On National Teacher Day, meet the 2024-25 Kenan Fellows
An integrated marketing revolution at Ithaca College
1. An Integrated Marketing Revolution at
Rachel Reuben
Associate Vice President, Marketing Communications
2. Overview
The plan …and the revolution
Why did we develop a new brand identity?
Project timeline
Market research
Achieving buy-in
3. Overview
Brand awareness advertising campaign
Licensing & trademark enforcement program
Expanding and restructuring the Office of
Marketing Communications
Goals and measuring results
4. The plan …and the revolution
Original mantra:
“Evolution, not revolution”
5. The plan …and the revolution
Original game plan (my charge upon arrival)
– Address problematic logo
– Review internally developed positioning statement
& identify steps to solidify in the marketplace
– Establish integrated graphic standards
– Create a tagline
– Conduct market research to test positioning and
brand standards
– Restructure Marcom
Original implementation plan
– 3 phases over ~2 years
7. And then we had such strong buy-in
and such a strong platform to tell
our story, we wanted to find
additional vehicles for getting the
message out.
Ready?
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14. Why did we seek a new brand identity?
Academic strategic plan: IC 20/20
Projected declining demographics in the
Northeast
Net price calculator
15. Why did we seek a new brand identity?
Lacked consistency – no integrated
marketing
Organizational challenges
Previous logo challenges
16. Timeline overview
2009–10 academic year: Internal development of
positioning statement and RFP
August 2010: Project kickoff with Mindpower and
SimpsonScarborough
Fall 2010: Focus groups, market research perception
studies, dozens of campus presentations on why we’re
going through this process, and the initial brand identity
pitch
17. Timeline overview
February 2011: Reorganization of the Office of Marketing
Communications (OMC) and realignment of web design
responsibilities from Information Technology Services to
OMC
March 2011: Creative concept tests
April–July 2011: In-house refinement of visual execution
and messaging; Creative Services group begins to form
August 31, 2011: Reskinned ithaca.edu site and site-
wide template launched; advertising campaign and new
Identity Standards system launched
18. Timeline overview (cont.)
Fall 2011: Campus-wide presentations of “before and
after”; implementation phase one completed and phase
two well under way
Spring 2012: Implementation phase two nearly
completed and phase three well under way, which included
redesigning our prospective student magazine, changing
the logos on our fleet of 150 campus vehicles, creating
completely new display systems for college fairs and on-
campus programs, and more
19. Market research
Fall 2010 – focus groups & perception study
– FG: Current students, faculty, staff,
administrators, regional alumni
– 15,000 prospective students
– 10,000 higher ed peers
– 2009 alumni attitude study results
March 2011 – creative concept test
– All audiences
June-July 2011 – focus groups
June 2012 – perception study & advertising
effectiveness
– Parents of admitted students
20. Achieving buy-in
CMAC
Traveling road show part 1:
– Where we’re going, where we are now, how we’ll
get there
Key stakeholders preview – research findings
and brand identity
Traveling road show part 2:
– Before and after
Identity and campaign reflected research,
not internal preferences
A good “problem” to have…
21. Brand awareness advertising campaign
To achieve greater visibility and strengthen
public’s perception about IC
Influencers were primary market highly
targeted by demographics and geography
Prospective undergrads were secondary
target
Worked with media agency for planning,
buying and trafficking
22. Brand awareness advertising campaign
Placements included:
– New York Times FSIs in select drop zones
– NPR underwriting spots
– SEM
– Banner ads – retargeting and marquee buys
– Select magazines
– Acela train
– Pandora
– YouTube
– Facebook
23. Licensing & trademark enforcement program
Ithaca College ®
Licensing partner: Strategic Marketing
Affiliates (SMA)
Licensing program at a glance
– ithaca.edu/licensing
Applying for 7 more trademarks
– Logos, seal, nickname, Ready expressions
Cortaca®
24. Expanding & restructuring the
Office of Marketing Communications
Silos
No in-house design services to support
integrated marketing effort
Not enough project managers to support all
of the schools and administrative units
Used open positions and reallocated existing
operational budget resources to redefine and
create new positions
Received one new position through budget
request process
28. Goals & measurement
Institutional Strategic Marketing Plan
– Situational analysis
– Guiding questions market research assisted with
– Goals tied to baseline perception study research
– Strategies, tactics, budget
Four goals based on answers to questions
asked in fall 2010 & June 2012 perception
studies & where we’d like those answers to
be in fall 2014 re-test.
Brand awareness – long arc to measure
results
29. Goals & measurement
Secondary indicators – positive impacts to:
– Donations and Development outcomes
– Application numbers
– Retention
– Employee searches
– Web analytics
– Email analytics
– Inquirers
– Visitors to campus
30. Goals & measurement
Additional metrics:
– Social media engagement
– Ads – number of impressions (CTRs, CPC to an
extent)
– Web analytics
– Tracking manifesto – all vanity URLs, all online
campaigns
31. Next steps
Taking the campaign to new audiences
– Prospective graduate students
– Prospective faculty and administrators
Campus signage
Integrating the institutional brand identity
with the upcoming capital campaign
We originally developed a three-phase implementation plan, which we expected would take one to two years to complete. However, almost everything in this carefully crafted plan—and more—was completed within the first eight months. We tackled projects we thought would take more than a year or two to get to. We secured a new institutional budget to support a College-wide brand awareness advertising campaign, enabling us to share our platform on much greater scale. We grew to recognize the importance of protecting our assets. We have registered two federal trademarks and are in the process of registering nearly ten more. We established a licensing program for the use of our trademarks and name on merchandise. We overhauled our display systems for admission counselors to take on the road as well as for the programs on campus. We created templates to further support our visual identity for presentations in PowerPoint and Keynote, electronic letterhead in Microsoft Word, email signature standards, digital signage, and more.
IC 20/20: a road map for creating a more integrated and robust academic experience by strengthening our academic offerings and support services. The College ’s institutional branding efforts needed to support that plan and present the institution’s message accordingly. Demographics: From 2008 to 2017, New York State alone is expected to see a 16 percent drop in college-bound students. Net price calculator: While providing greater price transparency for families, these calculators are wrought with challenges and may change the timing of the recruitment process. The traditional recruitment process allowed a college or university to build a relationship with a student and articulate the value of their offerings before much direct discussion of price took place. In the new model, students may never engage in the recruitment process, and instead may be comparing cost estimates to the value of each institution ’s brand.
Lacked consistency – no integrated marketing, every school wanted their own identity. Web design in ITS, print design outsourced to several different designers. No one worked together. No visual standards manual. Org challenges: silos galore, we’ll talk about that more in depth later in this presentation Old logo: Only said the word “Ithaca.” When our President would wear a baseball hat or something with our logo on it out of town, he was often approached by people who would said – oh, that’s a great town. Do you work at Cornell?
Good problem: People creating their own Ready taglines; A&E gala opening used motown “Get Ready” song as theme
26 positions. 10 people left.
Too soon. We’re doing a brand awareness campaign, not a direct response. However, our apps reached a record high this past year, as did our campus visits. Our summer melt was at an all-time low. We can’t attribute marketing as the primary reason for any of these successes, but we do believe it played at least a part.