Brand U: Marketing the Alma Mater

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After UCLA hired Popielarz in 2003, he interviewed 68 deans, faculty, and community leaders to gauge their perceptions of the school, and discovered arts and culture resources on campus were underappreciated. The school brought in advertising expert Paul Keye—who developed the iconic fried egg TV spot for the Partnership for Drug Free America—to create ads that were tested for effectiveness on 14 focus groups. Later when Popielarz reevaluated arts appreciation on campus, he saw an increase in the metric he was using. The advertising was working.

The school was also worried about the low number of African-Americans opting to enroll (just 100 entering students out of 4,809 in 2006) and the need to bring in funding for academic research. As a result, "UCLA, Unabashed" advertisements included African-American congresswoman Diane Watson talking about her alma mater as the new Ellis Island, and Nobel prize-winning chemistry professor Paul Boyer lauding the school's research efforts. Designed to give a look into specific strengths at the school rather than marrying a photo of the campus with a slogan, as college and university ads often do, "UCLA, Unabashed" is one way the school is aggressively targeting donors and prospective students on a shoestring budget of no more than $200,000. "When push comes to shove for the very best candidates, we are competing with Stanford and Berkeley to attract them," says Lawrence Lokman, who oversees marketing at UCLA. "To break through the clutter takes more than just traditional marketing."

ASU's Image Change

Still, the sheer size and structural complexity of colleges and universities make for some serious marketing challenges. Nowhere is this more evident than at Arizona State University. With 64,000 students, 300,000 alumni, 22 colleges, and hundreds of programs and research centers, moving away from its party school image and defining a clear brand message was no easy task.

The first step in its marketing campaign came in 2002 when the school was branded the "New American University," with a new Web site, targeted mailings, and lots of video content streamed on its Web site to showcase students discussing their personal experiences at ASU. The videos give a face to an otherwise gargantuan enterprise. To standardize the school's message, ASU established a marketing council two years ago that meets monthly to discuss and approve promotional materials put together by the various departments. The council "put teeth behind the marketing enforcement," says its chair, Terri Shafer. Any department that prints something violating the brand is forced to get rid of the material and pay for reprints out of pocket. "It's not O.K. to produce something that doesn't support the university brand portfolio," Shafer says. "One department can sabotage your brand if it doesn't look right."

Transcending Marketing

Codifying such branding is no simple task. In January, Boston University came out with a 67-page manual outlining a look, tone, and feel the school should exude in its marketing materials. The school called Toth Brand Imaging, a Cambridge (Mass.)-based branding agency, to put the guide together. For the first time, the manual set up standards for how the red Boston University logo could be used, with everything from font size to color grade. The guide compared the stiff corporate wording of an old-school brochure with new marketing copy that was more accessible. The branding effort, too new to have a measured effect on student yield and retention rates, has nonetheless begun to standardize what was a sprawling marketing mess in earlier days. "People can begin to really develop marketing programs where none existed before," says Stephen Burgay, BU's head of marketing, who comes from a business background as former marketing director at insurance firm John Hancock.

While schools are banking on attracting more students with their invested interest in branding efforts, many recognize it isn't the panacea to enrollment and fund-raising challenges. While more and more business practices are finding their way to campuses, the fundamental distinctions from business remain. Colleges and universities will always be sprawling, consensus-building organizations whose very decentralized model is what makes them successful academically. "What we are trying to do at a marketing level is simply represent a more consistent view of what we have to offer," says BU's Burgay. "Ultimately the final decision [on which school to choose] will rest on things that transcend the marketing."

Porter is a reporter with BusinessWeek in New York.