Brand Management Team Update

Happy Monday Hope College!

We just finished a great Brand Management Team meeting (see previous post about the BMT).  To better serve the campus community, we are continuing work on the following topics:

  • Establishing a resource center and space to prioritize and address campus needs. We are waiting to confirm a physical location, but have already started to talk about work flows and work teams that will serve the campus community in the area of marketing and communication.
  • Creating and conducting a variety of brand education programs to assist the campus in understanding how to share the Hope story. Both a brand education curriculum and supporting resources are the planning stages. A Brand Guidelines document is nearing completion and will be shared soon.
  • Hiring two part time positions (and student staff) to provide additional campus support and to back-fill work for the Brand Management Team.
  • Working everyday on tactical and maintenance projects. 

Stay tuned and feel free to contact us if you have questions.

Introducing the Brand Management Team

The Integrated Marketing Team (IMT) has been working to advance the colleges strategic marketing efforts on several fronts over the last few months. Those efforts have included the following:

  • Defining a resource team we’re calling the Brand Management Team to lead our efforts in implementing the redefined Hope brand throughout the campus.
  • Beginning to define goals for the next 18-24 months
  • Providing some tactical help on specific college marketing initiatives.
  • Considering the makeup of the IMT and looking toward expansion in 2013.

Brand Management Team

With a presidential transition in the year ahead, we believe an interim approach for the next 18-24 months makes more sense than committing to a structure that will undoubtedly change. We’ve asked four persons who have been involved in this process to dedicate up to fifty percent of their time to the marketing effort while also maintaining their current roles and responsibilities.

To sustain our current program, we will be providing resources to backfill for close to fifty percent of the team members’ current job responsibilities.

That team includes: Carol Fritz (Admissions), Becky Robrahn (CIT), Scott Travis (Alumni & Parent Relations), and Jason Cash (Advancement Communications).

The team will co-locate. A space still undefined will provide time and space to work collectively on departmental and college-wide initiatives while also staying connected with the ongoing work in their departments. This structure will allow for logical bridges between the Brand Team, Admissions, Advancement and CIT. This will allow for time to build bridges with other college departments and divisions.

The Brand Team will be led by Carol Fritz and will report “formally” to Bill Vanderbilt but also maintain seats on (and accountability to) the college’s Integrated Marketing Team (IMT). The IMT makeup will slowly evolve to include other key areas of the college over the next year. That evolution will most likely begin in early 2013.

Brand Management Team Goals

The Brand Management Team and the IMT are working to draft project plans, goals and time frames for activities over the next 18-24 months. Much of this activity will be driven by listening to the campus needs and reacting both tactically and strategically to those needs. Some initial activities that will be included are:

  • Establishing a resource center and space to prioritize and address campus needs.
  • Creating and conducting a variety of brand education programs to assist the campus in understanding how to share the Hope story.
  • Equipping and enabling college-wide content experts to implement the brand in their web and print materials.
  • Selecting Content Management and Digital Asset Management software to provide the infrastructure platform for our future web development.
  • Hiring/training student workers to provide additional campus support.
  • Working on tactical and maintenance projects 

Tactical Projects

Over the past two months, the team has assisted on a number of tactical projects ranging from athletic branding to Orientation messaging focusing on the freshman class cohort and external communications. The team will develop a triage and prioritization process to continue these types of efforts going forward.

More to Come

Please be patient as we live into this structure as a campus community. We believe this will help us improve our internal and external communications, impacting the experience of our students, faculty and staff and presenting a more coherent identity of the college. This will not happen overnight but will be an incremental change that will move us in a positive direction.

If you have thoughts on how we can improve this along the way, please share those with us so that we may benefit from your ideas! You can reach out to team members individually or email us at marketing@hope.edu!

Sincerely,

Integrated Marketing Team

Carol Fritz
Lynne Powe
Becky Robrahn
Jason Cash
Carl Heideman
Andrew Meyers
Tom Renner
Scott Travis
Dave Vanderwel (co-chair)
Bill Vanderbilt (co-chair)

Microsite Phase II: Coming Soon

The Integrated Marketing Team is excited to announce a significant upgrade coming to the Hope website! This is a step towards the longer term vision of working more broadly and consistently to communicate our brand promise and brand attributes. The website revision will bring to life the Hope brand and is a great step forward.

More detailed communications regarding the launch are forthcoming.

Integrated Marketing Team

Becky Robrahn
Carol Fritz
Lynne Powe
Andrew Meyers
Jason Cash
Scott Travis
Carl Heideman
Tom Renner
Dave Vanderwel
Bill Vanderbilt

Microsite Phase I: Now Live

Just a week ago today, we reached an exciting milestone in launching the new Hope brand, as the first phase of our microsite went live:

You can view the site at hope.edu/admissions. Every page within the Admissions area of the Hope website has been redesigned, and the site will serve as a fine resource for our prospective students and their families.

We’re so pleased with the work done by both of our partners, EM2 and Mediacurrent, and with the team effort we experienced here at Hope. No rest for the weary, though! It’s on to Phase II of this microsite project, which will include:

  • Applying this new theming to hope.edu and each of the front pages for the items in the global navigation (orange bar below Hope logo)
  • Installation of news and events modules which will be integrated on the home page and on index pages for each type

No launch date has been set for Phase II, but we expect it will be completed within 3-6 weeks.

So, what do you think of this first iteration of the Hope brand on the web? Leave us a comment below and let us know.

— Submitted by Andrew Meyers, Assistant Director of Admissions

A Micro-what?

Since the new brand will launch with the introduction of the Admissions campaign in the Fall, EM2 recommended to us the development of an interim microsite to serve as a branded gateway of top-level information about Hope. The microsite can be planned and developed faster to coincide with the Fall Admissions cycle and provide brand consistency while we begin planning the redevelopment of our full website. The information will be more promotional, highlight key messages and provide direct links to our existing site for more detailed information. The microsite will be developed as a self-contained module with its own content management system.
 
As with any web project, successful microsite development depends on a strong needs assessment. As part of EM2’s work in the web discovery phase, they are helping us to determine the scope of the project and the level of functionality needed.
 
We have just signed off on the strategy and functional recommendations which outline strategic content and functionality, page types and wireframes, and navigation and site architecture.
 

Think of wireframes as a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website. The wireframe depicts the page layout or arrangement of the website’s content, including interface elements and navigational systems, and how they work together. It is important to have a handle of this basic blueprint before the design phase begins.
 
At this point we have defined the scope of the project to include:

  • Hope.edu homepage
  • Admissions (entire site)
  • About Hope
  • Academics
  • The Arts
  • Athletics
  • Campus Offices
  • HopeToday
  • Alumni
  • Parents
  • Advancement

All of these areas with the exception of Admissions will only include a redesign of the section fronts, not the entire site.
 
EM2 will be presenting three page types in two sets of which we’ll be able to choose a direction and provide feedback. In July we will be working with EM2’s web partner, MediaCurrent Interactive Solutions, to begin back-end programming of the site. Page build begins in August and we are planning to launch the site on or around August 30, 2011.
 
There’s a lot of work ahead, so we better get to work!

— Submitted by Jason Cash, Campaign Associate for College Advancement

Using the New Brand: Admissions

Our main priority at this point, having selected a creative concept/direction, is to revise the Admissions campaign for print and electronic communication. The last significant revision of Hope literature for prospective students and parents was in summer 2006. Those pieces received minor revisions each year since then but are due for a more extensive treatment.

EM2 took the Fully Alive concept and (with our suggestions) prepared a more final version to be applied to the Admissions print and email campaigns. Here’s a look at what they came up with for us:


The most striking difference in terms of campaign strategy is that we’re communicating with prospective students 6-12 months earlier than we have in years past. They’ll begin receiving information from us at the beginning of their sophomore year.

The idea here is that by the time students are in the summer after their junior year, they’ve started to formulate the list of schools to which they’ll apply. By reaching out to them earlier, there’s a much higher chance that Hope will be on that list. The earlier a student applies to Hope, the more opportunity the Admissions staff has to work with them during their senior year and influence them to enroll.

Next steps for developing the Admissions campaign include: copy writing and revisions for print materials, HTML email creation, a video series for sophomores, and more. We plan to ship new Admissions materials to prospective students around the beginning of September.

— Submitted by Andrew Meyers, Assistant Director of Admissions

It’s Time To Get Creative

Taking a look at initial creative concepts may be the most exciting checkpoint in the rebranding process to date. They are the visual representation of all that Hope is and all for which Hope stands.
 
This week we saw the first creative representations of our brand promise and brand attributes. EM2 presented two concepts: Fully Alive and Rare Combinations. Prior to showing their work, Chris Martin explained the creative process and even gave us an inside look at how the design process works at EM2’s headquarters in Atlanta:Lynn Donham prepared us for reviewing the creative concepts with the following admonition:

Still the critic.
Entertain the notion.
Consider the possibilities.

These statements proved to be extremely useful encouragement for keeping an open mind as we viewed these concepts for the first time. Here’s a look at Fully Alive and Rare Combinations:

Fully Alive

Rare Combinations

Following the presentation, the Integrated Marketing Cabinet considered each concept and recommended that EM2 proceed with Fully Alive. We felt the use of vibrant color, graphic text, overall look and feel were most consistent with the redefined Hope brand. The IMC liked the idea of Rare Combinations, and has asked EM2 to integrate some of those elements in the revision of Fully Alive.

— Submitted by Andrew Meyers, Assistant Director of Admissions

Hope’s New Brand Promise and Attributes

We’ve reached a major milestone in the re-branding process: finalization of the Hope College brand promise and a refined set of brand attributes. These outcomes are the result of a long-term discovery and research phase, as well as substantial discussion and discernment.

The brand promise is a statement that embodies Hope’s main reason for being:

Hope College inspires students to be fully alive in mind, body and spirit through an exceptional liberal arts education and a community grounded in a vibrant Christian faith.

The brand attributes are the aspects of Hope that are most distinctive, important and believable:

  • Rare combination: rigorous academics and relevant, vibrant and inviting Christian faith
  • Friendly and welcoming community
  • Close student-faculty and student-staff relationships: masterful teachers and talented researchers in small classes and one-on-one collaboration
  • Christian character: engages the whole person with the larger world throughout academics, co-curricular and other programs
  • Nationally recognized leader: in undergraduate research, scholarship, preparation, and life-changing experiences
  • Holistic Approach: Liberal arts and pre-professional programs with very high academic standards and exceptional opportunities: holistic approach has been lauded for character, preparedness, service, and life-changing experiences for students.
  • Championship Athletics: tradition with scholar-athletes and community that supports College teams
  • Location: Safe and historic campus located just blocks from charming town of Holland, Michigan, with outstanding college facilities, an increasingly culturally diverse community.

This promise and supporting attributes will guide the development of print and electronic marketing materials to all of Hope’s audiences. They will also serve as a common reference point for each office on campus.

— Submitted by Andrew Meyers, Assistant Director of Admissions

A Brand-New Hope

We’ve just approved the first version of Hope’s brand creative brief. This comes as the result of one portion of an extensive Brand Development Process that was shepherded by EM2, our agency partner.

This process began several months ago and has involved the following milestones:

  • December 2010: EM2 visited campus to meet with a number of key people on campus, including senior administration, faculty, representatives from campus office, and current Hope students.
  • January 2011: Surveys (based on the meetings held in December) were sent to faculty and staff, current Hope students, and non-applied prospective students.
  • Mid-February 2011: EM2 tabulated survey responses.
  • March 2011: EM2 held a brand workshop on campus. It included the presentation of survey results, as well as extensive conversation about EM2’s suggested brand promise and attributes. This workshop included the Integrated Marketing Cabinet, members of senior administration, the Deans Council, and several key faculty.

EM2 distilled the feedback received during the brand workshop into a brand creative brief that included near-final versions of Hope’s brand promise and key brand attributes. The Integrated Marketing Cabinet made final suggestions and edits with input from senior administration.

At this point we’re looking ahead to tactical implementation, with the Admissions Print Campaign and a related microsite at the top of the list moving forward.

— Submitted by Andrew Meyers, Assistant Director of Admissions