This document discusses the importance of branding for for-profit colleges. It notes that branding matters more now due to increased competition, market saturation, a shrinking target audience, and a poor economy. A strong, consistent brand can help schools attract more students, build loyalty, lower perceived risk, and increase referrals. The document outlines the branding process, including understanding the brand, segmenting the target audience, defining the brand position, developing integrated marketing campaigns, and measuring success metrics like awareness, attitudes, inquiries, and enrollments.
8. TODAY’S DISCUSSION
• What is branding?
• Why branding matter for schools in our sector
• The process for creating a successful brand
• Defining success
10. WHAT IS A BRAND?
Your brand is your promise to your customers
Built upon a collection of perceptions and
experiences with your company
11. A Product vs A brand
Rational data and emotional memories =
brand recognition and loyalty
12. The failure of new coke
What did we learn?
Coke/Pepsi challenge is classic example of brand importance. In response to consumers choosing the taste of Pepsi over Coke in
repeated, blind taste-tests, Coke changed its formula and “New Coke” was born. BIG mistake! Loyalists of Coke were outraged. People
drink Coke for reasons beyond taste – they drink because of what “Coke” represents (i.e., the brand.)
13. Why Branding Matters
Brands are more than artistic logos
Brands are the sum of the experience, reputation and promise of
your organization’s products and services
Reputation Promise
Experience
14. Higher education branding
Education is a high involvement purchase –
expensive, long term, high risk with a lot of
competition
Reputation of school becomes reputation of its
alumni
=
20. The power of brandING
“….I would take the brands and
trademarks...”
-John Stuart, CEO Quaker
21. Measuring Brand value
Rating of 0 – 100 based on:
-Financial Performance
-Role of brand in consumer
purchase decision
-Branding consistency
across channels
-Brand differentiation from
competitors
22. Most valuable brands
Brand value = $70 Billion
Brand value = $60 Billion
Brand value = $55 Billion
Brand value = $71
Billion on revenues
Brand value = $42 Billion of $46 Billion
29. Process overview
Unders tand S egment Your
Unders tand
Your A udience
Your Brand
C us tomer
Define B rand C ampaign C hannel
Pos ition Development S trategy
30. Understand your brand:
The Brand platform
“To be our customers’ favorite
place to eat.”
Brand
Vision
Forever Young 1. Customer
experience is core
Brand Core of everything we do
Character Values 2. Commitment to
our people
High quality fast food,
Provide simple, easy Brand Brand superior service in a
enjoyment to every Promise Dimen- clean, welcoming
customer at every visit. environment at a great
sions value
31. Understand your brand:
The Brand platform
“To be our customers’ favorite
place to eat.”
Brand
Vision
Forever Young 1. Customer
experience is core
Brand Core of everything we do
Character Values 2. Commitment to
our people
High quality fast food,
Provide simple, easy Brand Brand superior service in a
enjoyment to every Promise Dimen- clean, welcoming
customer at every visit. environment at a great
sions value
34. Understand your Prospective Student
• Women (mostly)
interested in returning to
school
• Living in Indiana or Ohio
• About ½ are married
• Want to make more
money
• Starting or changing
careers
35. Segmentation
• Process to define and
identify subsets of the
market
• Segments have similar
need, wants or demands
• Prioritize and target
• Develop a message
platform and marketing
mix to match their
expectations
48. Benchmark
Attitude & Awareness Study determines:
a) If prospects know of your brand
b) What prospects think/feel about your brand
c) What prospects think/feel about your competition
___% have heard of Harrison College
___% believe Harrison College offers a
quality education
S - Good afternoon and thank you for being here. My name is Steve Jaworowski, the vice-president of marketing at Harrison College, located in Indianapolis, Indiana and this is my colleague, Catherine Stiver, our director of marketing. We are honored to be selected to speak to you today and are very excited to share our thoughts on why branding matters in our sector.
S - If you know me at all, I usually start my meetings with a joke. Well in discussing this with my wife and contemplating mu options, she said , and I quote… “if they want to hear a joke, they are in Vegas. They can go see Eddie Griffin or Carrot Top. Stay on subject.” Alright, enough said.
S - Catherine came from Lilly, and as I said, I came from Time Warner. Two organizations that not only emphasize the importance of having a strong brand to drive revenue but these organizations also have plenty of money to invest in creating a differentiation between themselves and their competitors. But what if I am not a huge organization with Wall Street investors? Does having a unique, recognizable brand still matter? Yes, absolutely.
S - I got into the higher education sector a little over 2 years ago after spending 15 years with AOL and then with Time Warner Cable after the merger. I thought marketing the cable-internet-phone triple play was tough…well, for-profit higher education marketing has given me a new appreciation for the expertise in this sector. It has also shown me the importance of branding your organization in a “give me leads now” environment. Being new to the sector, I was amazed by what we call “lead vendors” or PPL. No disrespect for the legitimate and necessary companies in this space but the model of what is essentially a huge version of Amway sales is flawed. We use intellectual and monetary resources to “buy” untargeted leads, spend time and money to make sure they are compliant, “clean” them up, score them and then make a mad dash to the phone to call them first often at the detriment of the overall student experience. S - And do we really want your brand to be associated with the infomercial of the good looking girl in bed surfing the Internet on her laptop who decides NOW is the right time to go back to school? I know Harrison College doesn ’t. Your brand must stand alone.
S - What my two years in this industry has shown me is that even if you have one or two campuses in a market you likely have at least 4-5 competitors with similar program offerings. In Indianapolis, where Harrison College is based, we have 11 colleges and universities, both traditional, like the University if Indianapolis and for-profit, like Harrison College and our culinary division, The Chefs Academy. There are lots of options for prospective students. While generating quality leads is at the core of how we initially introduce prospective students to our establishments, creating and establishing your brand is critically important.
S - Marketing 101, if they don ’t know of you…if they are not aware of you...they will not consider you. How many of us, if given the choice of DirecTV, Comcast and Frank’s Cable Service, are going to choose Frank’s? Frank might have an incredible cable system but because he has not created awareness of his product or tried to communicate key points of differentiation he is going to lose out everyday to brands such as DirecTV and Comcast. However, if Frank can create a brand that both differentiates his company from his competition and offers customers what they want, he will be in a much better position to win customers. Before we get started, I ’d like to know how many of you are from a school? OK, how many from a service provider to a school? Ok, and now who is here because there was rumor that Justin Beiber was going to show up? OK well whether you’re from a school, a service provider or your just killing time until the Credence Clearwater Revisited concert tonight, we hope to share some practical advice on how to approaching branding.
S - We are going to spend the next 40 or so minutes discussing the importance of branding as well as the actual process of branding. Even if you ’re not in the marketing department of your organization, it is important that everyone understand that branding is about delivering a consistent customer experience at every touch-point. If you think of branding this way, then everyone in the organization is a Brand Ambassador. We’ll also spend some time talking about why for-profit higher education institutes need to brand themselves. There are many, many reasons why branding is important, but we will look at three. Then Catherine is going to discuss the branding process –it is not just about putting a logo out there for people to see. And then, finally, I will discuss some measurements for success. You invest in the brand development, create nifty commercials, buy the media and so forth. But, how do you know if it was worth it?
C - Thank you Steve. Good afternoon everyone. As Steve mentioned, I am Catherine Stiver, Director of Marketing at Harrison College. I, like Steve, have spent my career in marketing but I too am relatively new to higher education. I have worked in both the consumer packaged goods industry as well as the pharmaceutical industry. What I have learned is that while each industry has it nuances, no matter what industry you are in the principals and process to building strong brands remains the same.
C - To get started, let ’s define what a brand is. Oftentimes, people will think of a logo and colors and consider that the brand. While those elements do represent a visual component of your brand, brands are much more than just artistic logos. Your brand is a promise to your customer and it is built upon a collection of perceptions of and experiences with your company. Strong brands have a deep, emotional connection with their customers.
C - Let ’s spend a minute thinking about the difference between a product and a brand. I think this will help to explain why a strong brand can bring so much value to an organization. A product exists only in the logical part of a customer’s mind. Think of a product as an ordinary, everyday item that is produced and packaged by a manufacturer. In this case, carbonated soft drinks. A soft drink is a product. But Coca-Cola is the brand that carries all of the emotional content – whether it’s a person’s childhood memory of sharing a Coke with a friend or the recollection of that memorable jingle “I’d like to teach the world to sing”. Consumers convert the combination of rational data and emotional memories into brand recognition and loyalty.
C - You probably all remember New Coke. In blind-taste tests, Pepsi beat Coke almost every time. So Coke decided to change its formula to better suit customer tastes and New Coke was launched. We all know how that story ended – consumer outrage! Coke quickly reverted back to its original formula.
C - The point is that people drink Coke for reasons beyond taste – beyond just the product itself - they drink it because of what it represents and means to them. They are loyal to “the brand”. Brands are the sum of the experience, reputation and promise of your organization ’s products and services. By the way, anyone care to guess which company has the highest estimate brand value? I ’ ll give you a hint, it isn ’ t Pepsi!
C - Ok, that makes sense for Coke, but why does it matter in Higher Education? I would argue that devoting time and money to building your brand in higher education is even more important than it is for Coca-Cola. Why? Because education is a high involvement purchase and there is a LOT of competition to choose from. For the student, it is expensive and there is high-risk for making the “wrong” decision . Going back to Steve’s cable example, if you choose Frank’s cable service and aren’t happy, you’ll just switch. Yes, it is a bit of hassle to make the phone call and have the technician come out, but overall not a big deal. For a prospective student, choosing a college is a much riskier proposition. Not only do they invest multiple years and thousands of dollars towards their degree, but once they finish, the reputation of the school they attended will be transferred to them. What your college stands for – its reputation or its brand – will become a part of every student who attends your school and they will carry it with them for the rest of their lives. So yeah, branding is as important for colleges and universities as it is for soft drinks, maybe more so.
C – Now I ’m going to turn this back over to Steve who will discuss, in greater detail, the importance of branding in the for-profit college sector.
S - It ’s no secret that many for-profit colleges have poured millions into their marketing efforts to acquire new students. Depending on which source you believe, it is reported that many colleges spend between 13-20% of revenues on advertising and marketing – a much higher rate than is typically seen in organizations or non-profit colleges. Why are for-profit colleges outspending other sectors in terms of marketing dollars?
S - Well for one reason, the bubble has burst in the sector. Chris Ross from the Parthenon Group, an industry advisory group, provides excellent perspective in his article, “where have all the students gone”…he points out that year over year student enrollment growth has declined from a high of 24% in 2009 to a negative 22% a year ago June.
S - His main reasons are: more competition from traditional colleges and universities, who now offer online classes as options and also brand marketplace saturation of message…the low hanging fruit has been found and therefore a shrinking addressable audience and, finally the overall economy. The thinking with many is if the economy is not going to get better is college even worth it? The point I am making is that if you only rely on direct response, lead generation advertising and you ’re not sure if anybody knows who you are outside a Google search for “online education” and the bubble of growth has burst, as Mr. Ross points out, how can you grow?
S - My answer…by creating and establishing your brand for the long-term. Strong brands lead to greater cash flow because you have deeper market penetration. Strong brands improve market penetration because brands reduce the perceived risk for the customer. When you have an established, recognizable brand, studies show you have faster product trial, higher referral rates and greater retention.Brands that are well-executed, consistent, memorable and live up to consumer expectations, command a premium price, a premium stock price and can boost earnings. And who doesn ’t want to be worth more? Brand value is very important to companies.
S - John Stewart the former CEO of Quaker Oats in early 1900 ’s once said, “If this business were split up, I would give you the land and bricks and mortar, and I would take the brands and trademarks and I would fare better than you.” We could take this discussion many different routes…about how brand value is determined, the accounting aspects of Net Asset Value and so on but we won’t. Thankfully, right? Let’s keep it simple.
S - According to McKinsey Quarterly about ½ of the market value of the Fortune 250 is tied to intangible assets. Assets like their brands. Many of us have heard of Interbrand, the internationally renowned brand consultancy…well each year they rank the top 100 best global brands and their monetary value. They take a look at three aspects of a company in their methodology…they look at overall financial performance, they look at the role of the brand in the consumer purchasing decision and finally, they look at brand strength which is a measurement form 0 to 100 with 100 being perfect and they look at this across 10 different dimensions of brand activation…things like brand consistency, so is the brand consistent in look, and brand differentiation…does the brand tout how and why they are different…Ok, they take all this data and come up with this list and the valuations…here are the top 5 for 2011 in reverse order…
S - #5 GE with a brand value of $42 Billion…#4 Google, $55 billion…#3 Microsoft, $60 Billion, #2 IBM at $70 billion and, drum roll, please…any guesses on the company and the valuation to win this fabulous Harrison College Know-U golf shirt? That ’s right Coca-Cola number one…brand value of $71 Billion! BTW, revenue for Coke in 2011 was $46 billion…Pretty incredible and a pretty good reason to engage in branding for your company and why it matters…whether you’re Coke, a service provider or a small for-profit college. Brand matters.
S - Finally, branding matters because it helps you cut through the clutter of the bizzilions of messages that consumers are hit with every day. If you have done your research and followed a scientific approach to developing your brand, certain key attributes and differentiators or message points are going to float to the top. These are the messages that you should use to help break through the clutter. Let ’s face it…there is a sea of sameness in our industry.
Literally hundreds of studies have been conducted over the years to try and determine how many ads a person is exposed to in a single day…one study from 1965 pegged it at around 1900…way before technology became so pervasive…now, I cannot even imagine…one study I read said 3000, another 5000…not only is it hard for people to absorb all these messages, consumers now have the technology in their hands, literally, to turn these messages off. I have a sad confession to make…I don ’t watch TV advertising. I am a time displaced TV watcher…outside of a live sporting event, 95% of my TV viewing is done using my DVR or Netflix. You really have to work hard for me to see your messages if you are an advertiser…but that doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to products that are important to me… like beer commercials.
S - I did an experiment about a week ago driving to work. I decided to really look out for university and college advertising to see how exposed I was in my 30 minute commute from Fishers, IN to downtown Indianapolis. Its about 25 miles…I drive fast…He is what I saw…3 billboards within a 2 mile stretch of highway…I heard 1 radio ad…saw building signage for Kaplan, ITT, Indiana Wesleyan, Indiana Tech, Med Tech, Brown Mackie and Arts Institute of Indianapolis…and saw countless bumper stickers and license plate brackets. All Branding for colleges. So the question becomes how do you break through the clutter? We all offer good programs, we have excellent faculty, we care about our students, we are concerned about placement and 90/10. We are like the new car dealer who says they provide the best after purchase service for you new vehicle. Have you ever bought a car and they didn ’t tell you that? They don’t say we sold you a great car but go down the street for service because we just stink at that…no…they say here are some lifetime oil change certificates, come back and see us because we will take care of you…forever…it is up to us as brand marketers to follow the process, which Catherine will discuss.
S - It ’s also important to take an integrated marketing approach. Find that message and that look/feel and then put it out in an integrated fashion over a mix of media channels. You don’t have to use every media channel but don’t put all your eggs in one basket. At Harrison, we use PPL, online banners, SEM and direct mail to drive inquiries. But we also know that using TV, radio, local sponsorships and social media for branding help drive inquiries but also give us the opportunity to differentiate ourselves. This unified approach enables us to look bigger then we actually are in the eyes of the consumer.
S – Now we are going to walk you through the 6 steps to building a strong brand
S- Hopefully by this point, you are convinced that your brand is one of your most important assets. Your brand is your reputation and it must serve two important roles – 1) build trust with your customer and 2) differentiate from the competition. So how do we get there? How do we build a strong brand? I want to spend the next 10 minutes discussing a disciplined marketing process that yields a validated position statement, campaign strategies and optimized channel mixes that deliver superior ROI.
S - Process overview: Here are the 6 steps that should be taken to help you define and build your brand: 1) Understand your brand, 2) Understand your customers and their needs, 3) Conducting a Segmentation study and using that to choose your target audience, 4) Brand Position Development, 5) Campaign Development and 6) Channel Strategy/Mix Planning. I will talk through each of these steps in detail.
S- Now let ’s take a look at an example of a brand platform. Each of these components has been identified. Hopefully, once you’ve read these, you’ll be able to figure out which company this platform represents. The vision of this company is “To be our customers’ favorite place and way to eat.” The core values of the company are: 1. The customer experience is core of everything we do and 2. Commitment to our people. The brand dimensions are “High quality food, service in a clean, welcoming environment at a great value”. The brand promise is to “Provide simple, easy enjoyment to every customer at every visit” and the character is “Forever young.” Would anyone like to guess which company’s brand platform this is?
S- Now we ’re going to give everyone an opportunity to develop your own brand platform. We know that not everyone here is a marketer, but it is always interesting to think about the company you work for in these terms. (Pass out worksheets) Please take the next five-ten minutes to complete the Brand Platform Worksheet. If you are here with another person from your school/organization, complete the forms separately and then compare after your finished. See how closely aligned you are in your definitions.
C – Any thoughts are insight on the exercise? So, Steve just walked you through the first step Understanding your Brand. This is really taking a look internally at your school and what benefits it has to offer. Now I will walk through the remaining 5 steps.
C – Once you have defined your brand internally, you must understand who your customer is, where they are and how they behave. At Harrison, we started by talking to prospective students to understand them as people - why are they thinking about going back to school?, what is most important to them when considering a school?, what obstacles they are facing?, etc. This helped us begin to understand how we might uniquely meet their needs.
C - But of everyone who might be considering going back to school, you then need to know which target audiences can be served best by your school. You can ’t meet everyone’s needs well, but you probably can find a segment of the population that is a great fit. This is where segmentation comes in to play. Segmentation is the process of defining and subdividing a large homogenous market into clearly identifiable segments having similar needs, wants, or demand characteristics. Its objective is to help you design a message platform and marketing mix that precisely matches the expectations of customers in the targeted segment. As a result of the segmentation study, you will choose a target audience to build your message and focus your marketing efforts towards. The more specific your target, the more efficient you will be with your marketing budget and the better chance of success you will have.
C - At Harrison, we selected two segments to target as result of our segmentation study. And we understand these target audiences like never before. We not only have demographic information, but also psychographic, behavioral, as well as media consumption habits. Here is an example of a “Day in the Life” board built for our Linked in Learner segment – and this information is just the tip of the iceberg. But as you can see, we understand where she eats, shops, how she surfs the web…in addition to her values, what is important to her, what she worries about, what balls she is juggling, etc. All of this information informs how we position our brand to meet her needs.
C - That brings us to the next step – developing your brand position. The position statement articulates what benefit the brand offers and why it can deliver . Since the work has been done to select a target audience and understand their needs, we can now develop specific messaging that is relevant to the target. An important component to consider when developing your brand position is what your competition is doing. You ’ll want to understand the messaging that your prospective students are hearing in the marketplace and how you can differentiate yourselves in the sea of sameness.
C - A great example of this is Cialis. I bet you didn ’t expect to come to a session at APSCU and hear about erectile dysfunction! But everyone has heard of Viagra and Cialis – the 2 top-selling ED medications.
C - When Cialis was preparing to launch, Viagra was already a well-established brand. The Cialis brand team spent a significant amount of time understanding their customers and defining the target audience. In doing this, they learned that the men with ED they were targeting just wanted intimacy with their partner to be natural, to happen when the moment is right, like before they had ED. Taking a pill right before they thought they might be intimate (as they would have to do with Viagra) reminded them that they had ED, and then once they took the pill they felt pressure because they knew it only worked for 4 hours. An A-Ha moment! A benefit of Cialis is that it works for up to 36 hours. This relieves some of the pressure and allows men to be ready for sexual activity when the right moment arrives. This served as the basis for their positioning statement and how they would differentiate the brand in the marketplace.
C - Once you have your brand position statement, the next step is campaign development. This identifies the most compelling, overarching creative expression of the brand promise for any touch-point over time. Let ’s watch how Cialis brought their positioning to life. You can clearly see their target is men who are in committed relationship looking for intimacy with their partners. The ending sums the positioning statement up: “When the moment is right – will you be ready?” As I mentioned, when Cialis launched, Viagra was the 800-pound gorilla that nobody thought could be beat. Cialis has now overtaken Viagra in market share in most countries around the world!
Last but not least, the final step in the process is developing a channel strategy and mix. Understanding your target ’s media consumption habits is critical; you need to be where they are: Programs they like to watch Music they like to listen to Websites they are interested in visiting This is where the results of the segmentation study come into play again. As Steve mentioned, at Harrison we use a variety of media channels, but we focus our spending on the ones that we know effectively reach our target audience.
Once this process is complete, you can feel confident that your brand is built on a solid foundation to deliver superior ROI and the next step is to consistently execute it. At Harrison, we realized that it is critical that everyone in our organization understand the brand and be given the tools to ensure it is consistently executed. As you recall, your brand is built upon your customer ’s experience – the indelible imprint left on individuals through interactions with your brand. We have 15 campuses and learning centers and every interaction, whether it be with potential students, business partners or even family members and friends, impacts our brand. You can imagine how disjointed this could be if we didn’t take an integrated approach. So you must empower everyone to be a Brand Ambassador. How did we do this?
C - Well, first we developed several tools to educate our colleagues about the brand and empower them to support it. And then we visited every campus and conducted Brand Ambassador training to discuss the brand and show them the tools that were developed. You can see here we developed a Brand Guide which details everything from the brand position to how to standardize your email template. We also have an online toolkit which provides over 100 branded templates that can be used for flyers, ads, invitations, etc.
Finally, we were also very intentional in making sure the Harrison campaign was integrated across channels – online and offline - this makes your dollars work harder as each exposure builds upon the last.
The last thing we ’ll talk about today is measuring success. You want to ensure that your branding efforts are creating the positive results you hoped they would.
The first step in measuring success is to determine exactly what you hope your marketing efforts will accomplish. Obviously, the ultimate objective for any business is to increase revenue. In the for-profit college industry, we do this by increasing awareness and inquiries.
In order for us to determine if our branding campaign is increasing awareness levels among our target audience, we first need to know what awareness levels are like prior to the launch of the campaign. We do this by conducting a benchmark attitude and awareness study. Since Harrison College ’s target audience is in Indiana and the surrounding areas, we gathered data from prospective students in these areas to determine: a) if they know about Harrison College, b) what they think/feel about Harrison College and c) what they think/feel about our competition. We recruit a high number of prospective students (at least 500) in order to make quantified statements such as: ___% of our target audience has heard of Harrison College. Following the first flight of the campaign, a follow up Attitude and Awareness study can determine what change has occurred in your audience as a result of your branding efforts.
As we talked about in the beginning, lead vendors continue to be a valued partner in gaining new inquiries. However, a strong brand will dramatically increase the number of leads who come directly to your organization, rather than through a third party. Depending on the channels you have chosen to place your marketing message, most are trackable. For instance, Harrison reviews SEM and display analytics to measure success of these efforts – Google does a great job of providing constant feedback on your efforts.
Demo here
Remember, strong brands are built over time and through consistency – visually, emotionally and experientially.
