Next week the Worldview Conference on Media and Higher Education is taking place in Toronto. I will be on two panels, one of which is interestingly titled, Branding and the Sophistication of the Communication Culture in Universities.
What makes this panel especially compelling to me is that it, along with the entire conference, is truly international and the implication is that brand identity is not only a signficant issue for universities everywhere, but communication initiatives are also becoming much more sophisticated.
My remarks will be built on my lessons learned over years of struggling to define brand for extremely complex academic institutions. In the process I have come to believe that a powerful institutional brand is composed of the four or five most differentiating characteristics that distinguish it from others. Once they are effectively summarized and condensed into a simple statement, they become the institution’s brand identity. And eventually they come to be collectively symbolized in consistently used elements of design.
These institutional defining brand characteristics tend to be a combination of program strength, type of campus experience, cultural characteristics, commonly held values, and geographical location features. For them to be enduring over time they must be totally anchored in reality. Otherwise they only function temporarily as promotional hype.
It seems to me that brand identity will become even more important to competitive success in a global market than it has been in a domestic one. The more differentiated the brand the more likely an institution will stand out visibly in this new media world. And as student and faculty migration becomes more global, it is only natural to conclude that overall institutional characteristics will govern location choices.
In addition to this acknowledged international importance of institutional brand, this conference is a very strong affirmation of how international our industry is becoming, and how this reality is changing the game for everyone.
Larry D. Lauer 
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