From the Nominator

"Before 2020, external marketing research told us that we had serious brand challenges. Texans outside of our Central Texas neighborhood either hadn’t heard of us or had only a vague impression of our brand. We needed a brand refresh, urgently.  With the TXST NEXT campaign, we launched a new visual style and refined our voice to focus on the unique aspects of our culture, resources, and people. We needed to connect with prospective students--an audience that is already overwhelmed by options--and make a different impression.  

Internally, our goal was to go beyond a change of colors and logos and strategic ad buys. We needed to change the way we talk about our school and find ways to reach new audiences while we do it. We also needed rapid adoption by our internal audiences, both by students and our many departments and academic units. This meant creating a wide range of digital, print, video, and social media projects to establish our new public brand identity, with only a few important stakeholders on campus having direct knowledge of the campaign prior to the rollout.  

Some elements of the new brand were used strategically as early as spring 2021, with the formal brand debuting in October 2021 in conjunction with the public launch of the university’s $250 million capital campaign. Despite the upheavals of the pandemic, we enrolled the largest freshman class in our history in fall 2021."

From the Judges

I like the way the challenge was framed to reach an internal audience to change their narratives. Double kudos for involving the students in testing; few do so and it's the most important step you can take to be aligned with your audience's mindset. This campaign really has a freshness to it that taps into Gen Z. Also appreciated that you've translated everything into Spanish.