‘I just liked the logo’: How branding can help you make your university choice.
I’ve spent pretty much all of my career in university marketing and admissions, and so I have more than a passing interest in branding, and in particular in how university brands actually impact on your decisions.
I realise, however, that most people don’t really care about marketing and I doubt many of you have ever really thought about a university as having a brand.
But I expect at some point, you will all look at a university website and think ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been looking for!’, or perhaps ‘Nah, this isn’t for me’. And trust me, a lot of that will be to do with their brand, and how they have presented themselves. Because of this, I wanted to give you just a few thoughts about university branding.
Bear with me; I promise there will be some useful take-aways at the end, and along the way you’ll learn some new stuff about marketing and strategy.
A bit about branding and corporate strategy
For those of you who haven’t studied marketing, some quick (and simple) definitions.
Firstly, the term brand is a huge catch-all term that is taken to mean many different things by different people. Most people will think of brand in its narrowest sense: the logo, the colours, the typeface, and any slogans.
But to a marketer, brand is more, and includes all of the above, plus the way the company communicates, through imagery and language, and a clear understanding of the target market, and their position in that market.
A fully developed corporate brand (by which I mean the brand for the whole organisation), will be derived from the corporate strategy. And corporate strategy is often simplified into three things:
Mission: What you do, and who for.
Vision: Where you are going, and what it will look like when you get there.
Values: How you are going to act as you go about achieving your mission and vision.
In the case of a small company, it can be quite straightforward to craft such a strategy. A very simple example of this might be a company who provides stationary to developing countries:
Mission: Our mission is to enable children to write by supplying pencils and notebooks to developing countries.
Vision: Our vision is that every child in the world should have the physical tools to learn to write.
Values: Our values are to ensure that everything we do is financially ethical and environmentally sustainable.
With such a clear corporate strategy, developing a brand that stands out can be fairly straightforward too. But without a clear mission, vision and values, it is almost impossible to genuinely create a brand for any organisation.
But what about branding for universities?
Well, for universities, developing corporate strategy can be extremely challenging.
Firstly, they do loads of different things: teaching, academic research, commercial research, and other commercial activities. The staff, students and other customers will all have different priorities, so it can be very difficult to sum up their mission in a way that everyone will buy into.
Secondly, the world is full of universities who ultimately have a very similar purpose, and so it can become almost impossible to write a mission, vision and values statement that is different from any other.
The result is that most universities don’t have a clear, differentiated corporate strategy, and so it becomes very hard for them to determine what their brand actually is. They don’t fully understand their place in the market, they don’t know who their target audiences are, and so they can’t develop a clear, unique way of communicating with them.
After that, having a nice logo and choice of colours becomes completely meaningless.
So, university brands end up being very bland, and it can be almost impossible for you to understand what a university is really all about.
Are they there for you, the student, or are they more focused on research? Are they focused on their local community, or are they all about global impact?
Do they want to push forward the boundaries of scientific knowledge, or are they more concerned with applying knowledge commercially?
My old boss, who is a bit of a guru in the university marketing space, used to say that the only market in the UK that has more suppliers, and less to differentiate them than universities is lager!
And you can see the similarities; 100’s of different suppliers, providing something that tastes pretty much the same, and the only difference is the image on the bottle!
Yet, as with lagers, some universities do have stronger brands than others; some do manage to cut through the noise and find a distinctive position. This matters because these are the very same universities who have strong corporate strategy; who can clearly articulate their mission, vision and values.
When there is a big decision to make at these universities, they will make a choice that supports the long term, strategic ambitions of the university, not the short term quick fix. You will see that when their students talk about their universities, they speak about the same strengths as the university does. When you look at such a university’s website, you’ll see that they talk consistantly about their strengths and their values.
How is this useful for you?
As you make your choices, I’d encourage you to do three things:
Firstly, look out for consistency
You don’t need to read every university’s mission statement, but…
If a university says on their website that their priority is to prepare students for the workplace, then they should be providing evidence for this everywhere, with facts and figures on their graduate destinations, graduate profiles, and examples of their careers support.
If they say that they are undertaking ground breaking research, then they should be telling you what that research is, and how it is breaking new ground.
If they say that they are contributing to the local community, then they should show you the projects and the impact, and how you can get involved.
If they say that they are ‘student centred’, then right on their homepage, they should have news for, and about their students. If they don’t, and have research news instead, then there is something muddled in their strategy.
Nowadays, almost all universities will tell you that they have sustainability as one of their key values, so call them out on it, and look for clear evidence of this commitment through their actions.
Secondly, have a look at how students talk about the university
Whether on social media, on comparison sites, or through blogs and vlogs, do students’ experiences authentically measure up to the values that the university claims through its website?
If so, you are probably on to a good thing.
If not, it’s probably a sign of a university that is strategically out of step with its students.
Thirdly, have a think about what your values are
Compare these to the values that a university is presenting to you.
Do you value academic curiosity as a means to discovery? Or do you place higher value on knowledge that can be applied in industry?
Do you value diversity and inclusion? Do you value innovation? Even if these things go against years of tradition?
Do you value environmental responsibility, even if it comes at a financial cost to the university, and to the quality of your education?
Do you want a university with a clear international outlook? Or would you place more value on focusing on your local community?
Do you want a university that places emphasis on looking after you? Or do you value independence more highly?
These sorts of questions are all things that you should be able to usefully ask yourself, and if you know what is important to you, then you will start seeing these values in university communications, and you’ll be able to start comparing their different values with your own.
If you can do all three, you have a fighting chance of finding a university which is delivering the kind of education you are looking for, in a way that fits with what’s important to you!
