UNM image headed for a makeover
University is spending $1.98M on new rebranding campaign
If the University of New Mexico’s rebranding dream comes true, it could be the next Ferrari or Nike of higher eduction as the school’s image, possibly even its logo, is up for a $1.98 million makeover.
The marketing company hired to distill the school’s personality and turn it into a new image is responsible for selling those high-profile companies and others, including Under Armour and Mecedes-Benz; professional sports teams, including the New York Jets and Philadelphia Eagles; and more than 30 colleges and universities, including Duke, Notre Dame and UCLA.
UNM’s Lobo mascot won’t go away. Neither will the school’s cherry and silver color scheme, but everything else is on the table.
School officials, who in October announced a nearly $5million decline in revenue, say the marketing initiative — the second in the past 10 years — is aimed primarily at attracting new students.
The university has experienced declining enrollment, losing about $3.7million of expected revenue when enrollment dipped 1.5 percent in 2014.
“I hear a lot that we’re the best kept secret in higher education,” UNM President Bob Frank said. “This effort is really intended to make us not a secret anymore. To do that,
we have to tell our story.”
Longtime news anchor and UNM alumnus Dick Knipfing made the same argument before the Board of Regents in August, urging regents to spend all the money necessary for a “campaign” to promote the university’s positive image.
In September, the university hired marketing company 160over90 to do a four-year, $1.98million makeover. The company, based in Philadelphia, beat out Ologie marketing from Ohio, which had a bid of $355,000 for one year.
Regent Jaime Koch said 160over90 showed that its strategy increased enrollment and donations at the universities the firm has worked with.
In October, the company launched three weeks of interviews with students, faculty, staff, officials and community members on campus to try to capture what makes UNM special.
Common themes
“What are the pictures, the words, the feel” of the university, said Cinnamon Blair, the university’s chief marketing and communication officer. “We are a lot of things to a lot of people, and what we are looking for is what ties it all together.”
Blair said main themes that surfaced in the initial 450 survey responses were “diversity, open and friendly, opportunity and crossroads.”
“Diversity is the key word: cultural, intellectual, social,” Blair said. “It’s like a 21 flavor sundae, and you have to call it one thing or you have to give it one name that described all of it.”
The company earlier this month presented its initial findings to the project’s 17-member steering committee, which includes directors, deans and leaders from across campus.
Next, the company will spend six weeks burrowing into the “flavor of the university” and settling on two theme options, which will be presented to the steering committee.
“Right now, we are just trying to figure out the direction we want to go, and then we’ll come out with how we are going to express it,” likely in January, Blair said.
Once an option is selected, it will be presented to the public for three weeks through meetings and workshops. Then, once all is agreed to, it will become the new theme or image of the university and appear in print, online and TV ads, along with other university products such as brochures.
At that point, Frank said, all the university’s numerous departments, most of which have their own marketing staff, as well as the university’s main marketing staff, which has 16 employees, will “be on the same page” of message.
Over the years, he said, the university’s different departments have become “more siloed,” or separate, creating advertising campaigns and trying to tell their stories on their own.
“This is really helping a very diverse organization have common talking points when we talk about what is unique at our university,” Frank said.
Not the first campaign
Still, the university has tried to solve this problem before.
Under then-President David Schmidly, the university spent $250,000 in 2008 on a branding campaign and allocated an additional $900,000 to the university’s communication and marketing department.
At that time, Blair said the marketers, McKee Wallwork Cleveland, would get the school’s colleges and divisions on the same page.
But she said this month that not enough was spent on that project and it resulted in little more than some new websites.
Her office still operates with the extended budget, $1.3million, which she said is much smaller than other colleges of similar size in the nation. About $1 million of this budget is for salaries. Some of the remaining money will fund some of the next round of rebranding advertising, Koch said.
Blair and Frank said the current project is getting enough administrative — and financial — support to make a difference.
“We’re a huge business and we have tons of good advocates in the area they work in, but what we really need to do is make a coherent story that catches peoples’ attention,” Frank said.
An original $500,000 for the project was set aside by regents in May from the instruction and general budget. According to the contract with 160over90, this first phase is the creative development. The following years are for the roll-out marketing, including advertising.
In September, regents voted unanimously to designate $1million of the Regents Endowment Fund for the three final years of the marketing plan.
The fund was created by the sale of Mesa del Sol land for $9million. Before the marketing allocation, about $6 million was in the fund.
That $1 million will be used to fund the advertising and associated costs of the marketing campaign, Koch said.
He said an increase of just 1.5 percent in enrollment can equate to $3.5 million in revenue, which more than covers the expense of the branding effort.
“The situation is that if you are trying to stop that (enrollment decline), you can’t just put your heads in the sand,” Koch said. “If we didn’t do that (marketing plan), then we are going to continue to go down.”