Branding Higher Ed in 2025: Relevance is King

I can see from my own feed that it's that time of the year when people put out their 'best of' lists or their predictions for 2025. I'm a fan of the former but tend to focus on non work stuff, while I've never thought about predictions before. But after dipping my toe in the water here and writing a few articles, I've come into contact with a range of seemingly like-minded professionals who realise something needs to change in the branding of higher ed, and have lots of good insights that could help the sector. Since those folks also seem to engage with my stuff, I've decided to try the predictions list, mainly to keep some conversations going, benefit from their wisdom and also just for my own sanity.

This is not intended as advice for those within my own university who are responsible for branding or leadership. I've decided that banging my head against the walls of Sussex House just hurts to much. Instead, it's for anyone else who may care and/or benefit.

So, what do I think will be some branding challenges/trends in 2025? Most likely, they are things that have already begun or I believe have been amped up. They won't be surprising, or even ground breaking, and will not involve AI etc because I'm not qualified to talk about tech. Branding tools are actually simple in many ways, but powerful when done well. These predictions are also a product of my own experience across many universities, discussions with professionals, insights I've absorbed, and years of conducting research into branding. So let's dive in.

It's all about the customer

No surprises here, but this is a view still very much seen as taboo in the sector, especially among too many academics who perhaps don't want to admit where their salaries come from (as opposed to where they should come from). But, it's also fairly obvious that since my view is shared across a lot of those commenting on my writings or indeed those writing better stuff, and the data we get from UCAS etc, that it's not one held across the sector either. If ever there was a time to start focusing on the customer in HE, it is now.

I've written elsewhere on this and the nuances that marketers bring to understanding what customer focus actually is, so I'm not going to qualify this to appease those who remain nervous at the thought of students as customers. They are customers, pure and simple. They pay money, a lot of it, and they are entrusting us with their futures. The relationship is boundary open as they often have little clarity on what they can expect but nonetheless their desires (which rarely involve the belief they should get grades because they've paid) need to be respected and put at the centre of what we do.

As a sector we need to start talking about the customer quickly. At USBS we are presently going through a strategy exercise and I had to jump in and request we not go over our values again. Instead, let's talk about the students, both those we have, those we want to get, and also those we had. Values just involve a boring conversation about ourselves and frankly no one, not even staff, are interested. Values are easy, but they're meaningless in the scheme of things, and lead us to focus primarily on ourselves, often creating a sense that we are important, indeed vital, to the world.

What would our strategy look like if we started to take the customer seriously? I can think of many things, including gathering insights, different comms, targeted messaging, product choices, investments in placements/partnerships overseas, the way we talk about research, our local relevance and so on. This conversation is one we rarely, if ever, have, but in my view it's the key to building relevance and also resilience. We might also start to listen to different parts of the university community and address some long standing pain points for all, as they really are the low hanging fruit of improving the journey.

Once we've embraced that, we can start talking more seriously about the brand.

Forget rebranding, try branding

I'm often struck by the low level of brand knowledge in universities. My own VC is frustrated by the Russell Group brand (I suspect when she finds a new role in that group her view will change), lamenting that "it's only a brand" (at which point I usually sigh), while at the same time talking about the need to rebrand and relaunch Sussex. Others talk about brand, but immediately jump to comms, or taglines, or .ppt designs etc. I've only ever once seen tracking data presented and know that it's the exception not the rule. When required to define the brand for various accrediting agencies I've had to work through positioning exercises with the marketing team, and we have to start from the very basics. Staff often talk about our brand in a way that suggests it's not all it needs to be, but also it's rare to find agreement on what it is.

For all the talk of rebranding and relaunching, I'd like to suggest many universities need to discover branding in all its meaning and indeed power. It's not just a name, or symbol, or set of taglines and colours. These are outcomes of a process and also things that help reinforce your brand identity, but they're really only the tip of the iceberg. And, if we are going to talk brands, we need to talk positioning.

Positioning is the most critical part of building a brand. it defines what the brand is, its essential DNA if you will; what it will do, not do, and how it will do it. Built into it are questions about who it is for and what need it addresses, what makes it distinctive and what makes it credible. Outwardly it appears like a stupidly simple process, but it actually requires courage and discipline to do it well, and to stick with it. And, once defined, it will drive EVERYTHING you do.

There are a variety of ways one can define the brand's position, but they all involve considerations of customer need, competitors, and your capabilities. This 3C's approach is one I used to use when I taught MBA, although I should be clear it certainly isn't my idea.

The first step is deciding on what customer need you are serving. And to do that you need to define your customer, gain rich insights into them, and focus very much on jobs to be done. The need should be clearly defined and is likely to be quite prosaic. This will give you relevance part of the distinction equation.

Then it's time to look at your competitors. Not your usual preferred ones, but the ones serving that customer need. What do they do well, and what do they do poorly or ignore? What do you do? You may not have much of a brand, but you will have a reputation and this will hold the key to why people come to you or don't. Is there anything that is valued, that is not owned by another brand? Can you add something without diluting what you might have (that is valued)? The aim here is the difference part of the distinctiveness equation.

The third step is a consideration of capabilities. However, before you roll out your great research institutes and rankings, the only capabilities that matter are those that will meet your customer needs. So, you need to do a very different exercise and the results may indeed be somewhat scary and upsetting. Brands are promises you make to customers, and to deliver those you need credibility. Capabilities assessment provides that, and therefore provides the authentic part of the brand distinctiveness equation.

Now this is all rather iterative in practice, but the chosen answers will then help you define your brand position. I should probably write a whole article on positioning, but there's plenty of advice out there and the main challenge is discipline. Mark Ritson has a great classroom exercise which I shamelessly stole (not really, Mark is very generous with his materials and has been a supporter of mine for some time) called "the graveyard of shit". This is a list he puts up in his MBA classes to contain all the words/ideas that will upset no one (what he labels as 'vanilla'), but that should be avoided for just that reason. The rule is simple, if the word has no workable opposite then it's in the graveyard (I usually use a brown marker from Crayola for my graveyard exercise to reinforce the point). What words? In brown are "trust," "ethics," "innovation," "relevance," "excellence" and any other things you may already have.

Once you have defined your position in a simple and memorable way, you need to do a lot of internal work including a brand audit, brand training, removal of off-brand elements, investment in on-brand elements, development of assets, taglines, comms and so on. It's quite a lot of work before you get anywhere near external comms. And yes, position drives all aspects of your mix, from pricing, comms, channels, and critically, product. Then FFS, track it, it really is something you should be measuring regularly in order to check the health of your brand and whether anything you do is actually working.

So for 2025, let it be the year that the sector actually discovers branding (and get cracking because it takes time which the sector doesn't have).

In times of crisis, brands focus on value

A few years back I was doing some research on the development of the idea and practices of brand equity, in order to understand where many of our core ideas came from. It took me to the Library of Congress and involved reading hand written letters from David Ogilvy and also a lot of documentation from JWT (mostly at the University of Georgia's Collection). JWT's papers were insightful and with regularity featured discussions about how to deal with the "crisis in branding". What was this crisis? Typically it involved economic downturns and the concern among JWT's clients that consumers would switch to what we would know as own-label brands. What was the suggested solution?

One of the most insightful authors on this was Stephen King, who worked in JWT UK if memory serves and who has written wisely on branding topics. He, along with US colleagues, always advised that the correct response was to double down on serving the customer, stressing your value proposition, and being even clearer on what we would today call points of distinction (largely by focusing on your assets that mattered and decluttering the rest). Sound familiar? We already have universities, including RG universities offering steep price discounts for their programs (in fact, it's been done for some time but always framed as a "Scholarship"). We have a large number of people writing off universities as unnecessary and wasteful, encouraging people to learn on the job, get an apprenticeship, or just "use the internet".

I like King's writings, and the historic perspective I got from those archives suggests he was on the money.

Branding occurs all the time

I'm not very tech savvy so I tend to screen shot posts I like and share them around WA groups to discuss something we usually don't do. The last UCAS data posted by Kyle Campbell was (as usual) great. It showed in effect that students start entering the marketing funnel pretty early (it might be share of search is something to track), checking us out, and doing so via our web pages as well as our socials (while social media is always useful don't assume the so called whatever generation rely on it, but also be mindful of where they will look). How are your web pages? I imagine they're not geared up for recruiting now, but why not? Also, it's always difficult to find information on web pages, even if you're in the sector; how easy have you made it for potential students to find what they are looking for?

If potential students are seeking information about possible options all the time, are we set up for it? At my own institution a lot of stress is put on open days, but the reality is by then it's almost too late. How much work is being done in international markets? My former Dean Steven McGuire must have a lot of air miles as he barely seems to be home, instead visiting key markets, signing deals, gathering critical offshore insights, and building and reinforcing relationships with channel partners and other universities. And messaging the fuck out of all of it! That is, normal business-to-business-consumer stuff.

Others are setting the pace in other ways. Media will never beat a path to your door, unless you're in Oxbridge. With all our acclaimed expertise in policy at Sussex, its been rather frustrating not to see them present insights on the budget, the role of HE in productivity, the US election (with the exception of the great trade folks we have), the UK election and even frankly COP29 (again with one or two exceptions but we have a lot invested in this area). One gets the sense that those of us seeking media coverage are doing so on our own or in some cases, even going against the wishes of marketing (experiences to which I can attest).

You can tell the universities who have integrated their brands with their operations, including their engagement strategies. They're simply more proactive and seek to lead or influence. Examples include Bayes and Andre Spicer but there are others. My recent feed has featured new podcasts from Royal Holloway via marketing supremo Chris Hackley and Bath's dynamic colleagues of Sarah Glozer and Phil Tomlinson and why not? Business schools should be openly engaged in translating their great content and hosting thought leaders. It's all content that may signal credibility, and reinforce claims to being business relevant. Plus, it helps with awareness.

And then there's the internal side. How many universities have even heard of internal branding? I don't mean those values we push through rebranded HR departments (to 'organisational development' - hey the 1970's called) that have almost nothing to do with how we operate, but actually engaging staff and other stakeholders on the brand. As mentioned above, positioning starts with the internal roll out because brands are always built from the inside out (especially in services). I've very rarely encountered a discussion about the brand, but the exceptions (RMIT, U of Melbourne) have benefitted enormously as everyone knows the what and the how. Brands should never be presented to staff or hidden from them and should be much more than a marketing approved slide deck and letter head.

Involve your people in the process and involve your experts in the making of the brand, the recent rebranding exercise by Cass to Bayes was driven by a wonderful team of people at the business school largely because students expected it (credit to Caroline Wiertz ). So before making those external promises, get your house in order and get people involved from the beginning, they will all have insights and expertise that is valuable.

For business schools, have some pride in who you are

Business schools seem ashamed of who they are. What do I mean by that? I mean that it's time to put the business back in the business school. Not as in bring more practitioners in, but in being proud of the fact that if we help businesses grow, economies grow, innovation happen, brand equity blossom, productivity increase then we are actually achieving what should be our purpose. The government would love it, so would our students (I teach branding and have never once met a student who didn't want to grow brands).

I'm not saying that sustainability doesn't matter, but I find it hypocritical to run modules on branding that are focused on the need to grow, while also somehow trotting out the same nonsense about Patagonia or purpose or the circular economy etc. Our students require an ecosystem that is resilient and that requires growing businesses and increased value. I've worked with numerous heritage industries to know what it's like to operate in perilous conditions. In putting the customer first, it is time we stopped apologising for who we are.

I'm all for critical research btw, hell, I even do it, but I've also met some of the most cynical postmodern branding academics who at the end of the day will argue branding is about generating returns. They know it, even if they know the societal cost. I'm happy that business school are diverse entities writing about all manner of things, but I'm equally tired of an endless focus on pointless credentialing that has almost nothing to do with what we do, let alone the customer. Our school, like many, signed up to the UN Development Goals. I was then required to identify which ones I addressed in my module and my research. Actually, in reality, none. I've had to twist my learning outcomes to address all sorts of desired outcomes, graduate values, and so on, and am frankly sick of it. And I've also moderated a fair number of assignments that look like activism, and are about as shallow.

I think students see through this stuff, but I also think it means we end up covering too much, diluting what we should be doing with endless mentions of what amount to vacuous corporate values (go figure). There's too much cost tied up in this stuff and credential creep is a game no one can win (other than those selling the badges), few customers understand, and dare I say, care about.

That means decluttering, big time.

Conclusion

There's much more one could write of course, and I do think if we start taking customer relevance seriously, it's time we dealt with some enduring problems. As HoD I quickly tired of trying to find disinterested staff teaching places where they could do the least reputational damage. I've never found it funny that staff think teaching badly or having ancient materials is endearing as a personal brand. Innovation will need to happen, and happen much faster than universities are used to, which means a lot of folks need to be moved out of the way. And if you're not engaged in performance marketing/branding, you really shouldn't be in the game.

That's my top of mind list, thanks for reading and thanks to all those who have so generously shared their insights on LI.