Beyond Flyers and Free Food: What ‘The Power of Moments’ Teaches Universities About Communication

We are experts at scheduling events, but often fail to create memorable experiences. Drawing on the work of Chip and Dan Heath, here’s how to build peaks, break the script, and design moments that truly matter to students.

Think about the last student event your department promoted. A mass email. A social media post. Maybe a flyer tacked to a crowded corkboard in the student union, lost in a sea of similar announcements. We fill our calendars with workshops, fairs, and info sessions, all with the best of intentions. Yet, if we’re honest, most of them seem to blend into a forgettable haze for students.

A compelling book I recently finished, The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath, offers a quiet but potent challenge to this routine. The authors argue that our lives aren’t measured in hours or days, but in a series of defining moments, short experiences that are both memorable and meaningful1. Their most powerful insight, however, isn’t just that these moments exist, but that they don’t have to be left to chance.

This feels like a critical reframing for those of us in higher education. We spend so much time managing the day-to-day that we can inadvertently create what the Heaths call: “a flatland that could have been a mountain range”.

It suggests that, as architects of the student journey, it may be time to start designing more peaks.

The Problem: “Nonstop Practice” with No “Game”

A line from the book, spoken by a high school principal, captures our situation perfectly: “We run school like it is nonstop practice. You never get a game”. This appears to be true for so much of campus life. An endless stream of announcements and logistical details for events that can feel like just another obligation. This isn’t born from a lack of care, but perhaps from a relentless focus on operations over experience. We fall into the trap of creating a journey that is, as the Heaths describe some services, “mostly forgettable”. But we often miss the crucial second part of that formula: the “occasionally remarkable”.The alternative, the book suggests, is to stop thinking purely like an event scheduler and start thinking like an experience designer. We must learn to spot the opportunities worthy of investment, to recognise, as the authors say, “where the prose of life needs punctuation”.

Building a Peak: A Lesson in Elevation

The Heaths propose a framework of four elements for creating defining moments: Elevation, Insight, Pride, and Connection. Of these, elevationappears to offer the most direct antidote to the flatness of typical campus communication. Moments of elevation are “experiences that rise above the everyday”9. The authors suggest a recipe to build them: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script.

Consider the standard university career fair. The script is familiar: a hall, rows of tables with branded tablecloths, and students awkwardly handing out resumes. It’s functional, but is it a peak moment?

How could we elevate it? Rather than just hosting a fair, what if we took inspiration from the YES Prep school’s “Senior Signing Day”? On this day, graduating seniors announce which college they will attend, and are treated “with the same hype and adulation as college athletes”.

What if our career centre hosted an “Internship Signing Day”? Imagine a designated space where students could publicly announce their internship or first job, perhaps unveiling a t-shirt from the company and signing a letter of intent in front of cheering peers. Such an event would raise the stakes, boost sensory appeal, and create a decisive moment of Pride. Thus, it transforms a private job search into a public celebration. Of course, this would require careful execution to avoid feeling forced; the goal isn’t corporate spectacle but genuine, student-centred recognition.

The Power of Breaking the Script

Where the book’s framework gets truly interesting, at least for me, is in the call to “break the script”. This means “defying people’s expectations of how an experience will unfold”. The book highlights the Magic Castle Hotel, a modest-looking establishment that outranks luxury competitors, partly due to its “Popsicle Hotline.” A guest can pick up a special phone by the pool, and moments later, a staffer in white gloves delivers free popsicles on a silver tray. It’s a small, unexpected moment of delight that shatters the script of a normal hotel stay.

This should challenge all of us.

What is the “Popsicle Hotline” of our campus?

It might not be a grand gesture. Perhaps it’s the financial aid office, during the most stressful week of applications, setting up a “document drop-off” lane with free coffee and a sign that says, “You’re almost there.” A small, unexpected moment of humanity that breaks the script of a bureaucratic process could be more memorable than any large-scale event.

From Kinks to Peaks

Reading this, I was struck by the author’s final, cautionary thought: “In life, we can work so hard to get the kinks out that we forget to put the peaks in”. Our role isn’t just to provide a seamless service and help shape a life-altering journey. That journey, it seems, deserves more than just a full calendar. It deserves defining moments. It deserves peaks.

It leaves me wondering: what is the one flat, forgettable moment in our students’ journey that we have the power to transform?