EduMusings

A few weeks ago, I wrote briefly about the benefits to colleges and universities that differentiate and create a great brand for themselves.

This past week, University Business took that concept many orders of magnitude further, in its story: 50 Best Branding Ideas: How colleges and universities are successfully creating and communicating their brands.

At the outset of the article, Barbara O’Malley, chief communications officer at The University of Akron (Ohio) is quoted as saying: “When the strategy is clear and the creative and communication consistent and supportive of the strategy, branding is powerful and can benefit a university greatly.”

The article goes on to highlight some fantastic success stories from campuses of all shapes and sizes. I was particularly pleased to see the University of Connecticut referenced in the article for its “Always Part of U” campaign, which has been well received by members of the UConn community, as well as by University Business.

Intelliworks provided a small bit of assistance to UConn on this effort, so I know just how much work goes into efforts such as this. While I am less familiar with the vast majority of the other initiatives that were highlighted, they broadly seem to share a few criteria. Those include:

· A Clear Vision: What exactly is the school trying to accomplish with the effort? Who is the primary audience? What is the call to action? What is the unique element of the institution that is being captured and communicated?

· Institutional Support: Successful branding and marketing campaigns such as these do not exist in a silo. They are not the sole domain of a marketing or communications department that is operating on its own. Rather, the vast majority of these stories enjoy support broadly across campus and commonly are embraced by the highest level executives at the school.

· Flawless Execution: It is one thing to have a great idea. It is quite another to put such ideas into action. In the end, all great strategies rely on successful tactics. In each of the stories shared in this article, a powerful concept has been put into action via focused, hard-hitting efforts by marketing professionals at all levels of the institution.

· Rigorous Measurement: Branding is often perceived to be something ethereal, touchy-feely, and / or impossible to quantify. This simply isn’t true, as I know first hand. Success can be measured in terms of an increase in applicants, rises in rankings, or downloads of a school fight song or screen-saver. While this story does not delve into the various success metrics of each campaign, I believe that virtually all of them are supported by its own key performance indicators that are watched closely by the institution.

Hats off to the schools mentioned in this great article, and kudos to University Business for its tireless efforts in pulling it together for our consumption.  We take branding pretty seriously here as well.  And, while I wouldn't claim to be award-worthy (yet), we are pretty proud of the re-branding effort we underwent earlier in the year. 

Additionally, we like to serve as a resource for customers in their own branding and marketing communications efforts, whether they work directly with us or through our partners or through the speakers at our annual users conference. 

At last July's Personify Education, one of our track sessions featured a presentation by higher ed branding expert, Mark Neustadt who offered tips on making research-based branding decisions.  Below are the slides from his session: