Talking Stick - July/August 2013 - 42

Brand management
requires staff
from all parts of
the campus to
work together. . . .
university marketing
provides branding
standards and
preferences for
departments to
use, but a lot of the
decisions are made
at the department
level.

marketing materials and promotional
efforts. The message they convey
must be in line with that of the
institution, and this consistency
among all layers of the university
community can work to strengthen
the value of the brand. Marty
Takimoto, director of communications
and marketing for residential and
student service programs at UC
Berkeley, is currently leading efforts to
integrate the new Berkeley branding
guidelines into their department’s
work. “The Berkeley campus
recently embarked on a campuswide rebranding effort. We [housing]
eagerly jumped on this train and
are using this campus initiative to
coordinate our internal branding
efforts within student affairs and
student housing,” Takimoto says.
Berkeley supported the campus
rebranding effort by creating a
website, which includes a brand
guidelines book; logos, seals, and
marks; fonts; color palettes; and
directions about how and when
to use each piece. “[The housing]
design team is converting existing
documents to the brand guidelines
during our regular updates, and it
has been with great success,” says
Takimoto. “We keep our internal
clients informed about the changes by
showing ‘before’ and ‘after’ mockups to show the impact of the new
guidelines. Fortunately, this has been
very well received, and most agree the
university is benefiting from this new
direction.”
SIUE also has a website to inform
communications staff across the
campus about brand guidelines.
Though products and publications
still have to be approved by university
marketing staff, the published
guidelines make the process easier
and improve turnaround time.
Marketing staff within departments
know the parameters they have to
work with and can do the graphic
work in-house or in partnership with
university marketing. University
websites, one of the more visible
opportunities for presenting a unified

42

tAlking stick

brand, can either be a cohesive
representation of a centralized
brand or a collection of various
micro-sites. A collection of approved
templates and a content management
system make it easier for various
departments to manage their own
content, in a timely manner, without
compromising the brand.

coMMunIcatIon
to MaxIMIzE
connEctIonS
A successful brand sets one
institution apart from others; in the
case of student housing, what is
being promoted is the value of the
on-campus residential experience.
Brittney Rutherford, marketing
coordinator for the department of
residence at Iowa State, found that
leveraging their connection to the
Iowa State community was the most
successful strategy in differentiating
the on-campus housing experience
from that of off-campus competitors.
“We are Iowa State,” says Rutherford.
“We should own that we are the
only [housing community] that
can offer that experience. We
maximize that connection when
[prospective and current] students see
marketing materials and content that
complements the Iowa State brand.”
Brand management requires
staff from all parts of the campus
to work together. In Iowa State’s
decentralized approach to branding,
university marketing provides
branding standards and preferences
for departments to use, but a lot
of the decisions are made at the
department level. Marketing staff
within the division of student affairs,
which includes housing, have found
that sharing resources and expertise
within their division has led to a
higher quality of publications. “We
work to have intentional interactions
with one another. We break [ourselves]
out of our silos to support one
contInues

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Talking Stick - July/August 2013

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