Ethan Braden, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Texas A&M University, shares his insight into how to create a strong position in a crowded higher education space, what brands he looks to for inspiration, and how he intends to make waves in his new role.
Last month, we began a series of interviews with some of the most interesting and influential experts in communications, crisis and reputation management. Today, we hear from someone who has not only shaped the higher education industry, but continues to create innovative brands that resonate with far more than just the prospective applicant.
Ethan Braden, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Texas A&M University, shares his insight into how to create a strong position in a crowded higher education space, what brands he looks to for inspiration, and how he intends to make waves in his new role.
Ethan, thank you for your time today. Please could you start by telling us why brand positioning is so crucial in higher education?
“At least in the United States, the average high schooler has something like 4500 universities to choose from. In Indiana alone, there are 49 schools who offer a teaching degree. So, if an individual stays in state to pursue a career in teaching, how do they begin to decide which institution to go to? There is a sea of sameness when universities are not intentional about their positioning or what they can offer that allows applicants to make decisions about their university choice more easily.
When I was at Purdue University, we were always thinking about the student we are ‘for’ and how we position ourselves to them. Using the earlier teaching example, do we want Purdue’s College of Education to be the best, for instance, at preparing graduates to become STEM teachers? The best with special needs populations? The best at teaching online? What is our unique position and value proposition? When you zoom out to the university level, you’ve got to think about what your institution stands for, who it is for, and why should anyone care.
Positioning is so critical in occupying a unique mind space in the target audience’s mind and allowing them to make decisions quickly and easily. In the land of 4500 choices in America alone, institutions must be known for something. Moving forward especially, I’d rather have a specific positioning than try to be everything to everyone and fall short – something that higher education does too often.”
“Stand for something for someone and don’t try to be everything to everyone.”
Why do institutions abandon their positioning?
“I don’t know that many fully ever embrace their positioning in the first place. Large colleges and universities are afraid to say that they are for a specific type of student because they believe that they are for everyone and should be for everyone. But the reality is that each institution has target students where student fit and experience are likely to be maximised. Segmentation and ownership in a space are great things, so institutions really need to understand and own a niche. Stand for something for someone and don’t try to be everything to everyone.
Institutions get wary about unapologetically speaking out on who they are, if they know, because they are worried that they will alienate folks. This wariness comes from a lack of expertise and deep understanding of the fundamentals of marketing.
Beyond that, if a major university invests $250,000 or $500,000 into a brand strategy and marketing campaign, this may not actually be a material investment in the grand scheme of things, making it easy to sub-optimise or even walk away from. However, if higher education leaders invested in marketing like many do in private industries, I’m talking putting 10% of total revenue into brand positioning, identity, and marketing, there would be a greater seriousness from institutions to make sure it’s damn good, embraced, utilised, and impactful.
And these are complex places with long histories and ingrained reputations. Audiences aren’t going to be swayed overnight to choose a particular institution from a single video or a small brand campaign, because the likelihood is that they have not seen the marketing in all the impressions they are consuming daily. It’s very easy to abandon positioning when you haven’t invested in the true potential of what it can do and how it can be great, but only after consistent and committed efforts.”
“Disproportionately focus and invest [in brand] because it will take time to shift a university that is often over one hundred years old and has thousands of past and present students.”
What strategies did you adopt to embody a strong positioning at Purdue University?
“The further I get away from my time at Purdue, the more I appreciate the former President Mitch Daniels’s quest and commitment to do everything he could to make the university the epitome of higher education at the highest proven value. So many of his decisions around brand positioning and messaging were about the provision of quality, affordability, and accessibility, which equate to value. Purdue went from being the least affordable ‘Big Ten University’ to the most affordable, with a tuition freeze of 13 years, saving families one billion dollars collectively vs. the average price increase in the ‘Big Ten’ alone.
Other institutions could have done the same thing and followed suit, but they just didn’t have the same conviction and commitment. From a marketing standpoint, we also worked to own our essence of Persistent Innovation Together, the three-legged insight that Purdue can uniquely own. So, when it comes to positioning, leaders need to deeply understand their brand essence and position, and communicate these with conviction and consistency. They need to disproportionately focus and invest here because it will take time to shift a university that is often over one hundred years old and has thousands of past and present students.”
What are some brands you draw inspiration from?
“I am a student of brand. Steve Jobs talks about the power of analogies and metaphors in storytelling and I’ve come to really embrace his thinking. In my career, I’ve always been asking what brands are out there that we resemble, that we might benchmark, learn from, and model? Somewhat unrelated to Purdue University or Texas A&M University, I want to discuss two today.
The first is Trader Joe’s – a national chain of neighbourhood grocery stores. It’s seen as a bit more upscale compared to your traditional grocery store, but it’s compact and more local. They have unique, quality products and they’re affordable – two things that create perceptions of value. With upbeat employees, they elicit in people this love and desire to have a store as part of their local community, even though they are a national chain. This intimacy is really powerful and they’ve carved a unique position in a crowded market.
And second, I can’t read enough about Liquid Death these days. It’s so fabulous because they’re making people laugh whilst literally questing to kill plastic pollution. They’re in the pursuit of sustainability and health, but irreverent and unapologetic in their approach. Who would’ve thought that canned water, a commodity, could humour you? In the words of Luke Sullivan, “their customer is literally drinking their advertising, and their advertising is their brand.”
This is what you need in a crowded, competitive, frankly boring market. Liquid Death entertains whilst pursuing greater good – it’s an unbelievable position.”
“I can’t tell you how a lot of universities are different, but I can tell you how Trader Joe’s and Liquid Death stand out and what they mean to their target audience.”
Brand is about feelings and emotion. How do you achieve this in higher education?
“Both Trader Joe’s and Liquid Death know their position and goal, and they’re unapologetic in communicating this to their audience. They’re unapologetic about their distinct identity, and what makes them different. I don’t think many higher education institutions are comfortable in taking the lead, or investing the time and the intellectual calories into truly answering four categories of questions – the goal, their audience, their identity, and their distinct attributes.
I can’t tell you how a lot of universities are different, other than their locations, but I can tell you how Trader Joe’s and Liquid Death stand out and what they mean to their target audience. And I can clearly identify the feelings and emotions that they are working to elicit.
At Texas A&M, I want to commit us to emotive brand storytelling that tells people who we are, what we stand for, and why they should care, as this is much more effective than talking about rankings and where we sit amongst competitors. If we can emote big human feelings amongst stakeholders, new and existing, we will win.
In the US, one of the best campaign examples is “Why We Fight” from Notre Dame. For years, this is a story that has been told most visibly in a two minute segment during halftime on their NBC television broadcast. The whole idea is to communicate what they fight for as individuals, teams, and as an institution. They could’ve done this for a year and given up on it, but instead, they’ve ridden the insight for years and I always look forward to seeing this campaign on TV – I can spot it instantly. I love the emotion they unleash, the consistency, the commitment and the ownership of their brand and what they stand for.
More universities need to invest in incredible signature stories and tell them with emotion and excellence. They are rampant across all universities and colleges. Those who do, like Notre Dame, will stand out.”
“You have to be in the game to win it.”
What unique positioning is Texas A&M University setting out to achieve?
“A previous boss once said to me, “only take jobs where there is enough clay to mould something beautiful” and the reality at Texas A&M today is that there is an abundance of clay. In particular, marketing, brand, and storytelling clay from the incredible people and breakthroughs here at scale. So we are researching and building our positioning as we speak.
From that, we want to have a compelling, distinct, and meaningful brand identity and arsenal of storytelling that are not only beloved in the state of Texas, but by many across the nation, Aggie or not. We want the world to have a deep awareness, appreciation, and enchantment for what Texas A&M offers and why it exists – the cultivation of character through our core values and community. I don’t want this place to be the best kept secret. That isn’t cute. I want to help create a constant “wow” factor on a nationwide scale, not just to be well known in the state. This is our quest moving forward.
Our incredible new President, Retired General Mark A Welsh III, shared late last year that Texas A&M University should be a constant in the ‘National Conversation.’ We need to be clear and deliberate on which conversations, why, and how, because not all news is good news, you know? So we must first be clear on who we are, what we stand for, and what are the first few areas where we are world-class and can make the greatest contributions. We need to bottle that with human emotion and expert storytelling, then bring Texas A&M more so to the nation and the world than ever before.
Ultimately, I want Texas A&M to be the first place people call when it comes to expert input on crucial world topics, challenges, and opportunities. I want it to be seen as an antidote to much of what ills higher education today. We need to craft a clear identity nationally and globally, and a big piece of that is establishing our world-class, world-wide research identity. We need this to be distinct, then well understood and known, so that we can make the greatest impact overall. You have to be in the game to win it.”
