St. Thomas is getting a fresh look for the new year as the university undergoes a complete re-branding effective on Tuesday, Feb. 2.
Because of the university’s many different logos, fonts and designs, Kim Motes, senior vice president for institutional advancement, said it was time for a new, cohesive look.
“We’re really not consistent in how we’re going out into market, and so our branding is sort of a hodgepodge right now,” Motes said. “I believe that as a result, we’re not getting the traction with the resources that we’re deploying in our marketing efforts in the way that we can when we all come together around this.”
In addition to promoting aesthetic consistency of the university’s brand, the main premise of the campaign is to make very clear what St. Thomas is and how the university promotes its mission statement.
“The brand lives with the consumer; it’s with the person as opposed to with us, so it has to be authentic and true,” Motes said. “The way we’re going out with the brand is really grounded in that mission, and how we bring this idea of the common good to life.”
To further the importance of the mission, “All for the Common Good” has become the tagline chosen to represent the university and now appears on banners across campus. Along with new banners, public buses and trains will be re-wrapped, the university’s website is re-skinned and a new micro site (www.stthomas.edu/commongood) has been launched.
“One of the things with branding is there are people externally that might say, ‘Really, St. Thomas?’ Like in the sense of you’re claiming these things. So, we want to create these proof points,” Motes said. “So the micro site is being organized around stories of students, faculty, and alumni that are out kind of advancing this idea of “All for the Common Good.”
The strategic brand plan was approved in November of 2014, giving the branding committee time to enlist the help of others, including a small local branding firm as well as Mindpower Inc., a nationally renowned branding agency based in Atlanta, known for its work with small colleges and universities.
“Between the two agencies we talked to over 500 people – so 500 people, students, undergrad, grad, faculty, staff, alumni, community leaders, the board,” Motes said. “We wanted to make sure that we got every perspective right at the table, and what was great is it just became the clarity of what people said was very consistent among the groups.”
Fourteen months ago, Motes assembled a branding working group of 20 members of the campus community – every stakeholder including faculty, administrators, alumni and board of trustees members. Senior Katie Hasslinger served as the student representative.
“After talking with many different clubs and organizations on campus, I think that there is going to be an overwhelmingly positive response by the students,” Hasslinger said. “The changes will mean that the various groups on campus will need to put a little work in, but it will all pay off in the end when we have a more united university.”
As a student representative, Hasslinger further realized the importance and prominence of the St. Thomas mission on campus.
“Not many schools have such a mission-driven student population, and I think that it’s one of the reasons that St. Thomas is so special. Being able to highlight that and let the world know what we’re all about is exciting to me,” Hasslinger said.
According to Hasslinger, in order for the brand to take off, it’s up to the students to embrace and help share it with the community while fully abiding by the mission statement.
“The best thing a student can do to promote St. Thomas is to be honest when talking about their experience. We as a school have so many different hidden gems, and one of the main ways to let people know about these is through students talking about their personal St. Thomas story,” she said.
St. Thomas hopes to show the community that it is not only the largest private university in the state, but that its students work to advance the common good.
“I think people have been really pleased to see that the heart of St. Thomas, the soul of St. Thomas, is coming alive and,” Motes said. “I think this is an evolution. I think the marketing world generally has grown more sophisticated … We’re bringing that sophistication to the university from a brand strategy perspective.”
Noura Elmanssy can be reached at elma7206@stthomas.edu.
I would ask the writer of this column, and any one else for that matter, how the new brand or slogan, All for the Common Good “it makes very clear what St Thomas is and how the University promotes its mission statement.” “All For the Common good could have any secular meaning you might want to ascribe to it, but I fail to see how it describes UST as a Catholic school which faithfully teaches its students what they need to know regarding the true teachings of the Catholic Church. If St. Thomas were truly Catholic in all aspects it would be listed as a recommended Catholic school on the Cardinal Newman Society’s list of such schools and there would be no need for such questionable slogan or brand.
Dr. Sullivan has made clear in various public forums that “All for the Common Good” uses the definition of “common good” commonly applied in Catholic social teaching. In this context, “The common good is the complete development of all the people of the world.” In my view, it’s an important and lofty goal.
More information on Catholic social teaching can be found at the following link: http://www.catholicsocialteaching.org.uk/principles/glossary/
You seem to think that the motto, which already cites Catholic social teaching, needs to be even more explicitly Catholic. I think you’ll have to enlighten everyone on what such a motto might look like. Heck, the Angelicum—probably the most true and faithful Catholic university currently in existence—has the motto, “The charity of truth.” Maybe they too should act a little more Catholic.