Art Appreciation
CURRENTS Article The donor wall recognizing St. Martin's Episcopal School's recent capital campaign reflects its brand and visual identity system. In addition to featuring colors and shapes used in the independent school's communications, marketing, and fundraising materials, the donor wall also doubles as a piece of art that blends in with the building.

Artistic Statement
CURRENTS Article Simon Fraser University brings its strategic vision statement to life with a graphic animation video that illustrates its priorities and brand attributes.

Expert Reveals Guiding Principles for a Successful Rebranding Effort
Article Communications and marketing professionals who are leading a rebranding effort must make sure they have a mandate for change within their institution, says a CASE faculty member who has successfully led two such efforts in her career.

How to Lead a Successful Rebranding Effort at an Institution
Podcast Hear Jane Chafer from Plymouth University explain why a traditional branding campaign is no longer sufficient for an educational institution in today's world of digital communications. Also, hear her advice on how to assess whether a branding effort is successful.

Embracing Change
CURRENTS Article This article discusses how changes in the way universities are organized in Finland led to the creation of University of Helsinki's first fundraising campaign, which, in turn, informed its university branding efforts. The university brought its brand to the city of Helsinki in several ways, including creative newspaper ads, public events, and a store in the city center that was inspired by Apple stores and designed to showcase its research in ways that would interest the public.

It's Academic
CURRENTS Article This feature article looks at the importance of involving faculty members in the institutional branding process from the start. Faculty members have influence over the brand, so engaging them and getting them to buy-in will help inform the branding, or repositioning, process.

No Longer Faces in the Crowd
CURRENTS Article In this short feature article, Anna Myers of the U.K.'s Oxford Brookes University discusses that institution's recent rebranding efforts, which led to the creation of the Distinct project, an initiative that supports U.K. institutions by sharing current best practices that identify and communicate what differentiates them in the higher education market.

In Service to Others
CURRENTS Article At Stonehill College in Massachusetts, a service initiative helps local schoolchildren and serves as an extension of the undergraduate experience.

From Lancaster, Pa., to Milan
CURRENTS Article A European clothing company borrows its name from a U.S. college and boosts the college's international exposure in return.

Getting to Know U
CURRENTS Article How did American University develop a brand strategy (the "KNOW/WONK" campaign that launched in fall 2010) that was original, authentic, and representative of AU's distinctive personality? This article explores how AU guided the brand campaign through the critical approval process, intact, with leadership's support and enthusiasm.

Re-imagining Your Brand Manual
Product This webinar looks at how some institutions are using brand culture guides, instead of prescriptive style guides, for helping internal constituents understand and support a redeveloped brand identity. Tips include appealing to shared community values, connecting to institutional history, sharing relatable examples and distributing the work in ways that get noticed. This multimedia file is a recording of a webinar originally presented May 17, 2012.

Brand Aid Part 1: Style Guide
Turnaround Marketing Communications
Article This blog post discusses the importance of a style guide as part of a school's marketing efforts and a key element in a strong brand. Six style guides from independent schools are linked, as is a compendium of higher education institution samples. Part 2 in the Brand Aid series, "Keeping 'Customers' (a.k.a. Parents) Happy," is linked from the article.

Growing Brand and Enrollment through Social Media: Tips for Community Colleges
Product This seminar will provide tips and ideas for using social media to grow enrollment and build brand. Examples and case studies will be presented that show how to integrate various types of social media, along with ways to blend social media with traditional marketing tactics. The webinar focuses on providing practical, actionable approaches that community college communicators, marketers and recruiters can begin to apply immediately to their campaigns. This mulitmedia file is a recording of a webinar originally presented Nov. 8, 2011. It is part 2 of a three-part Community College Webinar series.

Building Buzz
CURRENTS Article Walsh College's vice president and chief marketing and enrollment management officer, John Lichtenberg, discusses livening up the business schools branding efforts with a campaign that employs a simple yet accessible and attention-grabbing style in its TV, print, web, and other advertising as well as guerilla marketing tactics such as the Walsh College Yellow Suits, a band of actors who attend events and create a buzz factor around this Detroit-area business college.

Marketing and Branding Institute
Conference Within the higher education community, enrollment managers and communication professionals are working more closely together than ever before. This program is designed to explore this emerging practice and its impact on their work together. Walk away with a deeper understanding of the fundamental and philosophical approaches in each discipline and discover how new strategic partnerships can emerge for greater success.

Best Practices for Branding and Maintaining a University's Presence on Facebook and Other Social Networks
Product This webinar looks at how Illinois State University has used social networking tools to support its efforts in virtual relationship building. The speakers share the branding guide developed for internal audiences at the university and discuss how the university used social networking to enhance and market Homecoming. This multimedia file is a recording of a webinar presented May 12, 2011.

Armonía relativa
CURRENTS Article Este artículo habla sobre las marcas, ¿qué son las marcas?, ¿porqué son importantes? y ¿qué invulcra una marca? También habla sobre el desarollor de submarcas o marcas relacionadas, en instituciones de eduación superior.

Odds and Ends: Culture Club
CURRENTS Article In this interview with CURRENTS, Jenn Lim, CEO and Chief Happiness Officer of Delivering Happiness, discusses the importance of culture in branding and the key role that happiness plays in her work. Lim's partner in Delivering Happiness is Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos Inc.

Relative Harmony
CURRENTS Article This article discusses brands and branding—what it is, why it's important, and what's involved in branding. It also discusses the issue of developing subbrands or related brands, particularly named professional schools, at higher education institutions.

Content Strategy: 20 Tips for Powerful, Story-Driven Branding and Communications
Product This webinar focuses on tips for organizing a story-based content strategy across an organization’s communication channels. Examples from Nazareth College are used to illustrate how institutions can create a content strategy and keep it working. This multimedia file is a recording of a webinar originally presented April 12, 2011.

Join the Party
CURRENTS Article This article discusses the six essential factors involved in successful institutional branding initiatives and why branding is necessary, particularly in light of current economic challenges and the demographic pressures coming to bear on the educational marketplace. The author, Robert M. Moore, is president and CEO of the marketing communications firm Lipman Hearne.

Advance Work: Shell Shocked
CURRENTS Article One institution uses marketing to rally its community around a slogan.

Advance Work: Grow and Tell
CURRENTS Article Oxford Brookes University in England launched an award-winning communications campaign in the midst of a years-long demolition and reconstruction project on campus.

The Real U: Building Brands That Resonate with Students, Faculty, Staff, and Donors
Product This book presents the theory and application of branding principles in a higher education context. It incorporates case studies from colleges and universities (primarily focusing on U.S. institutions). A variety of commentators--marketing and communications professionals in academe, corporate and consumer branding experts, marketing professors--provide additional perspective through sidebars.

Branding out of the Box
CURRENTS Article Higher education marketers generally look inward for the best ways to sell their university's message, but perhaps a better place to look would be the world of consumer products.

Framing Your Mission
CURRENTS Article Although each independent school has qualities that are distinctive, the missions of many schools sometimes sound quite similar. So how do you make your institution stand out? By using marketing to establish your brand.

Mascots on a Mission
CURRENTS Article Although your mascot may seem like just a cuddly creature or a fierce defender, it may be signaling more about your brand than you realize.

Building Brand Momentum: Strategies for Achieving Critical Mass
Product Written for those on a higher education campus who want to develop an effective brand strategy for their institutions, this book presents an intuitive four-step brand development process: (1) make a brand promise; (2) communicate your brand; (3) live your brand, and (4) strengthen your brand.

Advertising Campaigns: Bowling Green State University - Bronze Medal
Best Practice Bowling Green State University’s successful "Changing the World by Degrees: Explore. Inspire. Achieve" campaign resulted out of a desire to leverage the university’s existing brand equity while more closely focusing on its brand promise.

PSAs and Commercial Spots: University of Alaska-Statewide - Silver Medal
Best Practice The University of Alaska’s fall 2006 advertising campaign included a series of seven short videos of students and their experiences at UA. Three spots, in rotation in Alaska as TV ads, pointed viewers to a site with four more videos and bios of featured students. The campaign also included print, radio, social networking site advertising and cinema slides. It was focused on a target audience of primarily 16-24 year-old prospective students in Alaska.

PSAs and Commercial Spots: University of Alberta - Gold Medal
Best Practice University of Alberta’s new president, Dr. Indira Samarasekera asked for a national television advertising campaign that highlighted the university as embodying the Olympic ideal in its new “Dare to Discover” ethos (i.e., striving for personal best and serving peace, friendship, and understanding in the world). It was important that the ad make a connection between institutional pride and Canadian patriotism.

Institution-Wide Branding Programs: University of Central Florida - Bronze Medal
Best Practice The overall objective of the University of Central Florida’s "UCF Stands for Opportunity" campaign is to increase the effectiveness of the new brand marketing initiatives through integrated marketing – both internally and externally.

Institution-Wide Branding Programs: University of Central Missouri - Gold Medal
Best Practice The University of Central Missouri's Confidence Campaign used a name change to begin a long-term repositioning and to build pride.

Institution-Wide Branding Programs: Loyola University Chicago - Bronze Medal
Best Practice Loyola University, Chicago’s, “Loyola Values” is a new strategic image advertising campaign to showcase the unique attributes of the university directed at prospective students, alumni, and donors.

Institution-Wide Branding Programs: University of Minnesota - Grand Gold Medal
Best Practice The University of Minnesota's "Driven to Discover" campaign's purpose was to develop an engaging, relevant branding campaign that would improve public perceptions, increase awareness of the university’s mission, and broaden understanding of its goal to become one of the top three public research university's in the world.

Institution-Wide Branding Programs: The Wellington School - Silver Medal
Best Practice Located in a highly competitive market, The Wellington School developed the "Lifelong Learners, Lifelong Leaders" branding program to market the school to various constituencies to increase and retain students.

Higher Education Marketing: Managing Multiple Brands on a Campus
Product This webinar deals with the challenge of getting multiple brands to co-exist on one campus. It offers information on the basics of brand architecture, various considersations to keep in mind when managing multiple brands, the steps to take to ensure campus-wide buy-in and why effective communication is essential to the process. This multimedia file is a recording of a webinar originally presented April 19, 2007.

Weathering the Storm: Protecting Your Brand in the Worst of Times
Product This book provides a step-by-step approach to creating a crisis communications plan that can prepare any institution to withstand a media assault when times get tough and help protects its reputation.

Everything Speaks
CURRENTS Article Everything about an institution, from the tidiness of lobbies to the smile on the receptionist’s face, “speaks” and makes critical impressions on students, visitors, and others. Paying attention to such details can make the difference in whether a campus achieves its strategic goals. This article shares advice on how to incorporate the “everything speaks” marketing philosophy on campus and use it to generate results. The accompanying sidebar highlights the importance of employees and internal communications to this philosophy. It offers suggestions for keeping an institution’s faculty and staff members informed and showing them they are vital to the school’s mission.

Brand Opening
CURRENTS Article Branding campaigns are typically driven by enrollment goals. But major capital campaigns offer an institution a terrific opportunity to define, position, and enhance its brand in another marketplace: that of alumni, donors, friends, and prospects who will make the gifts that allow the institution to achieve its broader strategic goals.

Coming Into Focus
CURRENTS Article What started as a news office/news bureau on many campuses evolved into a public relations office, which evolved into a communications and marketing operation. Many practitioners are now operating in an integrated environment. This article examines the factors that account for the change and is, in a sense, a conversation among practitioners about ways in which the profession has changed--some changes are subtle, some more a function of semantics, and others are fundamental. It explores whether the traditional role of campus PR officer morphed into a brand manager role, whether PR is an outdated term, whether media relations still the way to build (and manage) reputation, and more.

Closing Remarks: Novel Ways
CURRENTS Article Branding is commercial storytelling, and campus communications and marketing pros should consider using the elements of fiction--character, plot, dialogue, scene, place, point of view, and sensory detail--when they are writing and telling their institutions’ stories. The author describes how campus writers can persuade readers of an institution’s virtues and still tell a compelling story.

Winners at Heart
CURRENTS Article Profiles of 12 winners of CASE’s 2004 Circle of Excellence awards. The winning alumni relations programs offered creative ways to generate revenue, use technology, or support a campus cause. In the development categories, campuses showed how to use flash e-mail annual giving solicitations and speech-writing students to attract donors. Communications winners relied on humor, creativity, and unconventional publications. And top advancement services shops highlighted the importance of identifying top campus prospects, working as a team, and maintaining accurate data.

AdvanceWork: Farewell Tour
CURRENTS Article Empire State College officials launched a "Bring Out Your Dead" campaign to facilitate the transition from old to new campus marketing materials. In the college’s adaptation of the medieval practice of disposing of the dead--satirized in the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"--campus officials asked staff members to hand over "dead" copies of marketing publications in exchange for new ones featuring the updated logo. The yearlong campaign softened "the blow and shock of a major change," says Director of College Relations Kirk Starczewski.

Mining for Gold
CURRENTS Article Profiles of 12 CASE Circle of Excellence 2003 winners. Member institution nominees were judged on the creativity of their alumni relations, communications, and development initiatives, including alumni publications, reunions, constituency giving, stewardship, and alumni relations programs. Profiled winners include Brigham Young University/University of Utah; Columbia College Chicago; Georgia Tech Alumni Association; Goucher College; Imperial College London; the Institute for Shipboard Education; Lehigh University Alumni Association; Monroe Community College Foundation; Pennsylvania State University; the University of Chicago; the University of Iowa Alumni Association; and the University of Miami.

Stand Out in a Crowd
CURRENTS Article Branding is challenging for colleges and universities, whose brands are diffuse and complex and whose faculty, alumni, students, and advancement and admission officers send diverse messages. This article describes a proposed market taxonomy for postsecondary education based on brand characteristics and discusses market research, positioning, and the fundamentals of brand management. Includes brief case studies from Trinity University in San Antonio and Ohio University. This article is of interest to marketers who deal with branding and student recruitment as well as marketing and communications managers.

Raising the Roof
CURRENTS Article The director of public relations at Susquehanna University describes how campus leaders helped a new president adjust quickly to the institution. A committee created a transition plan that included a nine-month schedule of events and meetings with key constituencies. The committee also compiled a briefing packet and included the new president in discussions of important institutional issues even before his arrival.

AdvanceWork: A Real Advancement Hero
CURRENTS Article Frostburg State University features three superhero comic book characters in its annual fund appeal and exceeds its fund-raising goal by more than $20,000.

Campaign Strategies: The Benefits of Branding
CURRENTS Article Development officers should use their institution’s brand equity to link a campaign with the positive qualities people associate with the institution. The article describes five steps to help development officers leverage the institution’s identity, mission, and values in campaign communications.