Know-How Exchange : Branding

Your mission is to start from the inside.
Universities are much worse than normal corporations.
Too many smart people who think they know everything, hey they are professors, right?
If you get the top bananas to listen to an expert from the outside, it could be your best shot.
I teach branding at the University of Chicago and DePaul University in Chicago, and helped both to understand the process from the inside.
Don't go into tactics before you have inside agreement on what should be done.
You situation is one of many risks but also many opportunities, don't blow them up if you don't know what to do.
Having no budget is no excuse for taking the wrong turn in the road.
If you want to pursue it privately, call me at 312-861-1300

I'm a former adjunct instructor in market research and marketing strategy (graduate level), and I'm in the Northeast. I'm also a long-time consultant on positioning and branding, having worked in a range of industries and causes.

You definitely need outside help. Anything you do on your own is likely to be inefficient at best. And once you fail to deliver against the expectations of YOUR target audience, it's not likely they'll be eager to spend more money to try this again.

I guess what I'm saying is that you've been sent on a fool's errand -- a task that can't be done under the conditions you're facing. Your best bet may be to say so now, rather than struggle through it and later have to try to convince your management that you need to try again.

Doesn't sound like 'they' value the Mission if I understand your funding situation.

Any Legacy or turn around numbers you can get form other faculties or schools in the area might convince them the prize if worth investing in .... unless they are near retirement themselves and can't see any personal benefit .... more solid pensions for them perhaps if you succeed ;)

Dear tlc,

I'm not a teacher.

I don't have a doctorate or a masters degree, and I have no management program to sell. I've never worked in an ad agency, and I'm no expert.

But I know about people and 25 years in this gig have taught me several things. And one of the things I know about because I've learned about it the hard way is branding.

Ever been in love? Ever been dumped? Ever been stood up? Every wept like a baby at a movie or an opera? Ever felt a sudden rush from attending a rock concert or from owning a new gadget? Then you've experienced the power of branding.

Regardless of how well-known your University is, the very last
thing you'll do is to develop a brand first and then developing a marketing plan. By doing this you're putting the horse before the cart and you'll fall like a jet fighter that's been hit by a Stinger missile: in flames and a in a spiral of swirling smoke and snowflake debris.

Down and down and down you'll go until you hit the solid, unforgiving, iron hard Earth with a resounding crunch.

And your efforts? I'm afraid they'll all have been for nought.

It's said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

While that may be true in certain circumstances, there's nearly nothing so dangerous as an awful lot of ignorance.

By this I mean there's a great deal of nonsense talked about branding, and much of it from people who ought to bloody well know better!

Elsewhere on this forum I've made the same point about branding again and again. In case you've missed it, here it is again: brands are not created out of thin air or as part a corporate identity or a logo set.

A logo ISN'T A BRAND.

Ad agencies, designers, and marketing people (many of the
latter of whom often know sod all about either graphic design OR advertising) swear blind that a logo is a brand, but they're wrong.

Putting a logo on a letterhead or on a sticker or a website isn't branding: it's corporate identity.

The true notion and meaning of a brand is the feeling or emotion that's indelibly stamped or tattooed into the mind of the customer because a deeply seated need or feeling has been fulfilled or filled as a result of having used a particular service, product, or good. If you've ever seen cows being branded with a red hot branding iron, THAT'S what branding is all about: leaving a seared impression.

But in marketing terms the searing ought to happen for the best of reasons and for the highest levels of fulfillment and NOT to signify ownership, which is the real intention behind branding cows.

Your "limited background in branding"? Put it away, at least, until you wrap your mind around a basic concept:

Branding in the marketing sense takes place in people's minds when the service or product they're interacting with has touched them in some deep, meaningful, and psychological way. Branding happens when the USE of the service or product makes the buyer and user feel better or prouder, stronger, wiser, taller, smarter, thinner or whatever about a particular issue or problem in some way, shape, or form.

You don't need advice from people familiar with higher education marketing, you need advice from people who know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to the meaning of branding.

You're not sure of the steps you ought take to work through the process? Here are a few suggestions:

Talk to your primary stake holders (tutors, students, support staff, parents, local-non-student residents, local council members, the Mayor's office, police officers, security staff, ANYONE connected with the college) and find out what it means, to them, to belong to or to be affected by your college in whatever way they are impacted.

Pinpoint an unnamed, unspoken feeling. Some element that's there, but that isn't being said out loud and that is part of the whole notion of being connected TO the college.

Whatever that feeling is, whatever that notion might be, that thing is the glue that holds everyone's concept of what the college is together.

Now, express that feeling in two or three words and then sum it up with one adjective. Whatever that adjective is, THAT'S your brand and it's from THIS that your marketing plan will blossom.

Every aspect of your marketing MUST polish and shine the brand and its core meaning. Any aspect of your marketing that FAILS to shine the brand is doing you no favors.

Which means it must die.

REMOVE from your marketing ANY element that's not pulling its weight and that's not supporting the notion of your core reason for being.

This is where the term brand stewardship comes into play and to protect the notion of the brand and everything it means you must be RELENTLESS in rooting out any and all non-brand supporting elements and burning them at the stake! it sounds a little ruthless but trust me, to empower your brand, you've got to be ruthless, you must accept NO compromise because the purity of the brand and its meaning are of paramount importance.

Are you having fun yet?

Next, you must do more than just meet people's basic needs and expectations as to what the college means. You must become a God damn mind reader and you must meet unmet needs. You must seek out new ways of meeting people's needs, even the needs they didn't know they'd got, and you must surpass any and all expectations about the fulfillment of those needs.

When you do THIS, you create branding evangelists, people who simply cannot wait to tell their friends and family about the simply stellar things the college has done here, there, and everywhere.

This creates loyalty. Customer satisfaction is for losers. You want loyalty. You must turn the notion of the college into the educational equivalent of a rock star. Think "college as Bono" and you'll get the picture. Loyalty creates word of mouth advertising, which costs you nothing. Nada. Zero. Get it right and keep getting it right and you'll be golden—forever. Screw it up and you're toast.

Am I making any sense here?

I'm telling you all this because again and again I hear or read some moronic half wit going on and on about the brand this, the brand that, the brand the other who has NO IDEA, what the hell he or she is talking about.

The bigger problem is that these people's over-inflated hogwash then gets spouted as the truth, even though most of their audience hasn't understood a bloody word they're heard or read.

So, take this humble opinion and use it if it's of any interest.

Branding ISN'T difficult, but it can be complex (don't get me started on the whole notion of chaos theory and branding otherwise we'll be here for hours). The bigger problem with the notion of branding is that there's simply so much wooly-minded, half-arsed, poorly thought out crap written and taught about it.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

It sounds like your deeper goal is simply to tell various groups of people about your college to increase: enrollment, endowments, and status. While each of these goals have different needs, your basic message is "we are where future winners are". Students are looking to associate themselves with a school that helps them open doors for their next step in their life. People who endow are ensuring that their money will be used for good purpose (that has a good return on investment). And status seekers (faculty) are looking to have something good on their professional resume.

Everyone has given you good advice about branding in general. But it all revolves around the story you tell everyone. What are the stories of success (who, when, how, etc.)? Big awards won? How many CEOs graduated from your school?