U Windsor: where’s the line on bad publicity?
February 29th, 2008 RachelMy lovely sister is back in town for a few days. We got to talking about her University, which unveiled a new brand identity last year.
Old is on the left, new is on the right. Definitely more modern…but modern came with a price. The topic originally came up over lunch because it seems that Windsor has run into some difficulty integrating the brand into their student/faculty culture. It all begins with one professor, who rather emphatically (and repeatedly) pointed out that there’s something odd about that new blue and green symbol. Something…phallic.
We had a good chuckle and went through a “remember when?” moment over the days when Disney movies and VHS boxes were receiving the same kind of attention. Then I kind of forgot about it. Until later, when in front of my computer I remembered our conversation and headed to the University of Windsor site.
Well…the prof has a point. And all the kids around campus laughing about it? Yep…not surprised.
Now, I was actually rolling my eyes more at the choice of tagline and ways that the different sub-brands (Faculties, law school, business school) were organized than symbol itself, but that’s just me. To my delight they actually post the brand guidelines on their website, along with detailed pages on positioning statements and templates for Word and Excel. Goldmine for me, but not sure I would have made the same choice and so publicly offered the underpinnings of their strategy and identity…
Anyway, here’s my real point. Okay two points.
It was clear from talking to my sister that on campus this is a really big deal. “Everybody’s talking about it” and “Everybody’s laughing at it”. Yikes, right? But who is the new identity for…? It’s not for these students. It’s for the class of 2013, 2014, etc…etc. We went through the same snickering and sneering over York University’s rebrand when I was a student. People hated it. “All this money spent on a new logo, but you can’t find affordable parking on campus” was the refrain. But while their website is still a royal mess (especially when compared to Windsor), I’ve seen some of the other efforts they’ve made around “York is U” campaigns and such…that have rallied a nice chuck of students (especially for a school predominantly made up of commuters). It would be interesting to see if it raised the number of students who applied and caliber of students who got in - but at least from the surface, a difference is noticable.
Moral #1: people are resistant to change and you can’t ask for a side of ready made brand equity with your shiny new brand guidelines. It’s way more than the logo and it goes beyond colors, fonts, and symbols, though we notice those pieces faster because an improvement in tone/messaging is sometimes harder to pick up on if you don’t know to look for it. New logo or not, they won’t see anything noticeably positive out of the time/money the spent on this project if they don’t continue working on engaging their alumni, students (tough as they may be), faculty, and prospective attendees.
Moral #2: The world of a student, (or anyone closely tied to a rebrand) is not the world of…the world. My sister is immersed in this environment on a daily basis, so is far more acutely aware of the widespread criticism. This isn’t to say that she’s “wrong” or anyone is “right”. It’s just that there are going to be different perceptions, depending on who you talk to and their level of awareness. Certain people are going to always find something to nit-pick on and hate…but it’s the job of the person managing this project to take in the feedback and use it to determine if this is actually going to represent a big problem over the long haul, or if this too shall pass.
I guess we’ll just have to see.
