UH is constantly evolving. Every semester, there are new students, faculty, courses and more. Just as a growing teenager needs new clothes, the University needs a refreshed brand and marketing campaign.
The UH Marketing and Branding Team is in charge of refreshing the University’s brand. Last fall, almost five years after the last rebranding, the department began the refreshing process and entered a partnership with 160over90, a firm that operates in Philadelphia.
Almost a year later, the process has developed, and the team met on Tuesday and Wednesday with the UH community to present the new brand and designs in progress. At the meeting, 160over90 explained its research, the developing concepts and the reasons this process is so important.
A university’s brand refers to the central theme of all advertising and other content by its colleges and departments. It’s a theme or idea that identifies the university and its culture to students, faculty and staff members, as well as university outsiders, said 160over90’s creative director Steve Dean.
“The University of Houston brand is not just colors, logos and websites or billboards, taglines or face painting,” Dean said. “A brand is a personal perception … it’s what’s living in people’s minds.”
In the meetings, 160over90 announced the brand promise, which is not something that will appear in advertising campaigns, but will rather be the underlying, internal theme used when designing campaigns. The brand promise is that UH is “a mecca for the driven.”
“Coming out of the discovery (process), I think this strategy development is the quickest I have ever been involved in pulling together,” said the team’s account executive, Allison Isaacs. “We just thought there is just so much content there and we felt that there is so much to offer at the University. If you’re driven, you will succeed here.”
Because of the crucial connection of the brand to the University community, the agency has continuously collaborated with UH by visiting all the departments and colleges to create a representative brand. After these open forum meetings, the agency will take the constructive criticism given by the audience into consideration when moving forward with the brand development.
The implementation process will take time. While the brand is official, all other campaigns will roll out slowly.
“People will start feeling the difference over the course of a year. It’s really going to take that long to sort of hit all these audiences,” said UH Art Director Enita Torres. “This semester, colleges and divisions will start experimenting with the new brand.”
