Author's Note: If you missed our talk at this year's AMA, we have you covered! This presentation was a wonderfully collaborative effort with Richie Hunter from the University of Michigan, Jason Cook from Baylor University, and Jason Shough, the Executive Creative Director at SimpsonScarborough.
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Kidding aside, we all know this can be a messy process and sometimes the output is very academic. So much so that we, as marketers, may just want to leave it for the academy, leadership, and the board. And that's not a bad thing, these plans literally map the institution's direction for the next 5-10 years.
"Strategic plans provide an opportunity to unify and elevate a university's branding by framing it as a campaign that communicates both current and future impacts to external stakeholders."
In our work with Baylor and Michigan, amongst many others, we've found some key insights that should drive everyone's conversations around this integrated work. Because of the potential messiness or decentralized structure of many schools, it's often difficult to get the time or the buy-in to think about the larger brand impact available to us through these plans. However, to do so, we first need to understand the landscape surrounding strategic plan activities.
First and most importantly, presidential tenure is shrinking. The average tenure is 5.9 years, down from 8.5 years just a decade ago. And there's no indication it's going back up. This means more new and revised strategic plans are on their way, likely with fundraising campaigns to support them.
The natural next question is: what does this all mean for our brand strategy? It is easy to fall deeper into a house of brands trap. Development and enrollment, athletics and medicine, and many other entities on campus may have unique brands or marketing campaigns. The opportunity a new strategic plan presents is a real unification of the institutional brand, and this is the moment to take a step back with the president and share a forward-thinking vision for how this all works together.
Michigan and Baylor are two very different institutions, and they have two very different experiences in building their strategic plans and the campaigns that took them public. While we can't unpack every step for those schools, it's worth taking an inside look at the initial steps taken to unify the brands.
One of the first challenges was mapping all the different elements at play. We knew we were not just launching Vision 2034 for Michigan but that their comprehensive campaign would be launching in October 2024. We wanted to create space for Vision 2034 to compliment the fundraising campaign, so we launched the Vision in April 2024, but considered it a soft launch to avoid any potential conflicts later in the year.
We partnered closely with Development during the naming process, knowing that Vision 2034 would only be realized with a successful fundraising campaign. We went into the naming and concepting process for the Vision with the fundraising campaign in mind, aiming for alignment. We knew we had it when Tom Baird, Michigan's VP of Development, saw the Look to Michigan name and concept and said, "That's the name of the campaign right there."
Baylor took a different approach – a simple formula.
The strategic plan would be the functional features. Four core priorities give direction to the institution for the next 5 years. The emotional connection would be an evolved brand positioning aligned closely with the strategic plan. Those two elements are the head and the heart: the two places we make decisions as humans. Together, those form Baylor's distinct creative expression, which is how we want the rest of the world to experience Baylor verbally and visually.
Selling the Big Picture
The role of the CMO/VP is to show what the possibility is, how this work will push the institution forward, and drive toward key goals like awareness, perception, and reputation.
Derive Your Own Formula
Create a simple equation showing how the strategic plan connects with the institution's brand and key enrollment and advancement marketing initiatives. This context and vision will build advocates early.
Evolve the Brand, Do Not Reinvent It
The temptation will be high to brand the plan on its own. Your institution's brand began long ago and has gone through natural evolutionary cycles. Strategic plans offer the opportunity for another evolution and to strengthen it through tighter integration with key campus partners.
Download the full AMA presentation to learn more and see the creative outputs for Baylor and Michigan.
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Matt is a Partner and SVP at SimpsonScarborough. He's basically a non-fiction version of Ted Lasso and one of the leading higher education brand strategy experts anywhere in the country. He's played a key leadership role in SimpsonScarborough's evolution into a full-service, integrated agency but is likely more proud of the internal culture cultivated in the process. Matt earned his B.S. in Marketing from Auburn University and recently moved to Columbus, OH, with his wife and two daughters. Learn more about Matt and the rest of our team here.