A Visioning “White Paper” On ESF Branding and Visibility AN INTRODUCTION On September 17, 2014, Bob French and Bob Malmsheimer (visioning group co-­‐chairs) met with several staff members from the ESF Office of Communications and Office of Undergraduate Admissions in a session that contributed to the development of this first draft response to the sixth visioning question outlined in ESF’s strategic planning process. That visioning question is: How can ESF create a unique “brand” and maximize its visibility and reputation? This first draft response is intended to frame this question, to share some general observations, and to stimulate further discussion and ideas during additional visioning sessions to be held on September 24 and October 1. TWO QUESTIONS ARE BETTER THAN ONE We believe that this strategic planning question can be addressed more effectively as two separate questions: (1) How can ESF create a unique brand? (2) How can ESF maximize its visibility and reputation? We must first recognize that college branding goes well beyond the development of advertising tag lines, logo designs or the graphic standards used on a college website. College marketing professionals tell us that: •
•
•
A brand is a valued and differentiating promise that a college makes to its most important customers and supporters to meet a need or fulfill an expectation; Faculty, staff, students and alumni must believe in the brand before it can be effective and believable with external audiences; Brand differentiation depends on developing and communicating college attributes that are valued by customers and supporters and rarely offered by competing institutions (Adapted from Robert Sevier, Building a Brand That Matters, 2002). These three points draw a useful distinction between the strategies that a college might employ to develop and deliver a unique college experience (brand development), versus the marketing and communications strategies used to promote that college experience to targeted audiences (including advertising, public relations, social media, etc.). Strategy questions related to both brand development and brand promotion will be addressed in this white paper draft, as well as in our upcoming visioning sessions. HOW CAN ESF CREATE A UNIQUE BRAND? A unique and highly valued brand can provide a competitive advantage to ESF as we compete with other colleges and universities to attract outstanding students, achieve success in fundraising, and increase our media coverage. Our new President has identified these specific objectives as among the most critical for ESF’s new strategic plan. As we envision the image and brand position that we would like ESF to hold in the future, it is important to recognize that successful college brands are built over time, and that ESF has built up significant brand equity over a long history. ESF has an existing brand that has served us well in communicating the College’s unique attributes to a variety of audiences. This may suggest that our best strategy would be to enhance and extend our existing brand while we focus on building additional brand awareness with new audiences. As we begin our strategic planning process, we should also recognize that the ESF brand must remain closely tied to the College’s academic mission and vision in order to be relevant and believable to our customers, supporters, and internal stakeholders. Significant changes in ESF’s mission or vision would of course suggest that related changes in the ESF brand should follow. WHAT IS ESF’S BRAND TODAY? ESF has a number of college attributes and characteristics that define our brand today. Several of these attributes are not unique to ESF, but their combination is clearly quite unique. Can you think of another college or university that combines the following attributes? •
•
•
•
•
An academic portfolio singularly focused on environmental education, research and service. Offering more than 50 environmental degree programs with strong experiential learning and career opportunities. A well-­‐established history of environmental leadership (founded in 1911). One of America’s smallest doctoral level research institutions. Research that solves environmental problems. Unsurpassed opportunities for field study and research on regional campuses with 25,000 acres of forest and wetlands. •
•
•
Part of a multi-­‐campus state university system, but uniquely co-­‐branded with a top ranked private university partner. Affordable state-­‐supported tuition. Ranked a “best buy” college in numerous college guides. Arguably America’s top ranked environmental college. Currently ranked: Ø #30 among Public National Universities and #76 among all National Universities (public or private) by U.S. News & World Report. ESF is the smallest college, and the only environmental college, ranked in the top 100. Ø #3 in the nation on Forbes list of America’s best colleges for women studying science and engineering. HOW DOES CO-­‐BRANDING IMPACT ESF? Small colleges are sometimes able to improve their visibility and reputation by affiliating their brand with the brand of a larger and more prominent university or university system. Think of how the three NY state colleges at Cornell brand themselves as part of that university, or how the multiple campuses in the Penn State system all use the same Nittany Lion logo to connect with their main campus. This is called co-­‐branding. Co-­‐branding presents both compelling opportunities and complex questions for ESF’s branding strategy. We have two dramatically different co-­‐branding opportunities available to us, and each offers several advantages and disadvantages: (1) Co-­‐branding ESF with SUNY As a member of the 64 campus SUNY system, the ESF brand will always have some level of co-­‐branding with the larger system, but we can choose to either expand this co-­‐brand or to minimize it through marketing communications strategies. Here are some of the considerations that could contribute to our decision-­‐making: • The SUNY brand sends a strong message of access and affordability. This is attractive to many prospective students and parents, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Affordability and access may be less important brand attributes when communicating with other audiences (e.g. foundations). • A second theme in SUNY’s system-­‐wide branding is that SUNY is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive public university system, but this is a “something for everyone” message that does little to improve (and may actually conflict with) ESF’s brand as a small, specialized campus with higher levels of academic quality and admissions selectivity. •
It has been difficult for SUNY to build an image of academic quality in its system-­‐
wide brand. The 64 campuses vary widely in mission, academic quality, and admissions selectivity, and there is no dominant flagship campus to build the system’s brand around. The lack of a dominant flagship campus has also limited SUNY’s ability to generate media coverage and visibility for the system through Division I level athletics (think of Ohio State by comparison). •
The brand positions held by individual SUNY campuses sometimes have greater impact than the system-­‐wide brand, and several campuses (especially the University Centers) attempt to minimize their SUNY affiliation through their branding strategies. (2) Co-­‐branding ESF with Syracuse University With ESF located on the same campus as Syracuse University, and with ESF students highly engaged in Syracuse University courses, student services, and student activities, our College also has the unique opportunity to co-­‐brand with a larger private institution that has comparable academic quality and admissions selectivity , but a much more visible and prestigious brand. But this is a more complicated co-­‐branding opportunity than it may first appear to be. Here are some considerations that could contribute to our branding strategy: • Target audiences (including media, legislators, foundations, students and parents, etc.) have difficulty understanding the “ESF plus SU” relationship. There are very few (any?) examples of a small public college partnering with a large private university so extensively. It is easy for potential customers and supporters to conclude that ESF is part of SU. • Prospective students seeking the supportive environment of a small college sometimes view ESF’s relationship with SU less positively. • The SU brand communicates quality and prestige more effectively than it communicates access and affordability. Like many university brands, the SU brand is closely connected to the University’s location and “place.” • Co-­‐branding with SU too strongly can attract applicants for admission who are a “poor fit” for ESF academically and/or socially. A case can be made that the efforts that ESF has undertaken in recent years to enhance our institutional identity and pride among faculty, staff, students and alumni have strengthened our brand and had a positive impact on admissions, retention, and fund raising. Adding our own residence hall, our own student center, our own athletic teams, new campus signage and banners, and many other initiatives to improve the College have enhanced the ESF brand with both internal and external audiences. A stronger ESF brand also allows for wider use of co-­‐
branding with SUNY and/or SU by ensuring that the ESF brand does not get “lost” in the larger co-­‐brand. HOW CAN WE MAXIMIZE ESF’S VISIBILITY AND REPUTATION? Branding, marketing and media relations strategies are frequently employed by colleges and universities to increase their visibility and reputation with important targeted audiences, and to influence the behavior of those audiences. The targeted audiences generally fall into one of four groups: •
Stakeholders – faculty, staff, current students, alumni •
Customers – prospective students (several market segments) •
Influencers – parents, peers, guidance counselors, employers, media •
Resource providers – legislators, foundations, donors, tax payers (Adapted from Robert Sevier, Building a Brand That Matters, 2002) Each of these targeted audiences can be more receptive or less receptive to the specific branding messages and communication strategies that ESF may choose to use. While we would clearly benefit from improving our visibility and reputation with ESF’s full range of potential audiences, there is no single strategy that is likely to be effective in achieving our objectives with all audiences. The resources required to greatly expand our visibility and reputation will be hard to come by. ESF will need to be smart and creative in developing new strategies to attract “free” media coverage from regional and national sources. Paid advertising and direct marketing strategies (such as mailings, email, phone, social media contacts) can be used more effectively to communicate with more specifically targeted audiences. The College also must maintain a strong web-­‐based marketing and communications capability to properly serve the needs of the many audiences who reach out to us for ESF-­‐related information. An initial brainstorming session with several members of our Admissions and Communications staff (see 9/17 meeting notes) along with comments recently shared by a media consultant from DePaul University have yielded a number of ideas, questions, and potential media strategies for further consideration. Here are a few interesting examples: •
Change the name of the College (Preliminary response) Our name complicates our branding, mainly because of its length •
•
•
•
and the different meanings that different audiences may associate with “Environmental Science and Forestry.” The real question might be what name we would use to replace ESF? Any name change would risk the loss of much of the brand equity ESF has developed. Would the benefits of a name change outweigh the loss? Help ESF faculty increase the College’s visibility This can be accomplished by helping faculty members to conduct important research, and provide travel funds to present that research at national/regional conferences. Also help faculty produce more publications and compete for more grant funding. This is how research universities most often gain national visibility. Use ESF’s President to gain media attention College presidents have media credibility and can be “thought leaders.” But media are looking for stories/comments that are out of the ordinary and (sometimes) controversial. Making a public statement on fracking (pro or con) would get media attention for example, but do we want to be that controversial? Develop a plan to meet with editorial boards at major newspapers and magazines (NY Times, Scientific American, Sierra Club, etc.) and submit op-­‐ed pieces on environmental issues. Offer a massive open online course (MOOC) Many people feel that massive open online courses have limited educational value but substantial public relations value. If ESF could get hundreds or thousands of people engaged in a free online course, (perhaps Global Environment or something similar) our visibility could grow across a wide geographic area. Produce a documentary or television/radio segments Seek grant funding to produce a major documentary or PBS type series focusing on “species exploration.” This would fit well with the annual Top 10 New Species list. On a smaller scale, develop an “Academic Minute” type series for radio, or short video segments to expand ESF’s “Going Green” series.