Archive for August, 2007
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Universities and branding
What is a university? The answer, it appears, depends very much on who you talk to. To an academic, it is a self-governing community of academics who put the pursuit of knowledge above and beyond anything else. To a university administrator, one of the many professionals who have been drafted in to run Britain’s higher education establishments in the last few decades, it is a large, complex business. To a government minister, it’s part of a long-term solution to transform Britain from an industrial nation into a ‘knowledge economy’. To a parent, it’s an investment in a child’s future. To a business leader, it’s a source of commercially valuable research and high quality graduates. To a prospective student, it is ‘me time’ - a three year adventure in independent living and making new friends that is the reward for putting up with thirteen years of compulsory education.
With so many different - and often conflicting - points of view, how exactly does one communicate a university? With difficulty, always mindful that whatever one says about it, someone will hold exactly the opposite point of view.
What a university is, in fact, is a kind of patchwork made up of an odd assortment of pieces. Nobody really planned them: universities are, next to the church and the military, amongst our oldest national organisations and they have simply grown that way. Conceived by a mediaeval mind for purposes quite different in practice, if not in concept, to the ones they fulfil today, they have evolved haphazardly into the institutions we know today. Our oldest universities are now approaching 800 years and still going strong - no British university, once granted its Royal charter, has yet gone out of business.
If we can talk about a university ‘brand’, it’s something quite different from the commercial brands we’re familiar with. There is no ‘unique selling proposition’ in higher education: the university’s ‘offer’ is its people, and they are constantly moving around from one institution to the next, collaborating far more often than they compete. Schools and courses and research and even the student experience don’t vary greatly from one university to the next - whatever supposedly distinctive attribute one finds, there is almost certainly going to be at least one other university in the country that can match it exactly.
The one big difference - and one that universities themselves are often uncomfortable with - is place. Unlike businesses, universities can’t simply relocate (although several have opened new campuses in different parts of the country, or even the world). Universities are in a historic relationship with their cities. And, in the case of our historic universities, this is sometimes an uneasy, standoffish ‘town and gown’ relationship. The new universities have often chosen to exploit this, cultivating stronger relationships with their cities, working hard to forge relationships that their older counterparts have taken for granted (and it is a curious feature of the UK that many of our cities now have both old and new universities).
The university brand thus has to be something that allows all the university’s stakeholders to see what they want to see in it - it needs to have something of the nature of a blank canvas, onto which they can project their own meanings and associations. It also needs to reflect a place name that may, in every other respect, have little real connection with the university itself. For international audiences, whose grasp of the geography of these islands may be sketchy, to say the least, it’s often easier if that place is already known - for instance, because the city has a premier division football team.
Branding universities sounds as if it is about presenting and packaging universities in the same kinds of ways as commercial brands. It is, however, the exact opposite of this - it’s about adapting the language and techniques of branding to work for an institution as rich and complex (and as indefinable) as a university.
Interestingly, universities aren’t becoming more like other large, complex organisations. Other large, complex institutions are becoming more like universities.
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‘Guard dog poodle’ – art or eye sore?
Graffiti is usually seen as an anti-social eye sore – which of course it is – in many cases! It’s illegal and is something that connects a small percentage of society…
That is until Banksy hit London. No one supposedly knows who he is - yet his graffiti is now considered works of art – the most expensive selling recently for £288,000.
So, why is this being mentioned on our blog? I had lunch in a Shoreditch restaurant where Banksy had his work ‘exhibited’ – both the ‘Moona Lisa’ and ‘Guard dog poodle’*. I mentioned this to a friend of mine in Detroit and within seconds he had identified what restaurant I’d had lunch.
I found that an incredible use of the internet. The fact that it’s possible to identify one’s location with just a description of some graffiti – not just this – but that the internet has spread his work worldwide – of course he has also spread his work in places such as Israel – but his most prolific work is around the corner from our office.
I noticed yesterday that various walls near the Barbican had a couple of Banksy rats. The council had recently done a paint job – but painted around the rats. Probably as a result of the outcry that occurred when graffiti clean up services painting over one of his more favourite pieces (the Pulp Fiction characters with bananas instead of guns).
What makes Banksy’s work an art piece and other graffiti artists work mostly seen as an eye sore? Is it the fact his work has been photographed and passed around the world via the internet? Such as can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy.
Is the example of Banksy’s fame proof that through the use of the internet anyone can spread ‘their art’ without the need for traditional marketing routes. Through the internet he has shown that old fashioned word of mouth – or the more modern click of the mouse – his message can be seen and heard throughout the world. Messages from the ‘people’ is not simply limited to an area by a poster or sandwich board man in the town square as seen in days of old. Equally a message from big business that can be spread world-wide through big spending can also be spread for little cost via the internet. The internet has opened up the world of art to everyone – we are seeing it with the likes of Banksy with his graffiti art and Lilly Allen and Sandy Thom with their music…. But that’s a whole other story.
*http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/Banksy/Banksy_guard_dog.htm
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Trend Spotting – New tool for new reports
Back in June we took a stand at the Ideal Business Show Wales. One of the ways that we attracted delegates to us was to offer them a free 10 minute review of their websites (see screen shot).
Now we could have just produced a paper questionnaire and completed a form with a pen, but being a digital communications agency we decided to develop an online tool, which hooked up to a back-end database so that we could analyse the results as a whole after the event. And in fact we were able to get an overview of business websites in Wales and spot some common trends and themes (see Neil’s previous post).
You may be thinking that developing this tool was overkill for a couple of days at an exhibition, but there was method in our madness since we have plans for the prototype we developed.
After spending some time recently, extending and refining the review criteria, and tuning the database we are now in a position to begin to use the tool to produce trend-spotting reports into the websites of any given sector.
This is not a new venture for us, since we, or more specifically I, have been producing sector benchmarking reports on websites for many years. (see the reports section of our site).
However, this does represent an evolution of the report format. Previously the objective of the reports was to identify and highlight best practice, in relation to the basics of good website design, but the web has moved on and in our opinion everyone should be getting the basics right by now. What makes a really good site stand out is its ability to encourage brand awareness, communicate its proposition, and meet the organisation’s business objectives. So with this in mind we have defined criteria which will enable us to measure how able sites in any given sector are at meeting these needs as well as spot trends, and comment on the effectiveness of those trends.
We believe that our new reports will be unique since they will be a departure from the ubiquitous “Your site scored 8 out of 10 for accessibility” format and will provide a real appreciation of what works and what doesn’t for any given sector’s web presence. The data that our new tool will help us to collect will enable us to provide our clients and the broader industry with truly insightful commentary which we believe will demonstrate Precedent’s leading thinking.
Our first report on traditional universities is due for release at the beginning of October. It will be quickly followed by similar reports into Modern universities and HE establishments in the UK along with an appreciation of any variations in their online channels of communication.
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Digital Marketing and You: From Web2.0 to Second Life
August 2, 2007 September 6, 2007 In this seminar we will be discussing what is becoming a vital part of any organisations communications strategy.
In the early days of the web, a successful web strategy consisted of launching a new website and getting it listed on a single search engine. E-mail marketing was a nice-to-have, and online advertising was considered too expensive unless there was a product to sell. For many, online marketing was just about having a website and being successful was measured by visitors to the website. But times have changed and so have your audience.
Dean Russell, our digital marketing expert and Jane Austin, one of our senior consultants, are going to give a thought-provoking and inspiring presentation titled Digital Marketing and You: From Web2.0 to Second Life. Jane will demonstrate some techniques to help you get inside the mind of your audience and will show you how to use this knowledge as a basis for a successful digital communications strategy.
Dean will then talk through some practical tips and examples on the good, the bad and the ugly of modern digital marketing and how communicating your organisation’s message can now be measured. He will cover the concept of word of mouth marketing in this new era of the web and the far reaching impact this has for you and your customers.
This seminar is held at One Aldwych, London.
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wisdom of crowds
August 24, 2007 1:00 pm An amazing (yet sad) video of the wisdom of crowds (VT massacre) and how quickly wikipedia (people) acted . The video is a time-lapse of the first 12 hours of the Wikipedia article documenting the Virginia Tech Massacre .
