“All we have to do is tell our story!\u201d<\/p>\n
This wasn\u2019t the first time I\u2019d heard that sentiment. In this case, Smoke Wallin, MBA\u201993, spoke up at a meeting of the Alumni Board in late 2010 as part of a discussion on how the school could move up in the rankings and attract the best applicants. But telling our story meant more than just having our faculty\u2019s work cited in The Wall Street Journal<\/em> or on Marketplace<\/em>. To really break through the clutter and claims of other schools, we needed a bolder brand identity that would make the world sit up and take notice, proclaiming loud and clear that we are second to none.<\/p>\n For years, Vanderbilt\u2019s business school has been talked about as a \u201chidden gem,\u201d a \u201cbest-kept secret,\u201d a place that \u201cyou\u2019ve got to experience to understand.\u201d Those aren\u2019t entirely bad qualities, and for a long time those attributes helped distinguish us from other top-ranked schools.<\/p>\n However, with an aggressive new strategic plan in place, which includes pushing into the top-20 B-schools amid ever-greater competition for talent, we could no longer afford to be a hidden gem or best-kept secret. Telling our story had become\u2014and remains\u2014a competitive imperative. Below are just a few of the key steps in our yearlong journey.<\/p>\n In the same way consumer brands tap into renowned advertising agencies to sharpen their edges (and boost sales), we too set out in early 2011 to find a firm to help raise the school\u2019s profile. With the support of an internal advisory board, we screened more than a dozen agencies from across the country, including ones that had worked with other top B-schools. We plowed through a mountain of amazing\u2014and some not so amazing\u2014work, finally narrowing the field to three firms. Each of these finalists presented their capabilities, including a broad array of creative approaches they\u2019d used to help other clients achieve their goals. But in the end we selected an agency in Columbus, Ohio, called Ologie. A highly creative branding agency with about 50 employees, it has a client base that ranges from nonprofits and academic institutions, such as the Cleveland Clinic and Purdue University, to private companies like NetJets and the Food Network. Their creative team blended bold designs with smart, mission-driven content. It was a perfect match for our intimate, collaborative, and yet academically rigorous personality.<\/p>\n Everyone agreed that we needed to tell our story, and tell it boldly. But who needed to hear it? Obviously prospective students are a core audience. As is the wider Owen community, including faculty, current students and alumni. We also wanted to reach peer schools, which hold sway in the rankings and whose institutions serve as feeders for top student and research talent. But the one constituency that, with Ologie\u2019s help, we learned could really spark a virtuous cycle was corporate recruiters\u2014those who hire our students as interns and graduates. By broadening and deepening our relationships with employers, we\u2019d see a short-term payoff in higher starting salaries and greater job placements. In addition, we hoped to leverage a growing alumni base within select companies to help boost our national profile for the long term and further strengthen the school\u2019s network.<\/p>\n Now that we knew who should hear our story, the next question was just as important: What story do we want to tell? Each of us can rattle off five or six great things about Vanderbilt\u2019s business school, but honing that message in a way that\u2019s unique, credible and resonant with the people we\u2019re trying to reach is a daunting task. So Ologie started by talking with dozens of stakeholders\u2014faculty, staff, students of all programs and ages, as well as employers. Everyone agreed that \u201cculture\u201d was our single biggest strength. But here\u2019s the rub: No two people described the culture in the same way. What\u2019s more, employers don\u2019t immediately see how our culture benefits their organizations. Ologie worked through this problem and identified a vocabulary for talking about our culture in a way that all audiences would find compelling and beneficial.<\/p>\n Rather than go straight to designing a new series of ads, Ologie first drafted a manifesto\u2014a galvanizing public declaration that explained in clear, energetic terms why this school is special. (Incidentally Apple\u2019s \u201cThink Different\u201d campaign started with a manifesto.)<\/p>\n The agency then brought these ideas to life with a series of mock-ups of advertisements, sample pages from an MBA viewbook, online ads and layouts of all the other materials we use on a day-to-day basis to promote the school. Our job was to take those items back to our audiences and understand what worked, what didn\u2019t and why.<\/p>\n As expected, there were elements that resonated with everyone, such as, \u201cWe\u2019re the B-school built for the persistent. The genuine.\u201d There were some that split opinions: Students rallied around \u201cRewrite the Rules,\u201d for example, but alumni disliked it. And there were other things that were simply best left on the cutting room floor.<\/p>\n Using this feedback we spent much of the summer refining (and refining some more) the points that proved most salient among all the people we surveyed. Finally we began to see the outlines emerge of what we believe is a profound and truly unique brand narrative for the school.<\/p>\n The time had come to begin incorporating these new design and content elements into our marketing materials. The first step involved developing a positioning brochure that homed in on our manifesto in a creative manner. We also worked with Ologie to create an 83-page booklet using stats, facts, quotes, people and places to tell all that\u2019s worth knowing about Vanderbilt\u2019s MBA program. Over a six-week period, we sent these two items to more than 6,000 prospective students as well as 1,000 B-school deans, MBA and Executive MBA program directors. The results? It\u2019s too early to tell, but, if it\u2019s any indication, Jim Bradford got a call from another dean telling him that he liked the book so much that he was going to copy it.<\/p>\n Starting in 2012, we began dialing back our involvement with Ologie. We\u2019re now turning to an extended Nashville-based team of copywriters and designers to help translate Ologie\u2019s new ideas and fresh look into our websites and future marketing materials. Next up is an ad for both print and larger displays, such as at airports.<\/p>\n As you watch these materials take shape, I think you\u2019ll find that they are truly different than anything we\u2019ve done before. And yet, they capture our spirit perfectly\u2014just as we had hoped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To really break through the clutter and claims of other schools, we needed a bolder brand identity that would make the world sit up and take notice, proclaiming loud and clear that we are second to none.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,66],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-3747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bottom-line","category-departments","tag-spring-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8791,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3747\/revisions\/8791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbiltbusiness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Step 1<\/h2>\n
Find a creative partner<\/h3>\n
Step 2<\/h2>\n
Prioritize our audiences and objectives<\/h3>\n
Step 3<\/h2>\n
Discover ourselves<\/h3>\n
Step 4<\/h2>\n
Create \u2026 then listen, listen, listen<\/h3>\n
Step 5<\/h2>\n
A breakthrough!<\/h3>\n
Step 6<\/h2>\n
Tell the world<\/h3>\n