SIG-Marcomms meeting in Lisbon, 4 March 2026 (incl. joint meeting with SIG-MSP)

Welcome (Salome Branco, FCCN)

Collaboration and co-creation between marketing experts and service owners (chaired by Martin Bech, DeiC)

Marketing and service development often run in parallel, but real impact only happens when they intersect strategically. Early involvement of marcomms ensures that services are not only technically sound but also clearly positioned, understood, and adopted by the right audience. 

Presentations (max 3) could look at the following topics:

• How can marketing and service owners collaborate strategically from the start? What impact does this early alignment have on the success of services?  

• In what ways can marketing specialists and service owners work together to make the most of limited resources while maximizing impact and re-use? How can early involvement of marcomms in the service design phase help shape positioning, adoption, and resource efficiency, and what role can service owners play in enabling this? 

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• Strategy from Day1: how FCCN's marketing supports services through their life cycle (Joana Silvério, FCCN)
• Implementing a brand strategy across marketing, communications and service design (Lars Fuglevaag, Sikt)
• Aligning the portfolio strategy to SURF’s value proposition (Lonneke Walk, SURF)

• Compendium update (Jennifer Ross, GÉANT)
• The Secure Storage Network (RAS) Pilot: Testing Co-Creation Between Marketing and Services (Rafael Horigome, RNP)

Discussion (chaired by Ariela Herček, Arnes) on:

• What materials work best to maximise impact and reach?  
• What could be possible if marcomms and service owners joined forces from the very beginning for the creation and promotion of high-impact services?

User journey from a marcomms perspective (chaired by Laetitia Lagneau, Belnet)

Here, we will be elaborating further on some of the items discussed during the morning joint session.

Presentations could look at the following topics:

• What are some of the ways you spread awareness of your NREN’s services and make sure that you reach the target audiences?
• As a marcomms expert, do you participate in creating landing pages and FAQs for services offered by NREN? What are some of the key points where a comms perspective is necessary?
• Similarly, what are some of the advantages of a comms approach or overview of the onboarding videos, instructions and quick start guides? Do you participate in creating this content and if so, what are the pain points to avoid in communicating the onboarding?
• Do you use personas in your campaigns?
• While the service is online, what are some of the key aspects of reviewing the quality of communication with the users? (e. g. proactive vs. reactive comms, clear communication of updates and outages, etc.)
• How much is your communications team included in the user support with regard to tone of communication, etc?
• Do you gather user feedback? How?

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• RENU: the role of marcomms in shaping end-to-end service experience (Diana and Mangyeri Asiimwe, RENU)
• Promoting a newly launched SOC (Richard Tatnall, Jisc)
• Service Marketing - creating the WEB foundation (Charllotte Søbye, DeiC)

Emerging tools and technologies: AI, new platforms, new ways of working (chaired by Elis Bertazzon, GARR)

AI is transforming how we create, distribute, and optimise content. However, this comes with some challenges in terms of compliance and knowing what really works.

• Memos for AI and Web Design (Andrea Meloni, GÉANT)
• Making policy meaning legible to AI - NRENs in an AI-mediated policy environment (Leonie Schafer, DFN)

Followed by discussion in breakout groups:

• Which AI tools have your tried? What worked and what didn’t?
• Has AI changed your workflows/workload?
• Are you experimenting with text-to-video or geo generative AI for website optimisation?

Goodbye and see you at TNC26!