Joe Way opened episode 334 of the Higher Ed AV Podcast by saying he was widening the show beyond the AV silo. He got more than he bargained for: Peter Murphy Lewis spent forty-five minutes arguing that higher education’s biggest communication problem is not budget, politics or AI — it is that the sector keeps making its case with data when only stories move people.
The line Joe stopped on came from Peter’s own notes: “You can’t tell someone’s story from a distance.” What follows is the working method behind it — a before-and-after framework, a way to advocate for an idea without sounding self-serving, and two prompting habits that stop AI flattening your voice.
Peter came to this the long way round: a politics PhD in South America, a professorship, a travel company started at 27 because nobody would hire him, a CNN en Español analyst slot, and then a Spanish-language TV show in the mould of Dirty Jobs that ran to more than 120 jobs on camera. He now runs fractional CMO engagements and produces documentary storytelling projects. There is a written companion to this episode in our article on school marketing that retains families.
Key Takeaways
1. Data does not change minds — stories do, and Ken Burns said it first
The hinge of the episode. “Ken Burns says you’re never going to change anybody’s opinion with more data,” Peter says, then makes it personal: his own views on HIV and AIDS changed because he worked as an HIV/AIDS caseworker, not because anyone handed him a report. He applies this straight to higher ed. A sector arguing its value with enrolment figures and funding gaps sounds like an executive asking for money. A sector that puts a student or a professor on camera and lets them describe what changed sounds like something worth defending.
2. The before-and-after framework, and why it works at any depth
Peter’s whole storytelling method reduces to three questions: who was I before, what was the thing that changed, and who am I after. He demonstrates it twice in one breath — once trivially (he ate mochi for the first time at 44 and now his house has nothing else) and once seriously (he became a certified nursing assistant at 40, which changed how he thinks about long-term care and how much time he wants to spend with America’s seniors). The superficial version is the point: the structure is easy enough that anyone can run it on themselves.
3. Tell the frontline story, not the executive one
Peter describes pitching a state healthcare executive on a documentary told through the eyes of caregivers rather than residents or administrators. What he learned afterwards is the transferable part: people who have given decades to an industry are intensely passionate and have simply never been handed a microphone. And an executive telling the same story invites the opposite reaction — you only do this for profit, you don’t work Christmas. The credibility sits with the person doing the work.
4. Advocate for someone else’s idea first
His answer to the person who has a good idea and cannot bring themselves to pitch it: don’t start with your own. Champion a colleague’s. “It’s pretty easy for us to sell somebody else’s, because it doesn’t come off as arrogant, self-centred, what am I getting?” You get the reps in without the exposure, and it turns out to be contagious — people start advocating for you when you are not in the room.
5. Imposter syndrome does not go away, so aim to be the most useful person in the room
Peter, at 45, with a team behind him and a speaking career, says he still gets nervous and still sometimes thinks he shouldn’t be there. His counter is not confidence but usefulness: carry the chairs, help someone else feel less exposed, take one person from zero to one. His concrete version for anyone building a public voice — think of five people at this event you could each help with one question, and start by documenting that.
6. AI is not the threat to authenticity; ungoverned AI is
Asked directly whether leaning on AI costs you your own voice, Peter says the output quality is downstream of what you put in — your context, your framing, the way you ask, all of which came from your own before-and-afters. He offers two habits that keep it honest: make the model ask you questions before it answers, and make it rank its claims from most to least certain and argue why each might be wrong. “Treat ChatGPT as if you’re that fifteen-year-old getting ready to break up with it.”
Rapid Fire Q&A
Q: How does someone start building a public voice when they are afraid to?
A: Find the five people you already know who you could each help with one question, and start documenting that — on LinkedIn, on YouTube, at a parent-teacher evening, at church. Peter points out he had never made a documentary eighteen months before this conversation.
Q: What is the fastest way to get past small talk at a conference?
A: He recommends the New York Times’ “36 questions to fall in love” — not for romance, but as an icebreaker set. Take three to your next event. He has run them on strangers and on his wife, and says the answers surprise him every time.
Q: Can higher education answer the “won’t AI replace this?” question?
A: Peter says you have to name the elephant, then put a person in front of it. His own case: he could plausibly have acquired the knowledge from AI, but not the mentors and relationships that shaped how he thinks and uses it.
Q: What is a personal brand actually for?
A: A moat. Peter’s framing is that investing in a personal brand shifts what people pay you for — away from your words, your papers or your books, and toward how you think and what you represent when they see you.
Q: If someone visits you in Wichita, where are you taking them?
A: Tanganyika Wildlife Park, a boutique wildlife park outside the city where visitors can swim with penguins and otters and feed giraffes, hippos and rhinos — and where a hippo named Mars had gone viral at the time of recording.
What This Means for Higher Education Marketing
For anyone doing communications inside a university, the useful reframe is that the audience is not persuadable by the arguments the sector finds most natural. Enrolment data, funding shortfalls and outcome statistics all read as an institution advocating for itself. A student describing what changed reads as evidence.
The before-and-after structure is what makes that practical rather than aspirational. It gives a communications team a repeatable interview: what was your life before you arrived, what was the thing that changed, who are you now. It works on students, on faculty, on facilities staff, and it produces usable footage without a script.
Peter’s advocacy advice is the quiet one, and it applies well beyond higher ed. Most people who cannot pitch their own idea can pitch someone else’s comfortably, and the practice transfers. It is also the cheapest way to build the internal coalition any initiative needs.
If your institution or industry has the same gap — real outcomes, and a public narrative that has not caught up — that is the problem Strategic Pete’s documentary work exists to solve. The People Worth Caring About docuseries is the healthcare version of exactly the method Peter describes here.
Listen to the Full Episode
This conversation first aired as episode 334 of the Higher Ed AV Podcast, hosted by Joe Way, on 21 October 2025. Listen to the full episode on higheredav.com.
