We will be hearing from the very people who are shaping the higher-education industry as they give us a behind the scenes tour of their strategies and stories. Stay tuned for further interviews to come…

This week, we’re delighted to have spoken with Fiona Morrison, Head of Marketing and Brand Development at the University of Aberdeen, to discuss the journey she took to secure buy-in for a university wide rebrand, and what advice she has for individuals who also want to pitch brand to senior management.

Fiona, thank you for speaking with us today. What steps did you take at the beginning of the brand buy-in process?

“We started by showing exactly how brand  impacts every team at the university, engaging in deep dive conversations to find out what people needed, where the gaps were, and the overall ROI. It’s all about wrap around ways of working and joining the dots between functions. We needed to make clear that if we invest in a larger central pot here, then that means we will have seven or eight outcomes for every single team, ranging from research and innovation, development trust and alumni relations, recruitment, international recruitment, student services, communications, public affairs, digital, and design.”

Fiona also spoke about the need for educational pieces on brand before budget requests could even begin.

“We undertook a three-word split test at the very start. This is a well-known strategy that asks stakeholders to describe the institution. We took it a step further by asking them to also describe where they see the university in the future. When senior leaders saw this gap mirrored back to them – shared in the form of word clouds – they understood that this is where your brand power as an institution sits. It sits in the gap between perception and aspiration – between how people see you now, versus how you want them to see you tomorrow.

That is your brand power – steering perception, influencing reputation, and proactively reinforcing who the university is, and who it wants to be.”

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone who doesn’t have the support for brand buy-in?

“It can feel quite isolating because brand is often seen as an add-on. So my advice would be to surround yourself with people who truly value brand and want to be involved. Have a group of supporters and advisors, it could be made up of people who are senior or junior to you, and from different teams, but they can help you with ideas, challenge you when you need, and offer genuine support in an informal way. Also identify ‘brand champions’ in different teams who can help drive brand in their respective areas, and identify opportunities.

If you’re struggling to convince senior management on the importance of brand budget, try to influence big audiences in front of them to show just how many people are buying into what you’re saying. Take the moments where you can influence hearts and minds on a platform and go for it.”

What are common obstacles you’ve faced when trying to secure brand budget?

“The single biggest challenge was that there were so many urgent campaigns that needed to go live immediately and so it became quite difficult to rebrand in an organised way.

We had to focus on the opportunities that generated the most income, which is absolutely the right thing to do, but what it meant was that we weren’t able to do the internal launch first, and put the new brand guidelines in place.

We did manage to get all those launches out, which was great, but ideally we would’ve had the big internal launch first, then a few months of training teams, get the web and real estate updated, then share this externally.”

However, even amongst the challenges Fiona faced during the rebrand, she was still successful in its delivery. She states that brand professionals in the higher-education space “have to be adapting and pivoting a lot to what’s going on in the external market,” and so that’s exactly what the University of Aberdeen did.

Finally, in your expert opinion, why should senior leaders prioritise brand budget? 

“UK universities are going through some of their most challenging times – they suffer from the ‘sea of sameness’ and so you have got to have a differentiator that makes you stand out in what is going to be an incredibly competitive climate. Universities are already investing in marketing in order to drive numbers and generate income, so it’s about making sure that brand can help maximise the value of that spend. It can be quite scary to navigate a crisis, and so universities may think it’s better to just play it safe. But the opposite couldn’t be more true. The universities that will survive will be the ones who have a strong voice, conviction, and confidence in their content.”

Fiona ended with, “yes, it can seem like a lot of work to get that brand budget, buy-in, and reeducate around brand, but I don’t think that we can afford to not do it if you want to stand out.

You have to stand out in this market if your institution wants to survive.”

Our collaboration with Fiona Morrison ensured that the University of Aberdeen cut through the noise and secured a strong brand positioning on a competitive global stage. If your university is looking to stand out in higher education to reduce getting swept out into “the sea of sameness”, contact us at The Brand Education to see how we can help.