quite a long time, we could see this new opportunity emerging for lifelong learning. And so, we have been working towards that goal for a number of years. But I would say that the shifts we've seen in the last 12 months have created a burning platform, if you like. So we-
Mark Jones
Does that mean burning as in bad?Like these things are on fire?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
It means challenging.
Mark Jones
Okay. Right. Yeah.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
So we are effectively moving from what has been a period of high growth after COVID. Last year was our best year ever and we are moving into a real constrained growth environment. So that is domestic and international policy shifts constraining or capping the number of students that we can teach. So that creates this opportunity for us to really double down on the lifelong learning opportunity because that's unconstrained. So that's really where our focus is.
And as a marketing team, we've been driving a lot of the insights and we're also pretty agile to market shifts and changes. So we are having these conversations with senior leaders in real-time. It's been very dynamic but it's been a very collaborative and supportive approach.
Mark Jones
So in marketing parlance, you're going after a new market?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
We are. We are creating this new revenue opportunity. Yeah. So we've been focused quite a lot on organic growth and this is really a new market for us so it's exciting.
Mark Jones
Now, imagining we're talking short courses for anyone and everyone, is there a particular focus?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. So for lifelong learners where we are choosing to play, again, we are looking at what are our strengths? Where can we win? Where we're choosing to play is very much in the online space and that is from masters to graduate diplomas, graduate certificates, and short courses, executive education. So we are really looking at that stackable credential and delivering teaching in a very different way so it aligns with the needs of working professionals. So online, flexible, shorter, micro credentials. And of course, as a marketing team, we need to respond to that as well.
Mark Jones
What was the insight that got you the go-ahead to do this?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Look, I think it wasn't one thing. I guess as we're building a picture for what the demands of the future world of work are, there's a number of things that start to coalesce. But effectively, if you think about what is the role of a university, it is to educate the nation with the skills it requires to thrive in the future. So that is very much our purpose. And so, we can see that as technology and AI is coming into everywhere in society, we've got climate change, these are all opportunities for society. The challenges and their opportunities and our role as an education provider is to think about, "Well, what are the skills we need for the future so Australia can thrive and how do we educate our people?" And whether they are school-leavers or whether they're working adults, I think it really comes back to our purpose and being responsive to what the market needs.
Mark Jones
Tell me about the Progress For All Campaign, I think, in that context because what's interesting to me... Actually, by the way, ImpactInstitute, we run our own Social Impact Summit. So I'm already on the social impact train.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Oh, great.
Mark Jones
So it's exciting to see what you're doing. But I ask in that context because progress for all, from my reading, is putting your focus on a narrative which says, "We need to keep pushing into this idea of constant innovation, constant progress, leaning into the hard stuff, which is learning, being brave, and all those kind of good things, right?" Have I pointed you in the right direction in terms of the way you were thinking about this?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
That's right. And in fact, we did look at big longitudinal consumer studies. We really looked at, what are the opportunities? And I guess there's glass half full and there's half empty. When you're seeing these massive shifts in society, there is a lot of fear but there's also a lot of opportunity. And really when we spoke to our community, when we spoke to our students, our staff, our brilliant researchers, it very much reflects the culture of UNSW to find opportunity in challenges. And I guess that's really what Progress For All is about. It's thinking about, how can we support society to take advantage of these opportunities?
But I guess the other piece for us is making sure that nobody gets left behind. It's no point having the brightest minds if people are getting left behind. We're seeing that around the world. The greater the divide, the greater the challenges, I think, for society more broadly. And it sort of comes back to our not-for-profit purpose is we want to advance people and society, but we want to take everyone with us. So whether that's underrepresented groups being educated, whether it's things like our brilliant solar technology that is now used in 90% of the solar cells around the world. Even though we had that breakthrough years ago, we continue to have breakthroughs to make it more affordable so it can be adopted in places that are less fortunate than us because that's going to make a difference. Yeah.
Mark Jones
Storytelling is a big part of what you do and how you think about this and I'm already connecting a few dots here in terms of long-term narratives. Would you see yourselves as really challenging the idea that progress is bad?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Very much so. As you can imagine, we had a lot of debate and it was brilliant having many of our senior leaders involved in the process of developing our brand platform because there was a lot of discussion around, "It's not just progress, it's progress for all." And that is something that I think is felt really keenly across the organisation. So much so that when we've launched our new 10-year strategic plan, it has the name of Progress For All and I think... I feel very proud of that as a marketer but it very much resonates with the whole community. So it's not just about being the smartest person in the room, it's also about making sure everyone can benefit from that.
Mark Jones
Well, I think that's when you know your brand platform worked is when everybody else adopts it in the organisation, right?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah.
Mark Jones
Well, well done. Right.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Thank you.
Mark Jones
I'm really interested... We are not a political show in any way. But obviously, you are speaking into a cultural and a business climate that here and internationally is increasingly polarised, right?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Mm-hmm. That's right.
Mark Jones
And so, what you're talking about is a wish to include everybody in a conversation that says, "Actually, we are going to keep moving forward." How hard is that in reality?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Look, it's definitely not the easy road but I think it's something we feel pretty passionate about. We could... And as a global top 20 university for three years running, it would be very easy for us to really just look at advancing our academic rankings through the brilliant minds that we have. But actually, part of our 10-year strategy is how do we make sure that we are taking people with us? So it's not just the research, it's about influencing the policy shifts so that people can take advantage of it. So it's definitely a complex opportunity but the world is complex and I think there are lots of examples where when we are seeing the divide, it creates more challenges. So we think it's the right thing to do and that is one of the beautiful things about working for a university. We do have a 10-year strategic plan. Research has a very different timeline and it also is about how we use the great outcomes that we can affect through education and research. But also, work with community to make sure we're solving the biggest challenges. We're working with government, we're working with policymakers so that we all get the benefit of that. So it's definitely a long game.
Mark Jones
Tell me about how you make this whole marketing team and what I presume is a quite sophisticated machine-run 190 people. Firstly, that's a lot of humans to look after. But what's the system or systems that you use to make everything work? Give us a picture of what's going on.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Look, I would say it's always evolving and we are by no means perfect. But I think first and foremost, everyone really is driven by that transformative power of education. So I think that is really the glue and our why. And so, as we are going about our work, we have put a really big focus on collaboration, cross-functional teams working together. We've started small. Lots of experimenting and responding. So that really has shaped the way we work. And as you'd expect, as a learning organisation, we try to develop the skills of our people. So we've had a few waves of digital transformation in marketing and our approach has been, in addition to the technology, what do we need to do to enable our teams so that we are taking them on the journey? And they're brilliant. They've been... I mean, they inspire me on most days as well so it's a two-way street.
Mark Jones
I got to say, you're the first CMA I've spoken to in a while that's talked about keeping the team working in parallel with the tech. Because it's one of the great unspoken stories really is we've got all these great stuff, but we're using 20% of it.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mark Jones
What's your thoughts on how do you make that work properly? Because I think this is, again, non-trivial at scale.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. So we... I mean, definitely taking the team. So thinking about not just the tech but the operating model. And so, we're planning from that from the outset. And again, we're a not-for-profit. We don't have lots of cash to splash so we're really, really clear on why we're doing what we're doing and how we are prioritising. So of course, we started even our current phase of technology investment with a much wider scope. And through the process of prioritising, taking people on the journey, we've got a really clear focus now on the lifelong learning opportunity as our primary use case. And then, we'll have subsequent use cases. So we are thinking about it more as a roadmap. But at each phase, we are thinking, "What do we need to do to take the team, upskill the team while we're building the tech so that when the tech drops we can get value?" So that sort of incremental value and thinking about the operating model is just part of how we are planning for the future.
Mark Jones
Now, most marketing professionals are secretly hoping their jobs won't disappear. What's your thoughts on that? It sounds like you're trying to keep both things running simultaneously: drive productivity, keep people engaged. It can't be that simple.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
I think there's a lot of opportunity for marketing roles if we keep people engaged and keep them upskilled along the way. I think if you stop on that continuous learning journey, it would be hard. But certainly, my goal is, how do we take people on the journey as we are building so that they feel included? It's very much our culture as well. So making sure that we are being responsive to our individual needs. I mean, the great thing about marketing these days is that there are so many diverse skillsets and thinkers and perspectives. So it's, how do we harness that? And helping people feel involved along the way.
Mark Jones
What's the role of AI? Of course, it's the compulsory question.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
It is the compulsory question. Look, again, I think that is... It's actually critical for us. It is an opportunity. I think we are still laying the foundations, doing a bit of experimenting. But from an organisational approach, given the context that we are operating in, there's not going to be bigger budgets but we have bigger ambitions. So the opportunity is how do we do more with less? And that's, I think, where AI and automation really comes in. And I know from the team's perspective, they are really proud of the quality of the newsroom articles, the content that they produce. And so, we've tapped into that and said, "Well, how do we focus on doing what you're doing in a scalable way?" And so, we are sort of involving them in that conversation. I think probably the big focus we've had this year is on the governance, updating our content governance to be ready for AI, and for that scalable opportunity. So that's where we focused our investment at the moment.
Mark Jones
Well, just on the governance and you mentioned content as well, where do you see the biggest early wins? Because if you think about it, you've mentioned also sort of developing these systems, there's content at scale, there's a million and other different ways of orchestrating customer journeys. Now, lifelong journeys. What's going to be the earliest wins?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
I think we will start probably looking at workflow automation. We have some brilliant writers, content producers who are highly skilled at their craft. And so, I think there is a lot of opportunity in maximising their time focused on the craft rather than the chasing across 8,000 people in the organisation. So that's where we'll start. But we certainly want to look at other opportunities around gen AI content in a really thoughtful and ethical way. I mean, we really want to make sure that all our UNSW content, particularly our research stories, don't go off and hallucinate in any way. So that's really where we are thinking about that quite thoughtfully.
Mark Jones
What's the strategic focus you have on trust as a concept in this context? Because you mentioned hallucinating and that's really... It all comes back to can I trust the content that comes out of any organisation, let alone a university with a pedigree like yours?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. So trust is really key and that's why we are being quite thoughtful about how we apply AI tools to content in particular. But it's even on the web, there is so many news sources. It's hard to distinguish what's true, what's fake, what's being generated. And so, we'd really want to be seen as a trusted source of truth. Evidence-based research is the core of what we do.
Mark Jones
Of course.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
We currently have some pretty high ethical standards in the way we report scientific papers and content around that. So we want to preserve that. But think about how do we leverage the benefits of AI and still preserve that quality? So that's really the conundrum and the opportunity.
Mark Jones
Another topic I wanted to briefly touch on was this big question of audiences. When you talk about for all and lifelong learners, to me, that just sounds like about 20 stakeholder groups, let alone all the existing small village of humans that you refer to in the entire organisation. So how have you got your head around audience segmentation and personalisation?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. So we have definitely started with our student audiences first and we have a progressive approach. So we have an audience maturity sort of model and-
Mark Jones
Meaning they get better or just older?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
No, our sophistication in understanding our audiences sort of gets better. And so, we have a number of segments that we look at across undergraduate, postgraduate, as well as international markets. So we've started with that and we've started at the future students at the prospective student lens. And then, we build fidelity and maturity as we go. So that's where we've started. We will then look at our alumni audiences because, of course, they're a really important audience for us when it comes to lifelong learning. So that's the second focus.
So that's sort of one team is sort of working on that space. In parallel, we're also starting to think now, how can we amplify our societal impact and think about the other audiences we engage with? How can we apply the Adobe and the audience tools that we've already leveraged on students for our donors, for our industry partners, for our research collaborators, and also for the community around our various campuses? So that's next on the agenda.
Mark Jones
Is there sort of a hot lesson that maybe you can share about how to get the most insights out of your data for those audiences? Because it seems to me that it's best when it's thought about as a two-way street. We're not just pushing content out to these mythical personas. We're also getting inputs, right?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think... I mean, it's Marketing 101. Walk in your customer's shoes and I think-
Mark Jones
Yeah. But we keep forgetting.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
I know. And in fact, my sort of tip is start in a lo-fi way, so actually build that persona of your customer and then progressively build the data and the signals. So build that maturity. Because if you start with the sophisticated approach, sometimes you forget about the human. And so, I think it's always about humanising. And we often say within the team that the role of marketing is to make sure that we don't forget the customer, that we are putting the customer and it's thinking, feeling, doing, breathing. If you think about an international student, it is a huge investment to send a child to a foreign country. It's a huge financial investment. It is transformative for those families.
Mark Jones
Of course.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
So it's really about being empathetic to the decision-makers, the students-
Mark Jones
Thinking about them as a whole person. They're going through culture shock. They're not sure which bus to get on.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
That's right.
Mark Jones
All that sort of simple stuff that we forget, right?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah, yeah. And it's so humbling when you go to our open days in these countries because you get to see the families and you can actually see the impact that education has on their lives which sometimes here, we take for granted because we are so lucky.
Mark Jones
Yeah. A simple but hard question. What's the most challenging aspect of your job?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
So much to do in so little time. I think I'm quite impatient so-
Mark Jones
You don't strike me as an impatient person.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
I'm calm but impatient. Because we have got this ambition for Progress For All because we have a lot of support in the organisation for taking steps towards some of the things that we've talked about. I just want to do it faster and quicker and I think many marketers are like that. I know my team are often chomping at the bit so I think that's it. But staying the course, pivoting, progressing, but always moving forward.
Mark Jones
Turns out, it takes a while.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
It does.
Mark Jones
What's your advice for the listener and the audience looking from the outside in to your experience? What's your advice on managing a large team, holding a big idea, but yet driving the day-to-day at the same time? There's a tension there that, I imagine, you feel.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
I think more than ever, it's really important for marketers to be able to work across those two horizons so the long-term and the short-term. And it's... I think the other sort of thing is, how do you stitch the two together? Because sometimes the long-term is quite abstract and hard to see in the day-to-day. So I think trying to bring the connection of the two and that helps, in a way, when you are prioritising. The long list of things that you have to do, what's going to shift the needle in the long-term? How is this going to matter in three years, in five years? Are people going to notice if we've done this event or not? If people are going to notice if we've done this campaign or not. It helps to prioritise but it also makes sure you are keeping your eye on the bigger picture.
Mark Jones
I mean, that's leadership and management advice, not necessarily marketing, right? Isn't that interesting?
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. Or maybe to bring a marketing angle to it is never forgetting what's important for your customer.
Mark Jones
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I didn't mean that critically. Meaning we've got to look a little bit outside of the narrow lane of, how will this deliver a result in some way? We've actually got to be thinking about the broader skillset that we've got to bring to the table as well.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. Absolutely.
Mark Jones
Sofia, thank you so much for your time. It's been great to meet you.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Yeah. It's been great to chat.
Mark Jones
Thanks for joining me on the show.
Sofia Lloyd-Jones
Thank you.
Mark Jones
One of the ideas I loved about my conversation with Sofia talked about how she keeps the team working in parallel with the technology. So upskilling people and introducing technology so that it can really work to its best effect. That's not something we hear a lot of CMOs and marketers talk about. Quite simply because I think there's this sort of legacy of getting a big idea. Getting some new fancy tech and throwing it at a marketing team and hoping they'll be okay.
I don't really know why we keep doing that but this is a really great example where you are really taking more of a thoughtful approach. And interestingly enough, applying the lessons from education in this sector, so in the university sector. And actually applying some of those adult learning principles to your own team. Who knew? So a really great example of, really, cohesiveness in your marketing team and I just think that's a really awesome thing to take out of this episode. Plus, many other great ideas. So thank you for joining us for this episode of The CMO Show brought to you by ImpactInstitute in partnership with Adobe. We'll see you next time.