Strategic Narrative
Our Strategic Narrative helps you to talk about Newcastle University in a way that demonstrates the impact that we have on the world.
Using the Strategic Narrative
The Strategic Narrative gives us a definitive and aligned way to describe ourselves. It highlights the University’s strengths, and evidences them through our actions.
Using this structure ensures that we are telling our story in a cohesive, coherent and consistent fashion. It ensures that our narrative is thoroughly evidenced, and easily understood.
This approach should be used consistently across the University, whether you are writing externally facing content, or a research funding bid or talking to students or staff.
Our five strengths
The Strategic Narrative is structured around Newcastle University’s five strengths:
We have produced a number of case study videos which articulate our Strategic Narrative, which you can watch on the strengths pages.
These form part of our University’s ‘Hero’ content, intended to drive authority, brand awareness and engagement.
Our actions
When using our Strategic Narrative, each of the five strengths is expressed through the actions that we’re taking around them. This is known as a value proposition - a clear and concise statement of the benefit and motivation that underpins each strength.
We achieve this by taking each of the current strengths and explaining why we are so focused on this strength.
For example, the strength ‘Ageing and Health’ becomes 'We are helping people lead healthier, happier, longer lives’.
General value propositions can be complemented by any number of more specific value propositions. This adds a further layer of detail to the content.
Problem statements
Each value proposition is accompanied by a problem statement. These statements clearly and factually outline the problem we're trying to solve.
Its purpose is to help us express the motivation of our value propositions. We can use these alongside each other when creating content.
Our evidence
Our evidence, or rational proposition, provides us with the ability to explain exactly how we are working towards our actions, or value propositions.
For example, we have a rational proposition which outlines the detail of the actions that we are undertaking to help people live healthier, happier, longer lives.
This includes our teaching, research and knowledge exchange expertise.
Using the narrative in practice
The Strategic Narrative is a consistent way for us all to talk abour our work at the University.
When using the Strategic Narrative you should:
- draw on one of the value propositions based on the University's five strengths
- consider layering this with a more specific value proposition to add detail
- consider integrating a problem statement to outline the problem which is being addressed
- evidence the specific strength with factual information (rational proposition)