How All Things Words became the secret weapon for marketing UCL

Since March 2021, we’ve worked with 13 different teams and completed more than 500 projects for University College London.

Whether we’re highlighting the world-changing impact of UCL’s research activities, co-designing new content types and strategies, or creating persuasive prospectus course pages, All Things Words are fast becoming an essential part of the UCL communications toolkit.

Explore some of our work with UCL

Highlighting UCL’s innovation and enterprise activities

Academic spotlight: Creating the UK’s first menopause education programme

Demonstrating UCL’s research impact

Using AI to cut industrial carbon emissions

Marketing UCL’s courses

Genetics of Human Disease MSc

Communicating UCL’s values, services and culture

UCL’s Research Culture Roadmap

Read more of our work below

UCL is huge.

Like, size-of-a-small-city huge. With 44,000 students, it’s the UK’s second largest university (after the Open University).

It’s also huge, in terms of its impact and influence. UCL research has been shaping the world around us for nearly two centuries.

The climate science used to set international emissions targets? The new drugs for treating the most hard-to-treat cancers? The technologies reshaping the way we build cities and transport networks? Yep, all created or defined by UCL research.

The biggest challenge when creating UCL marketing resources can often be trying to choose what to leave out. It’s an embarrassment of riches.

And for a higher education specialist copywriting agency, it’s no exaggeration to say UCL is one of the dream clients.

So when Wendy Tester, Communications Manager for UCL Innovation & Enterprise came calling (courtesy of a referral from long-time colleague and UCL marketing pioneer, Julia Weston), we sharpened up our best pencils and bought an extra pack of Hob Nobs.

Even then, it almost didn’t happen – our first project for UCL unfortunately coincided with the pandemic in 2020. UCL were forced to put a hold on all new suppliers while they adapted to a radically different working model.

Thankfully, Wendy’s determination to work with us meant that once the year-long hold on new suppliers was lifted, we could get started on creating a consistent voice for UCL’s enterprise activities that could work across all 11 faculties of UCL.


Wendy Tester, Communications Manager for UCL Innovation and Enterprise


Find out about our work with Wendy and UCL Innovation and Enterprise

Since then, the partnership has grown and grown. We’ve written more than 500 communications for more than 13 different teams across UCL. Most of those projects have involved either communicating the world-changing impact of UCL’s research activities (such as our ongoing work with The Bartlett Review, which has attracted more than 20,000 views since September 2023) or creating persuasive prospectus course pages that paint a compelling picture of why students should study at UCL.

Find out about our work with The Bartlett Review


Liz Griffith, Head of Marketing and Communications, The Bartlett, UCL’s Faculty of the Built Environment


Why do UCL keep coming back to All Things Words?

As our partnership has evolved, and our name comes up more frequently in conversations at UCL, we’ve found ourselves working on an increasingly varied range of projects.

Supporting initiatives to increase menopause awareness and education. Developing new content types, and collaborating on communication strategies. Writing speeches for international conferences, or scripts for queer walking tours of Bloomsbury.

The common thread across all these projects? The sense of reward we get from talking to people who are changing the world, then helping them to express the importance of what they’re doing.

Even though UCL is huge, it’s these conversations with the academics and the talented UCL marketing professionals like Wendy, Julia and Liz that help us get to the heart of what it does.

Because no matter how big the ideas are, or how knowledgeable the audience is, the best communications always feel like a conversation between two people.


Julia Weston, Head of Marketing and Communications, UCL Faculty of Life Sciences


March 2021

Started partnership with UCL

500

Projects completed

13

Teams worked with

15 gazillion*

Words written

*There or thereabouts, we’ve not actually counted them.

ATW works across so many areas of UCL now. There aren’t many people, even among our approved suppliers, who work across such a broad spectrum. It’s quite uncommon.

Julia Weston, Head of Marketing and Communications, UCL Faculty of Life Sciences