Live from EduWeb 2006: How’s Your Institution Brand Today?

Steve Kappler (Stamats) presented a session titled “Building a Brand that Matters,” yesterday morning at the EduWeb Conference in Baltimore.

Shane Colvin from the University of Oslo is one of the seven very nice people who agreed to share their notes with all of us who couldn’t attend the EduWeb conference this year. This is Shane’s first post about the conference.

Steve Kappler’s presentation was on the importance of building a strong brand in an extremely competitive higher education environment, where institutions are fighting for the hearts and minds of students.

Kappler began by discussing the warning signs that an institution has a “brand problem.” Giving the following traits of a weak institutional brand:

-Tuition revenue is flat or declining
-Prospective students and parents have undue price sensitivity
-New programs languish
-Alumni involvement and giving is declining
-First year to second year retention rate is below norms
-Job ads fail to attract the best candidate

Kappler went on to discuss what perspective students are looking for when choosing the right school. Academic programs were number one on his list as most important when deciding which school to attend. Other factors when deciding the right school were:

-Cost
-Value
-Outcomes
-Your brand!

The following quote from a student truly summed up how important it is to have a strong brand:

“I didn’t think of ever going to school there!”

Kappler pointed out that if students don’t know you and what you are all about (your brand) they will never visit your website, apply or attend your institution.

If indeed, the web is the most important marketing medium, we should be building our brand there. Kappler went on to cover what is necessary to build a strong brand on the web:

Key concepts about branding-

Brand marketing > Direct marketing > Customer relationship management

Creation of a Brand portfolio

-brand attributes: A series of words or phrases- implied in your brand promise
-sub brands
-brand attributes matrix
-brand architecture
-tagline
-elevator speech
-graphic identity

Make a brand promise > Communicate your promise > Live your promise

Brand stewardship- deliver on your promises

Consistently tie your brand to your strategic plan/initiatives
Help people understand their role in brand fulfilment
Ongoing staff training, development, evaluation and rewards
What does your brand promise mean to recruiting, fundraising, and the business office?

Campaign maintenance
>Secret shopper (have someone go through the campus to see what your brand is like, how they are treated, what they think about the administration process and so on)
>Post-mortems

Brands are “Lived” through 10 Domains
1. Mission and vision
2. Finances and budget
3. Academic affairs
4. Student recruiting and financial aid
5. Student development/retention
6. Institutional advancement and alumni relations
7. Facilities planning
8. Information technology
9. Brand marketing and integrated marketing
10. Human resources

Internal branding
-Changes in brand culture come through the thoughtful development of tools, training, and using evangelists to spread and keep the word
-Brand evangelists are also those students who are currently attending your school (these are the best word-of-mouth marketers)

Strengthen your promise

-ongoing evaluation to determine how we can:
>Make a better promise?
>Communicate our promise better?
>Live our promise more completely?

Kappler concluded by presenting examples of institutions that were successfully building their brand online. I particularly liked University of Pittsburgh at Bradford who used the one word tagline- “Beyond”. The word was cleverly used to convey the message that their students and faculty went “beyond”. This concept was used on cups, hats, banners and the web to project the message that if one attends University of Pittsburgh at Bradford they would “go above and beyond”. I like that! Kappler points out that in order for a campaign like this to work, the institution must merchandise the tagline by using different mediums throughout the campus, there by strengthen the brand message.

The other examples were:

–York University , “Redefine the Possible.”
–Montana Tech, “Get into it!”

Overall the session was very interesting and thought provoking. In fact, the presentation reminded me very much of the books written by Dr. Robert Sevier, namely, Building a Brand That Matters and Thinking Outside of the Box. Not surprisingly, considering that Dr. Sevier works for Stamats ;-). I would highly recommend reading Dr. Sevier works if you would like to learn more about branding in higher education. Both books have proved very useful in my work in communication.

Presenter’s Book recommendations:

Sacred cows make the best burgers by Robert Kriegel
Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing by Harry Beckwith