The EMS Blog

Five Steps to Building Your University Brand

What is branding?  According to Al Ries, author of “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding”, a branding program should be designed to differentiate your product from all the other cattle on the range, “even if all the other cattle on the range look pretty much alike.”  In this crowded, competitive world if you’re not a brand you’re just a commodity.  How are you currently seeking to distinguish your school from the competition and creating a lasting impression in your prospect’s mind?  Here are five steps to successfully branding your school:

• Create one unified message based on what makes your school different, who you are, and what you do.   What distinct benefit(s) does your school deliver?

  o Ball State “Education Redefined”
  o University of Maryland “Keep Me Maryland”
  o UCLA “Here. Now. UCLA”
  o University of Phoenix “I am a Phoenix”

• Focus on public relations not advertising that creates a sense of belonging through engagement.  Staff, faculty, administrators and students all play a key role in delivering an institution’s brand promise.  Engagement through your web site (promote news on campus; encourage online engagement); social media (be mindful of what you are trying to say, looking at posts “likes”, connect with stories; share information in both directions; maximize your involvement with “whole” people that require a name and/or some consistency of membership); video (rotating key feature stories that reflects different programs, community member or reflects the student body as a whole), push video content to mobile devices.; engage with local cable TV/media; create interactive view books on USB drives that can be handed out at an open house or mailed to prospective students that feature video clips or information about your school relevant to the programs you are promoting.
• Build a brand promise based on academic offerings, student experience, or an institution’s prestige.  Develop brand strategies that reflect the emotional and psychological dynamics (alumni giving, staff culture, student experience, recruitment efforts, instructor reputation, faculty engagement, and community relations) of an education institution as a whole.  These dynamics will influence and shape the perceptions of your brand in the marketplace.
• Create a brand experience through updated curriculum. Curricula must be relevant in today’s global marketplace through new academic subjects.  Institutions must also be aware of the
  growing  population of nontraditional students, aging student population, accommodate more online and distance learning as well as continue to offer broader spectrum of student needs.  Doing so will strengthen your brand’s position in the marketing place.
• Build an emotional brand experience that creates loyalty.  If you build it they will come.  If the emotional connection between your brand and your prospect is strong, the brand experience will bring active/continued referrals as well as increased profitability to your school.  Loyalty means higher retention rates as well as reduced marketing costs.  Create loyalty by understanding your market segments as well as offering convenient locations/hours, having an employer influence (corporate alliance), pricing, timing, or flexibility with schedules for example.

Powerful brands increase market share and loyalty.  The power of a brand lies in the minds of your students’ perceptions:  what they have learned, heard, felt or seen as a result of their experience overtime.  Ultimately your students determine what your brand means.

Andy Schadwinkel from University of Nebraska Lincoln:

–do things that earn media

–how do you make news not just ads;  mascot can be your brand element; use your mascot to make news and engage people;  Take “Herbie (mascot)” on the road to planned stops.   The Herbie Husker Good Will Tour.  Herbie hit the road.

–Herbie went over 1,000 miles in the state of Nebraska.  Great coverage in rural areas:  photos, captions in newspaper (free publicity)

–Handed out posters/flyers; banks/grocery stores and walked Herbie around (had fun).  Reached out to schools asking them if they would be intersted in having Herbie visit for class achievement.

– Buy a lot of gatorade for the mascot as the uniform is hot and sweaty

–Maybe we can do more with this and think creatively and what we hope to get out of it as communicators.

–Share message of what we were doing; solution for low budget:  cost $1300; earned thousands in publicity