Clarifying and communicating your brand

Author: 

Linda Smith

In our media-fragmented world and given the diverse audiences institutions serve, articulating your brand can be a challenge.

Consider The Adler School of Professional Psychology, which relies on integrated marketing to ensure the brand message is consistent.

Here’s how Jannie Holland, Director of Marketing, Lead Generation, with The Adler School of Professional Psychology put it:

“We are a unique graduate school with very niche programs, so an integrated marketing approach is critical to the success of our recruitment effort.  Our goal is to ensure that print and online advertisements, directory profiles, banner ads and other marketing tactics have consistent imagery and messaging that aligns with our overall brand strategy and current advertising campaign.”

No matter what your institution’s programs or focus, you have equity to work with. Your name and logo identity, for example, are hard assets. There is a value synonymous with your name. Your logo offers visual appeal. People have a sensory reaction when they see it.

Both your name and logo can be set forth largely by your brand book, a living document that spells out the accurate ways to use the logo, approved colors and name usage. We recommend every institution have one. Share this with your marketing partner(s) to ensure that your brand remains consistent regardless of the advertising medium used.

But what about the experience—the messaging that tells your story? Experience is a soft asset that often requires nuance and delicate handling.  Let’s tiptoe into it.

To keep the story you’re telling clear across media and audiences, you should clearly delineate an important or illuminating ‘point of difference’ for each audience—prospective students, current students, current and prospective faculty, donors, alumni and the general public. What message is relevant to each audience?

With The Adler School of Professional Psychology, what’s illuminating is how they prepare socially responsible psychology practitioners. Adler’s message is made relevant by its tailoring to the specific audience and media selection.

Tell your story, but target the messaging by audience, based on what they care about. Once you tell your story, build on it with other stories with the message constantly changing. Your goal is two-fold: to encourage instruction and inspire action. What do you want each audience to discuss and act upon, based on your illuminating difference for them? Each audience needs distinction and relevance in messaging. That’s the filter for sustainable differentiation.  

In every story with every audience, you need to constantly weigh the message against: Why should it matter? Why does it matter? Why does it still matter?

You’re not selling a product. You’re selling experiences associated with your institution. That’s why action messages about what you’re doing or willing to do resonate. What people perceive is 20 percent conscious and 80 percent subconscious. In other words, what you do is more important than what you say.

The bottom line on clarifying and communicating your school brand relates to relationship and value. A brand is a relationship that is formed and nurtured by an ongoing exchange of value. Mutual agreement on what IS valuable is what strengthens the bond between your institution and its diverse audiences.