When research funding becomes a headline, higher education has a choice: retreat into complexity or step forward with clarity. In this episode of Higher Voltage, Kevin Tyler sits down with Marina Cooper, Senior Associate Vice President for Integrated Marketing and Brand at Johns Hopkins University, to unpack how one institution chose the latter.
The result was Research Saves Lives, a campaign born not from branding ambition, but from a moment of reckoning. As federal research funding faced renewed scrutiny, Cooper and her team asked a hard question: Had higher education done enough to explain why research matters to everyday life?
Rather than centering Johns Hopkins alone, the campaign was intentionally expansive. Research Saves Lives was designed as a shared platform: white-labeled, open-access, and adaptable, so institutions, researchers, patients, alumni, and advocates could all participate. The message was simple, affirmative, and grounded in impact: research improves lives, strengthens communities, fuels the economy, and protects the future.
As Cooper explains, this wasn’t meant to be a traditional marketing play. It was a content-first storytelling effort rooted in trust between marketers and faculty, between institutions and the public. From life-saving medical breakthroughs to national defense, space exploration, and job creation, the campaign widened the lens on what research universities actually do and who they serve.
That openness paid off. With millions of organic impressions, widespread adoption across institutions, and visible enthusiasm on campus — from faculty advocacy to T-shirts and yard signs — the campaign demonstrated what alignment can look like when mission leads and brand follows.
Read the full transcript here
Kevin Tyler
Hello, and welcome back to Higher Voltage, a Volt podcast covering the latest trends in higher education marketing and administration. And with everything that’s going on in the industry, there is a lot to cover. I’m your host, Kevin Tyler, an industry veteran, and I’ve worked on both sides of the fence at institutions like UCLA and various higher education agencies. In each episode, I talk to industry experts to get their take on what’s working, what’s not, and what has to change. Higher Voltage is produced by Volt, the go-to news source for higher education marketers and enrollment professionals. You can visit Volt at volt.edu.com and subscribe to Higher Voltage on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss an episode.
Electric Kite ad read
Kevin Tyler
Welcome back to Higher Voltage. I am so excited. I know I say that every time at the beginning of every episode, how excited I am about this guest, but today is true, true excitement because I’m welcoming my good friend, Marina Cooper, to the show. Marina is currently the Senior Associate Vice President for Integrated Marketing and Brand at Johns Hopkins University, where she leads the digital, creative, multimedia, and marketing teams in the Office of University Communications. With more than 20 years of senior leadership and trench experience leading strategic communications, brand, and marketing in higher education and at all levels of the public sector, Marina has also held two governor-appointed positions for the state of Maryland. Marina, welcome to Higher Voltage.
Marina Cooper
Thank you, Kevin. I’m so excited to be here and be with you, especially.
Kevin Tyler
Especially. Well, thank you for making the time for this chat on this, I guess for you, snowy, rainy day in Baltimore. But I’m always happy to have a friend on, but we are going to be talking about some very serious things about a topic that is near and dear to both of our hearts, and that is the state of higher education in today’s climate. And the reason for this episode now is that you and I were both at AMA a couple of weeks ago, just outside of DC, and you were on a panel at the Senior Leadership Experience talking about a relatively new campaign that your institution has launched called “Research Saves Lives.”
And as I was listening to that and your presentation, it was clear to me that we obviously had to have you on Higher Voltage to talk about this response to the current moment, right? Johns Hopkins is responding to the moment now with a really interesting campaign. And I just want to, like, speak just briefly about, like, the top line of it. As everyone here, you know, listening knows, higher education is kind of backed into a corner in terms of, especially, research funding and those cuts from the federal government. And as one of the largest recipients of federal funding for research that Johns Hopkins is, the campaign that was crafted talks about how the research that is conducted not just at Johns Hopkins, but across institutions across the nation, are really responding to the most urgent needs of society. And so I just want to think about first, before we get into the nuts and bolts of the campaign, how that story came to life on your campus around research, its saving lives, and how you planned to respond to this moment.
Marina Cooper
Yeah, thanks for asking the question and thanks for having me on. I think we, Johns Hopkins, like many other research institutions, found ourselves at the early part of this year of 2025 in an important place in terms of thinking about how well have we communicated our research mission to the American public? And what happened was, the current administration really forced us to have that conversation through federal funding cuts and reimagining things like indirect costs and how research labs are funded across our country. We were faced with an important challenge of better articulating the value that we as research institutions bring to the American public and improving their everyday lives, but also improving the quality of life that we have today. And so now we find ourselves, you know, in that agreement that research universities and the American government first had, like many, many years ago… that we agreed as research institutions that we would be the research and development, the R&D, that would create the discoveries that America needs not only in health, but in defense, and in innovation.
You know, Hopkins is one of those places, right? We found the GPS, and the defibrillator, and so many other amazing and important discoveries. Redirecting asteroids so they don’t hit Earth… you know, all of those things happen in research labs with amazing, incredible faculty. And their science wins, right, in terms of their ideas winning those research grants, peer-reviewed, merit-based, all of those things. And all of that is now being challenged in terms of how we continue to win that funding with the federal government’s funding model. So, at the early part of this year, we found ourselves saying, “Hey, we haven’t done a good enough job articulating to the American public what it is we do and how it connects to them.” And so we literally found ourselves in a moment after one of the directives came down around I think it was NIH funding, or it could have been indirect costs, they all happen so fast, the following week saying as a creative team, “We’ve got to say something and we’ve got to give our people the tools to be able to say, in their own words, tell the story of how their work, our faculty’s work, or how grateful patients were happy, you know, and their lives were saved by the health discoveries and the important breakthroughs that came through our institution.”
And so we created this campaign and we needed it to be affirmative, we needed it to be positive. “Research Saves Lives” as really the umbrella and the tent that allows not only our community, but anyone who believes in this moniker that research has saved their life… their life, to be able to bring it forward. So it came as a simple idea, but one that we wanted to be big enough and broad enough that many people could join us in advocating and do a better job, as I said before, articulating the hard work that happens in our institutions every day. That was a long answer.
Kevin Tyler
It’s a perfect answer. I think it’s important to get into the nooks and crannies of the decision-making because the decision-making in higher education right now is so critical. And, you know, turning over every stone to really understand what the response needs to be. And I think one of the most exciting parts and compelling parts of the campaign that you launched is that you white-labeled it, right? So it’s not proprietary to Johns Hopkins. Any institution can use it as they feel fit. And I think that because so many versions of the future begin on college campuses, it really brings us all together in a way that we really haven’t seen higher education come together before.
I’m curious if you could speak to the decision to white-label the campaign, because so often we see campaigns that are so specific, so branded, so “ours,” that we do not want anyone else to borrow it, but I love this notion that this is for all.
Marina Cooper
Yeah, because the research is for all, right? And so Hopkins’ mission, and one of the things we say often is, “We create knowledge for the world.” And our discovery is for the world, and so this mission, this campaign, really had to embody that. It wasn’t about Johns Hopkins research; it’s about research at large. It’s the research that we do with other research institutions, you know? We don’t work in isolation; we work across states, we work across the globe to bring discoveries to the world. And so the campaign really had to embody that. And also, it wasn’t a campaign that was just for our institution; we wanted every individual to feel like they could pick it up and be an advocate and take it to their social channels and, you know, and take it to their communities and take it to their families to be able to tell their story.
And so the white-label piece of it was really important. It was about creating really a toolkit that any institution or any individual could use with simply the words “Research Saves Lives.” And then, of course, if you’d like to add your institution’s logo, of course, we made it scalable and flexible for folks to be able to do that. But the goal was to get the message out there and to, more importantly, give folks the tent and the platform to do that. And I think, again, with the mission being forward and what we’re trying to articulate going first, I think we were successful in allowing people to adopt it. And again, part of our mission, part of our culture is, you know, again, just serving and making sure that the mission was heard.
Kevin Tyler
Can you speak at all to how the market has responded? Like, how many other institutions have picked up on the campaign and how, if at all, do you, like, train or workshop its success for individual institutions?
Marina Cooper
Yeah, and so, you know, anecdotally, I’ve heard from a lot of my colleagues, especially out in the Midwest, who were like, “Thank you so much for doing this. It showed us the way, it inspired us, or we used it.” And we’re flattered by that, but I think this was a moment where we as higher ed institutions just needed to come together. That while we’re all different and we have different approaches to what we do, we have different constituencies and complexities depending on the states that you’re in or the challenges that you’re tackling, but there needed to be this moment where we just, like, removed all of that and said, “How can we help each other?” And we do that in a lot of ways in terms of sharing best practices, but we don’t often do that with our branding and our campaigns. And so we just wanted to make our playbook open.
And so we put this as a resource, as we often do with many of our campaigns on our website, to show people. But in this case, we actually made all of the assets downloadable without login so that any American… not just institution, whose research has saved their life, research has supported their job, it has, you know, created hope for them… that they have the opportunity to use our assets, whether it’s a, you know, a filter on their social profile or a Zoom background. And that was important. The adoption that we’ve seen since February is incredible. So, we launched mid-February, which was very early, and we saw within, I would say, the first six months, we captured over 500,000 views of over 120 posts, I think we had done at that point. We’ve done significantly more, but, you know, we’ve done our storytelling about the work that we do at Hopkins, we’ve reshared the discoveries just to make sure folks can connect again, the dots.
We’ve done a number of things, but I think, you know, millions of impressions, all completely organic campaign, put no paid advertising behind it. And I think the adoption, I think over 4 million impressions within the first few months shows that people just wanted something and were saying, “Put the words in my mouth so I can, because I have something to say and I just need the toolkit to help other people understand it.” And I think that’s what, you know, I think it’s remarkable, but I think it also just speaks to the moment that folks were looking for the words and the ability to act.
Kevin Tyler
I think it’s great. I think it’s so, so smart. And I think that higher ed can learn a lesson in how we can work together in responding to issues that are affecting the entire sector as opposed to coming at it from an individualistic kind of perspective. And I think it’s kind of a template for all types of conversations that could be had now in higher education. I’m curious if you can speak to the campaign pillars and not only what are they and how you built them, but also like, how did you go about sourcing all the material to support each?
Marina Cooper
Yeah, so the campaign pillars really, fall on the idea of, number one, Research Saves Lives, but the idea of, that it also creates jobs. We talk about institutions as economic engines for the cities and the communities in which they are rested. We also talk about the industries that surround us. And so, and then we talk about the faculty researchers and the staff that support them as well as important parts of those jobs. So the idea that being an important pillar, especially in terms of economic impact and speaking to the American economy is a really important part of this campaign and messaging that we want to include.
There’s also an aspect of the campaign called “Research Creates Hope,” which again speaks to the idea that, you know, discovery is all about looking to the future. And sometimes that breakthrough… that we’re creating around cancer gives you an extra year of life, an extra day of life. And are willing to give up on hope? Again, those positive reinforcements.
And then the other piece of it is, again, connecting to what the American public can understand is that research protects America. And so it is research, you know, that is behind our defense. And as a military brat, I feel really confident in saying that our American military and our American defense structures rely on the innovations that we bring across our research institutions. Obviously, Hopkins has the Applied Physics Lab, which works mightily on not just defense as we understand it as military, but also we think about space and the next frontier, the new frontier, and how we need to be prepared for that as well. So the campaign touches on a number of areas. Again, not just focused on health and medicine because often people think about medical institutions with research, but really widening the aperture and making sure the American public knows all the touchpoints in which we need American research to continue to thrive and bring American prosperity.
Kevin Tyler
So, I’m so glad that you mentioned that because as you were speaking, I was thinking about, and it might be my own naivete, but whenever I think of Johns Hopkins, I think of medicine first, and almost only. And I think of maybe only I think of medicine. And so I’m curious how, if at all, has this campaign, when you speak about widening the aperture, has it brought more of the research that you do every day to the forefront for people in a way that might be that you might not have expected at the creation of the campaign?
Marina Cooper
Absolutely. The campaign and I think, again, the message, whether Johns Hopkins is taking up the message or other institutions and individuals, gives us the opportunity to talk about how we all work together in a number of areas. Obviously, we, this year, opened, in the last year, the School of Government and Policy. And in many ways, you know, we now have the opportunity to speak to that as a strength of the institution. And, you know, we talked earlier in this conversation about defense and space, and those are major and important fronts that the institution is building its strengths as well. You know, and we can go down the list of all the important things that we’re working through. But I think, yes, it does give us the opportunity to broaden the perception of our strengths, but more importantly, speak to our impact in a number of areas and how that impact is often shared with other institutions.
Kevin Tyler
I love it. I love it.
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Kevin Tyler
Having had a hand in building what feels like hundreds of campaigns for institutions across the country, one of the questions that comes to mind most immediately is how did the internal community feel about the development of this project, right? Like there’s always that internal space and because a campaign of this kind of status and because of its, kind of, critical nature, it becomes a very, very important project. I’m curious if you can speak to how it was working across campus in the ways that you had to, how the messages were received. I imagine working with a bunch of researchers, having their work, kind of, you know, put in the front of everything was probably pretty exciting, but there are a lot of nuts and bolts that go, like a lot of, you know, machinery happening in the background when you’re building a campaign like this. What did that feel like and look like for Johns Hopkins?
Marina Cooper
Yeah, I have to give a lot of credit to our team in University Communications. We have a team of incredible storytellers. And so, when our content team goes to work with faculty, faculty are comfortable with them, they’re familiar with them, our media relations team. We’re talking constantly and in touch constantly about their breakthroughs, their discoveries, and how we can communicate and articulate that research in ways that the American public can appreciate. Whether it’s the science of pumpkin spice or the fact that, you know, a Johns Hopkins researcher, you know, invented rubber gloves. So making science real is something I think our faculty do really well and I also want to pat my colleagues on the back, I think they do an exceptional job of helping articulate that story and telling that story as well. So we had the foundation of trust between our marketing communications colleagues and our incredible faculty experts, right?
We also have tremendous marketers across this institution. You know, I sit within the University Comms team which is, kind of, the central team, but every division and school has an incredible team of marketing communication professionals who often look to us to convene and lead in these big and important moments. And so we were going to create something that everybody could join and be a part of. And I think, when we created it, and when we came to them, I have to give them credit that they sharpened our knives in terms of, like, “Well, what about this?” and asking the right questions or they’re really great at making sure that what we’re building is scalable and flexible.
And then they take us up on our offer. Like, when we know that the first thing they ask for is T-shirts, we have succeeded, you know? Like, “That’s great! When are you going to make the T-shirts available?” Okay, we’re onto something. We’ve got something here that folks want to create. And so then we created this whole, like, brand portal because we’re like, okay, we need to make sure that when our faculty go to Washington and decide that they want to, you know, participate in democracy in Washington, that they have all the swag or things that they want and need as part of that. So, you know, again, we always say alignment, especially when we talk about brand, I work in a very big, complex place where we can’t tell people what to do, but we say “adoption is alignment.” And if people take it up, if people take it up, then we’ve done something right. And this was a great example of where folks were on board. And as I said before, looking to advocate and looking for the opportunity to be a part of it.
Kevin Tyler
Well, I’m going to make my public request here to get one of those T-shirts, first of all. What metrics are you looking at for defining success for this work? I mean, obviously adoption on campus is a great one. What other kind of metrics are you looking at?
Marina Cooper
Yeah, I mean, so we look really closely at our organic social campaigns that we’ve launched and as well as, you know, the readership. So we have a very specific Research Saves Lives page and microsite. And so we’re monitoring traffic to that, we’re monitoring traffic to our stories. The whole, it’s really this was a content campaign first and foremost about storytelling, and so we’re monitoring the readership there, it’s high. And then we’re also looking at our… we have a specific YouTube channel focused on this content as well. Hundreds of videos created by our team and by our colleagues across the institution.
And as I said, over 4 million views just in the first six months alone. It’s time for us to remeasure again. You know, 9,000 shares around that same period of time, over 500,000 views. Like, we know that the engagement is there, and we’re constantly looking for ways in which, you know, that the content that we’re reflecting today speaks to the moment and adapts because the conversation has shifted and changed over these last several months in terms of priorities, and so we’re making sure that we can continue to make our storytelling relevant.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah, yeah. And it’s important to note for listeners that all of the information for the campaign will be on our episode page as well. So if you want to take a look, download whatever, that will be there easily accessible after you listen to this episode.
Marina, I’m curious since the campaign’s launch back in February, how has the campaign, if at all, brought the campus community closer together?
Marina Cooper
It’s exciting. I think it’s brought the campus much closer together. When we’re all speaking, you know, from the same, kind of, song sheet and when you walk around campus and see people wearing the T-shirts or the stickers on the laptops or we even have yard signs, we have a limited production of yard signs. When you see them out in the wild, that’s when you know you’ve really created something special and when people, you know, continue to ask you for ways in which they could incorporate it. So, Research Saves Lives became part of our Hopkins on the Hill annual, kind of, summer event that we actually go to Capitol Hill and really put science on showcase to show our elected officials, our legislators, what it is that we do here and why it deserves to continue to win federal funding. And so when our colleagues are like, “We want to make what we’re doing under the moniker of, you know, the Research Saves Lives campaign,” then, you know, we feel like that’s a great success. We’ve also had beyond the advocacy, we’ve seen our donor and alumni support grow in terms of their interest in this campaign as well. And so, again, I think that’s another good sign of our community coming together and rallying around this cause. We’ve seen our alumni write op-eds on their own and columns on their own. It’s a cause that any individual can take up and speak to their own story. And so, it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to see, and again, the positive message just continues to, I think, be that flexible and easy platform that people can repeat and share.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah. Have you seen, kind of, the shape and sound of how you talk about research and innovation at Johns Hopkins shift because of the campaign? And I guess the second part of that question is have any other parts of the institution kind of taken up the messaging for their own benefit? Specifically, I’m thinking about admissions.
Marina Cooper
Yeah, so I think it certainly, I think this moment in America has required everyone involved in higher education to really, once again, think about how we have articulated the value that we bring. And our value proposition. And so, how can you not, if you work within that institution, think about, “Okay, how can I make sure that I am articulating and translating the value and the impact of my work to the people that I’m serving, right?” Let alone working to improve their lives, save their lives. And so, I think there most certainly is that mindset. I think that mindset already existed here, but if this campaign helped people think about it and maybe even come to us proactively to want to share their story, their research work, then I’m excited about it. And I believe those things have happened. I don’t know that anyone, we’ve gone to faculty-wise, or researcher, or anyone to say, “Can you tell us your piece of this story?” has turned us down, you know? And so I think that speaks volumes.
You also asked about the admissions piece. You know, there are lots of surveys about students today and why they pick universities. A lot of it has to do with mission and, you know, social and societal good. I hope this campaign has given, you know, prospective students, prospective patients, anyone who wants to be part of our communities, the idea and the better understanding, clearer understanding of what we do and why we feel our mission is so important. I expect that it probably has become part of maybe the dialogue and the conversation in admissions. I don’t have a formal example of that to share with you today. But I think there’s no better illustration of Johns Hopkins research mission than showing these stories of our people and our discoveries and the impact that it’s making.
Kevin Tyler
I find it more than a little refreshing to see how individual institutions are kind of picking themselves up and dusting themselves off in response to, you know, again, the current moment. You know, a couple weeks ago we had on a guest from Colorado Mesa talking about their FU campaign, that kind of bit of satire on some of the perspectives or assumptions about higher education. We have, you know, the campaign “Research Saves Lives.” There are a lot of different ways to enter the conversation about how we go about saving higher education and it’s exciting to see the diversity of those responses.
The “Research Saves Lives” piece just feels so right. And it feels so right, right now, that it kind of strikes a chord in hopefully in people’s hearts and minds and that higher ed takes up a large portion of what you deal with every day, right? The things in my room right now, what has higher ed touched? This laptop, this ring light, this gigantic computer screen my husband uses. There are just so many things that higher ed touches that we use every day that we forget that started as an idea in someone’s head on a campus. And I think that no matter what kind of perspective we are, you know, dealing with, right? Like, you know, my mother is now going through cancer, and so whatever research that we can grab onto, to like, give her the length of life and quality of life that she needs and deserves, I’m looking to higher ed for that. I’m looking to higher ed immediately, right now for that. And so it’s just a very special thing to see your institution and these others stand up for such a critical important pillar of American society. And it really speaks to the adoption that you speak of, the response from the market. It really pokes a lot of holes in this like trust in higher education kind of trend we’ve been seeing and it gives me a lot of hope for really bright future in higher education.
Marina Cooper
Absolutely. I think, one thing I didn’t mention but it’s really important, and that is that Johns Hopkins is America’s first research university. And so, when we think about our extraordinary responsibility to not only bring knowledge to the world, but to really help the American public understand what that research does for every one of us every day… it was incumbent upon us, we had to create this campaign not just for us, but for everyone. So I’m proud to work here, I’m also, you know very well that I am the mom of a grateful patient of pediatric cancer survivor and so… I wear Research Saves Lives on my chest every day, you know? Because I know about that power as well, the power of discovery and what it means to my family. And so, it is a great honor to work here, and it is a great honor to serve but and I say a tremendous responsibility that we have to continue to do it.
Kevin Tyler
Girl, you’re gonna make me cry on a higher ed podcast. I can’t take it with you. All right, so I love it, I love it. But my last question for you is the question I ask everybody: What do you think higher ed’s going to look like in the next 5 or 10 years?
Marina Cooper
Well, I think we both can agree it’s going to look a little different than it does today.
Kevin Tyler
I think you’re right.
Marina Cooper
I think this moment is calling on all of us to not just speak differently about what we do, but in many ways to operate differently. You know, we can talk a little bit about what AI will do, but I think more importantly, just there will be… and the collaborations I think that we even have even in the research department I think those will only continue to grow because the model around all of this is changing. So, I’m excited. I also think that access is something that has grown tremendously over the past 10 to 20 years in higher education. I think we’re going to see even more. I know that at Johns Hopkins our class of 2028, one in five were first-generation.
Kevin Tyler
Oh wow.
Marina Cooper
Yeah. And I think that access, and also when I think about the extraordinary work that’s been done to ensure financial support for our students, we’re going to continue to see more of the American public achieve their dreams through higher education. And what must we do? We must continue to better articulate exactly what we’re doing in that realm to create, to improve lives, to save lives, you know, and to ensure American prosperity.
Kevin Tyler
There’s no better place to end this show than with that. That is perfect. Marina Cooper, thank you so much for joining me on Higher Voltage. This was obviously a pleasure. It’s always good to see you. Thank you for sharing your expertise. Again, all of the Research Saves Lives campaign documentation, tactics, and toolkits will be provided on the episode page for this show. Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
Marina Cooper
Bye, thank you!
Kevin Tyler
All right, thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Higher Voltage. You can stay up to date on the latest higher ed marketing trends and news by following Volt on LinkedIn and Bluesky. You can find me, Kevin Tyler, on Bluesky as well. We’ll be back soon with another episode. And don’t forget to catch Trusted Voices, hosted by my friends Teresa Valerio Parrot and Erin Hennessy, also on the Volt network.
