The challenge

In an ever-changing world, brands can’t simply stand still, and Durham University knew this. Consistent re-evaluation and optimisation is the key to staying relevant and discovering new business opportunities — and the topics at question for this institution revolved around brand equity, drivers of choice, and the levers they needed to monitor moving forward. How could they better understand these and leverage their findings to build a better brand?

What we did

We investigated what matters to a student’s choice of university and how Durham University is positioned amongst its peers. We explored awareness, perception, and consideration within Durham’s international agents, and we investigated what goes into international choice. With this data-led information in our arsenal, we could provide real market insights and evidence based strategic recommendations on how to develop the Durham brand.

What happened next

Through our findings, Durham University could build a long-term roadmap that outlined the brand metrics that needed to be improved, especially when it came to brand reputation amongst peers, and ensure the mechanisms were in place to monitor these metrics year-on-year.