Brand: Lessons Learned

A weekly blog documenting lessons learned during a two year branding project in higher education.

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Brand Lessons Learned 4: Unintended Consequences

The roll out of the Queens brand prompted several groups on campus to take an introspective look at their own departmental brand. Some came to me for advice. “How can we brand our department?” In most cases, these departments had a desire to better communicate who they are and what they do. I thought it sounded like healthy dialogue – something every department should do occasionally. But I quickly learned to follow up with key questions to prevent the entire university brand initiative from going sideways.

One department, for instance, began down a path to develop their own departmental value proposition and voice attributes. I unintentionally opened the door for this when I presented the elements of brand to campus. In an effort to be thorough and transparent, I shared word clouds of comments from focus groups that led to the final voice attributes, like this:

This particular department assumed they could choose another word in the word cloud as their own voice attribute. The spirit of the idea is well-intended. But in execution, they could have deteriorated the university brand.

Voice attributes are the adjectives that describe your organization’s personality. As a university, we combed through countless focus group comments, tested ideas and sought third party advice to come up with our list of six voice attributes that were both grounded in authenticity, yet aspirational.

These final six attributes define and direct the voice of the university. They help everyone writing or communicating on behalf of Queens speak with one voice.  Any work to define a different set of attributes would water down our brand voice.

We regrouped before this department had their annual retreat. Rather than brainstorming new voice attributes, I suggested they discuss how the six university voice attributes come to life in their area. Where do you see these behaviors? Instead of creating alternatives, they will spend their time enriching the brand – giving it life, meaning and real examples.

This is a nuance, but one not to be overlooked. Our new brand may have launched. But the tough part will be the careful management, cultivation and nurturing over time.

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Brand Lessons 3: Choose the Right Partner

If you are considering a brand study, picking the right partner is key. Having gone through this with two organizations, I can definitely say you can’t do it on your own, nor can you outsource it from soup to nuts with no internal support.

Why Not Outsource the Whole Thing?

You can outsource things like research, writing, visual creation, etc. But you can’t outsource the internal communication and leadership. And if that goes poorly, it will sink your entire initiative. Someone on your staff has to be fully committed to the brand. Plan for 50-75% of one person’s job for 12-24 months. The nature of that work will evolve over time – a good portion of it happens before and after an outside vendor is involved.  Tasks range from building the case in the beginning, then assembling task teams, possibly delving into research findings, generating ideas, gathering and articulating feedback. Later in the process, that person will go through cycles of communication about the research, findings, strategy, key messages and finally visuals. We spent months in individual and small group meetings socializing our strategy, value proposition and voice attributes long before the visuals were complete. 

In the end, this time investment paid off exponentially. Our campus had time to internalize the strategy, taking much of the subjectivity out of the visuals that came later.

Why Not Go It Alone?

There are four big reasons to find a strong creative branding partner.

1.       People at branding agencies work on brand all day, every day. Their expertise and cutting edge knowledge of trends just can’t be replicated in-house.

2.       Their outside perspective will help you truly get to the heart of what’s differentiated about your brand.

3.       They bring a level of credibility to the work which will go a long way with certain leaders in your organization.

4.        They will keep you on task and to a timeline. Doing it in-house inherently takes longer. Distractions can’t be prevented.

 Finding the Right Partner

Finding the right partner takes a critical evaluation of the time, skills and resources you have on staff. We found the perfect partner in Columbus, Ohio based @ologie. 

We chose Ologie because they had a perfect blend of higher ed and non-higher ed experience. We wanted someone who could take best practices from other industries and apply them to a university. But we also wanted people who knew the landscape of higher education and could help us navigate what’s trite, what’s overdone and what’s truly differentiated.

The second reason we chose Ologie was because they were willing to meet us where we were. They didn’t apply a cookie-cutter approach. For us, we had the time and research skills to get our brand project started on our own. Using staff, volunteers and student research assistants, we conducted almost 20 focus groups, a market awareness survey and a competitive audit. We completed a thorough analysis of our own history and messages. We got our hands on all the research we could about the behaviors and attitudes of incoming undergrad and grad students. We distilled all of this research and generated themes. We even got to a place where we started to net out what is out the center of the brand ven diagram – authentic, compelling and differentiated.

But then we needed a partner. We needed someone to validate our findings, and articulate them in a unique compelling way. Ologie did exactly that. They took just the right amount of time to get to know us. They embraced our research. And when they presented their findings they somehow managed to take what we knew to be true about Queens and reframe it in a fresh light.

Mobillize all the internal resources you can to work on your brand project. But don’t think you can go it alone. Find the right partner who is willing to take the time and understand you!  

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Brand Lessons Learned 2: Take the Focus off the Logo

As we approached the roll out of our brand initiative at Queens, we conducted several individual and small group meetings to discuss how the brand would apply to various areas on campus. (I highly recommend this approach.) In two cases, these meetings were with individuals who were concerned about losing their group’s logo. They entered the meeting skeptical, in one case even a little defensive about their perceived identity mark.

So when asked - what will happen to my group logo, we said - can we start from the beginning?

We shared the core value proposition of the Queens brand.

We spent time talking about some of the operative phrases in the value prop. We asked - how does your specific program leverage our great city? What is intentionally balanced in your program?

We talked about Queens unique voice and personality and shared the six voice attributes, extracted from the focus group data.

We handed out blank cards asking faculty and staff to write down examples of intentional balance and how they see Queens’ voice attributes come to life on campus. We received hundreds of entries.

Then we demonstrated how the brand can showcase our students, faculty and programs... like environmental science

nursing

business

By the time we got around to talking about logos, they were ready for a refresh of their group’s identity - brainstorming headlines that reflect their unique intentional balance. They were asking for overhauls, not holding onto old logos.

In the end, yes, we phases out the plethora of individual logos that were disconnected from the masterbrand. But when we demonstrated our research-driven, inclusive approach, the change wasn’t resisted. 

Your logo should be an obvious extension of your brand strategy. When that strategy is grounded in authenticity and research, people will understand the logo evolution, and have the ability to see it more objectively.

[jenniferjohnsonsblog]

@queensuniv celebrating Dr. Brian Ralph @wpeaceuprez - and his installation as the 11th president of William Peace University. So proud of you! (at William Peace University)

[jenniferjohnsonsblog]

Brand - Lessons Learned Part 1: BRAND FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Today Queens unveiled the logo and visual elements that represent a two-year branding effort. At the beginning of this project, I set a goal to blog about the ins/outs of the brand process. I’m two years overdue. But today creates an opportunity to begin reflection. So I have started a weekly blog to document the successes, failures and lessons learned - with the hopes of creating dialogue among marketing professionals in all industries, particularly higher education.

I begin with a success – the creation of one of our core principle: BRAND FROM THE INSIDE OUT.

By bringing others along in the process, we created brand ambassadors who are invested in the outcome and have been generating enthusiasm and support long before today’s official launch.

Start with a Group of Advisors

First, we established an advisory group that represented the campus community. For us, that meant about 25 -30 people. We engaged this group in meaningful work throughout the two year process. They contributed to research. They chewed on data and helped extract themes. They revised key messages, evaluated voice attributes and reviewed our value proposition. And they saw everything.

Let Transparency Be Your Guide

In many organizations the new brand is kept top secret in an effort not to spoil the big reveal. That works – and is in fact necessary - for many large corporations. We didn’t need that approach at Queens. For an organization our size, with almost 160 years of history, buy-in was more important. We aired on the side of transparency. If someone wanted to see what we were working on, we showed them. By doing so, we built a cadre of brand ambassadors months before today’s public launch.

Expand the Circle Periodically

While the group of advisors was key, it’s not enough. At Queens, all faculty and staff gather for Campus Update a few times a year. We regularly provided branding news during these updates. We shared our discovery and research long before we explored the logo. An entire Campus Update was spent connecting faculty and staff to our core message and voice attributes, so they could see their programs in the brand.

Additionally, we sought feedback from the board of trustees and student leaders at various points during the process.

We expanded the circle even further to share the brand with some alumni and Charlotte leaders. We showed all of these groups our visuals - including a video, ad concepts and logos - well before the public launch.

Prepare for the Launch

So today, the media predictably focuses on the new logo. We hear the subjective reactions – I like it or I don’t. But it doesn’t matter. Because we have hundreds of brand ambassadors in all circles how know the rigorous process, careful thought and rich dialogue that went into the brand development. They see that the visuals are just a natural extension of the research and strategy. They see the visuals objectively, as an accurate expression of Queens brand.

They know today isn’t about a logo. It’s about letting more people know Queens is a place where you don’t have to sacrifice the personal attention and support network of a small school to get the energy and opportunities of a growing, metropolitan city. At Queens, you have both – and it enables our students to have multi-faceted college experiences.