“Your brand is what people say about you when you leave the room.” —Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon

DEFINING A BRAND

To answer the question of what a brand is, it is often easier to start with what a brand isn’t. A logo is not a brand. Neither is a color palette. Slogans, taglines, mascots, icons, letterheads, websites, images, and videos aren’t brands either. All of these things combined, however, go a long way to support a strong brand.  If you were to find a word synonymous with “brand” it would probably be “reputation.”  And, as the saying goes, you only have one chance to make a good first impression. Branding yourself gives you an opportunity to control the way people think about you. The best brands can be summed up in one sentence or even a phrase, for example, “Gatorade = Drink for serious athletes.” Now, you may only drink Gatorade when you’ve had the stomach flu and need to hydrate, but there’s no denying that because of their well branded marketing campaigns, reading “Gatorade” probably made you think of athletes before you thought of the word “virus.” Organizations and individuals brand themselves best when they ask these three questions:

1. How are we different than our competitors?

2. Why should people care about what we do?

3. Is the investment we are making into our brand worth it?

WHY SCHOOLS NEED TO BRAND

Not only do students need to impress private schools and universities to get in, private schools and universities need to impress students and parents to attract the most qualified applicants. Any private school—be it elementary, high school, or post-secondary—that does not think like a business is not doing itself any favors. Good branding can potentially increase enrollment, attract talented new faculty, and boost alumni donations. An extremely skilled football recruit, for example, will probably be more likely to choose to attend and play for a school that has branded itself as a school that gives a lot of support to its football team. Schools can brand themselves to have any image (as long as it's based in truth) that they think will help further the goals and mission of the school. Columbia University, for example, went to great lengths to brand itself as the only Ivy League school in New York City. They created a trendy image of themselves as a school competitive with the likes of Harvard and Yale, but better because students live and work in the heart of Manhattan—a bustling and culturally rich metropolitan destination. As a result, Columbia saw an increase in applications, and many students surveyed claiming that “location” was one of the main reasons they applied.

BRAND EXPRESSION

If your reputation is your brand, then all the other things your school does to market itself can be called “brand expression.” Absolutely everything you put out from business cards to banners, wayfinding signage to decorative wall murals, should underscore and support your overarching brand. The reason brands and brand expressions are sometimes thought to be synonymous, is probably because you need to express your brand to really create it. For schools, the best places to express your brand (other than website and mailers) are often in places that get the most traffic from parents, students, and alumni such as sporting arenas, campus commons, student service offices, the Dean’s office, cafeterias, etc. 

Obviously, the best way to brand your school is to be creative and not follow what the other schools in the area (your competitors) are doing. Here are some ways to stand out from the over 3,000 other colleges in the United States and thousands more private schools. 

• Vinyl Graphics: The great thing about vinyl is that it can be digitally printed to have any design on it and it can go on a ton of different surfaces. Using vinyl you can brand your athletic teams by transferring graphics onto helmets and other equipment (we've put graphics on golf carts for the Vanderbilt football, baseball, and basketball teams). You can use vinyl to display large murals of students' art, or, like we recently did for the O'More College of Design, you can use it to put up inspirational quotes. The versatility of vinyl means that you can use it for pretty much whatever your school wants. Windows, floors, walls, architectural elements, and equipment can all be branded with murals, lettering, or decals. 

We installed this wall wrap for the LIDS retail store located in the A-Game training facility in Franklin, TN. It was a great way for them to target their potential customers and to brand themselves as a high-end, multifaceted sporting goods store.

• Architectural Display Systems: These display systems are also a highly versatile and functional way to display anything that, well, needs displaying. Made up of whatever combination of rods, cables, joints, and panels you may need, architectural display systems work well for anything from brochure holders to an award recognition wall.

• Large-Format Printing: Our murals, car wraps, and pretty much everything that goes on vinyl goes through our large format printers first. Banners, posters, displays, and more all also come through large-format printing. Need banners celebrating your basketball team's championship win? Done. A giant backdrop for the set of an upcoming performance of Hamlet? No problem. Giant posters reminding freshmen that Parent's Weekend is next week? We got it.

Banners can be a great way to display upcoming events or showcase different department activities.

Interested in talking about branding signage for your school? Click the button below to contact us today and receive a free quote and consultation on your project.