Branding for Business Schools

1. Branding for Business Schools Andrew Crisp, CarringtonCrisp 18 October 2005

2. Agenda • Why brand? • What is a brand? • Approaching branding • Understanding your brand • Benefits of branding

3. Why brand?

4. Need to stand out Put ‘MBA’ in to the Google search engine and you get over 82 million possible answers

5. Turn on, tune in • Students make decisions earlier than anticipated • 47.6% decide to choose business at undergraduate level before they get anywhere near a UCAS form

6. No one knows who we are or what we do “It’s a sort of generic world class business school. I would find it hard to articulate any tangible differences that it would have over any of its peers and the image differences are down to nuance”

7. To get to where we want to be Where you want to be Where you want to be Everyone knows who you are and think they know what you do, but in reality don’t Awareness No one knows what you do or why A few people know what you do and understand very well Understanding

8. What is a brand?

9. How long have you got? • Seven blind people and an elephant • Logo, ads, packaging • Brand identity, brand intention, brand reputation • Emotion based on experience - perception • Brand breakdown = lack of corporate values or insufficient effort to execute on those values

11. Approaching branding

12. Be clear what you want The working group first attempted to deconstruct the idea of branding and identity and found that they could best be viewed as symbiotic terms of defining, which transform and strengthen each other over time and space. We want everyone who sees this image to know immediately who we are, where we are and what we do.

13. Getting closer “What we ought to be looking at is how those attributes enable our customers to become what they really want to become, which is a different them, a richer them, a more competent them and a more employable them. It’s actually to do with changing them. That’s what these people come for”

14. Getting started • Assume nothing • Top support • Set clear expectations • Increase the budget • Research, develop, test, roll-out, test, develop

15. Understanding your brand

16. Careers, careers, careers • Career prospects are key to course choice • Career prospects is the main motivating factor for studying business (53.8%) • 56.7% of postgraduates also cited careers, plus 17.7% mentioned improving their earnings • Only 50.4% are aware of the help available to them in finding employment

17. Influences when choosing a particular business school

18. Reputation, reputation, reputation • Almost two-thirds cite school reputation as most important in selection of school • 45.2% are influenced by course content, 36% by location and 35.5% by career prospects

19. Defining reputation • Emotional as well as logical • Reputation and brand feed off each other • Reputation developed over years and from a range of different items • Course offerings, distance from home, recommendations, but not QAA scores

20. Describe your Business School to a prospective student- net result friendly/competitive

21. Describe your Business School to a prospective student- net result lively/dull

22. Describe your Business School to a prospective student- net result international/domestic

23. Describe your Business School to a prospective student- net result academic/vocational

24. Describe your Business School to a prospective student- net result modern/traditional

25. The benefits of branding

26. Realising the intangibles • Values, image and perception • Consistency, confidence and commitment • Recognition and reputation • Sense of belonging

27. Desired and actual outcomes of rebranding exercises

28. Why not what? Research and reputation Understand your audience not your history You are different Much to gain Five fundamentals