Welcome everyone. And welcome to the session. Finding your Identity, How to proper brands, How proper branding can Make all the difference. We'll be getting started shortly, but I have a few housekeeping notes for you. On the right hand side of the screen. You'll find a window with a chat box, a Q&A feedback and notes tab. You can use the chat box to communicate with our other attendees, but please use the Q&A box to send questions in for our presenters. You can also upvote questions in the Q&A panel if you would like to see those questions answered at the end of the session. If time permits, we'll answer as many questions as we can. There's also a notes tab in there for you to keep your own notes during the session. If you would like. Before leaving the session, we ask that you complete a brief evaluation that's found on the feedback tab at the end of the session. We use this session feedback to continue improving what we offer, so we truly appreciate you to take the time to do so. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming our presenters. Allison Lanier and Kyle Benjamin. Thank you. All right. Hello, everyone. How are we doing? I hope we're doing great because I can't hear you, so that's awesome. But I appreciate you all joining us today for our presentation. Thank you, Lauren, for that great introduction. I know that we have 45 minutes today. Our goal is to get through this in 30 so that way we can have plenty of time for Q&A, because I think that that is where the magic happens and you get to learn as much as you possibly can. And so what I'll do is actually go ahead and dive on in here. And again, our presentation is titled Finding Your Identity, and that is how proper branding can make all the difference. And so I'll go ahead and get started with a quick introduction. My name is Allison Lanier. I am our director of Client Services with Up&Up. We are agency based out of Greenville, South Carolina, and we primarily focus within colleges and universities across the United States. And we actually help them with their brand strategies website design, development, enrollment, marketing, digital marketing, literally all of your problems. That is how we help our clients. And our main goal is really to help to instill that bravery and confidence so that way we can really own who we are. And I think that you'll start to see how that plays out in our conversation today. But aside from work, I'm actually a huge advocate for the Immune Deficiency Foundation. My little bugger here, Sebastian has an immune deficiency, so I just try to make sure that I advocate and spread awareness for something that no one really knows about. So I will pass it over to Kyle to introduce himself. Hey everyone, I'm Kyle Benjamin. I'm the assistant Vice President for marketing and communications here at Carson-Newman University and a proud graduate of the Class of 2009. Prior to joining the staff here. Carson-Newman I was a news anchor, I worked in motorsports in content creation and broadcasting, so I had no prior experience in higher ed. And this is important. As we get further into the presentation. Now, you might be asking yourself what exactly is a motorsports content creator? And so we have a bit of a vanity reel because I like to show off all the fun things I got to do before I got suckered into working in higher ed. So roll the tape or however it works That in the biz is what we call a bit of a scene set. It's a little important to understand kind of who I am and my background as we walk through this branding exercise for you. Prior to arriving at Carson-Newman, I worked for clients like American Honda and Honda Performance Development, Acura Motorsports, Aston Martin, Porsche, North America, A.J. Foyt Racing and some other big clients and companies that the motorsports world do. All sorts of really fun things. Being at the Rolex 24, the Indy 500, I had a very fast paced career up until this point. Like I said, those of you who have a lot of experience in higher ed are probably starting to kind of understand what I'm driving at here. But I was called on to come serve in this role and in December of 2021, and because I'm an alum and I have a great affinity for this university where I met my wife and some of our most wonderful friends in the entire world, I accepted the job not really knowing what I was getting into, but knowing kind of what Carson-Newman is and means. Where now 100 and 172nd year as a Christian liberal arts university, we're in a small town in rural east Tennessee. Jefferson City is one exit on I-40 outside of Knoxville, and we're in the shadow of another fairly large university. You may have heard of the University of Tennessee. They're experiencing a massive resurgence in athletics at the moment and where we're competing with them on that front, not athletically, but because they've got this massive, massive resurgence right now. They're doing really well in the World Series and we're seeing some impacts around that. Our total enrollment around 2200. But we had upon my arrival a very murky identity also in part because there are a number of smaller liberal arts based universities in our region that also sort of support kind of our look and feel the mountain vibe, the orange, the blue, etc., etc.. So we arrived at this turning point with the university and our work with up and up because we had a five year old campaign that was a bit due to COVID, the general shelf life for one of these things, as most of you well know, was 2 to 3 years. But because COVID came along, that whole process got bumped back. Everybody here was kind of tired of talking about COVID. And the department I took over hadn't really kept up with the evolution of media. Our website was very dated. Our social platform, the various channels we were using weren't being utilized very well. We weren't using email very effectively. So there were a lot of things that need to be optimized and modernized. When I arrived, we also kind of didn't really understand who were ideal student was. We had a general idea students who were looking for a faith based liberal arts education. But why are they picking us over Lee University, which is in Chattanooga or Union University, which is on the other side of the state in Memphis, or any of the other number of Christian places of higher education here in the Southeast? We had to kind of hone in on a lot of this stuff very, very quickly, because our enrollment was starting to slide a bit. We hit peak enrollment right around 2018, 2019. Yeah. And so this is a problem. I'm sure that if I could see everyone, they would just be shaking your head in. You're probably relating to a lot of the things that Kyle just mentioned. And I just want to say that this is a big problem that we're seeing within higher ed, as you all are probably experiencing on all levels, is that everyone is really doing and saying the same thing. And so how do you try to stand out amongst your peers that paired with the fact that the candidate pool is decreasing? We're also thinking through how Gen Z actually cares. Surprise, surprise, they actually care about what you say you're going to do is something that you're going to actually do. And and the biggest thing that we see, especially in the higher ed realm, is that no one is willing to really lean into who they are to allow themselves to stand apart and above. And really, the whole point of this is that we really worked closely with Kyle and his team to create a brand. And what that means is that it actually does take courage. You really have to know who you are and lean into it and also be willing to kind of take that leap. Sometimes, even if it is slightly uncomfortable. You also have to have that realization that you can't own everything you really have to commit to what makes you unique. And we're going to walk through all of this in a moment of how we got to this great spot with Carson-Newman. But ultimately it really came down for them to own who you who they are. And that's just what we encourage everyone to do. And so how this really impacts those of you who are on this call, you might be in charge of marketing either for your division or for your institution. You also might be in charge of advancement. Branding actually goes throughout all of those pieces of your institution. And so understanding how it works at the top level and how it can start to distill down into your specific area is just super important. So hopefully that is something that we will showcase today of how you create that brand and how we can distill it down into all pieces of your university or college. So when I started at Carson-Newman we were trying to establish who we were as a brand, which is one reason we we called on Allison and the folks at Up&Up. Fun fact I've known Allison literally my entire time in higher education. I had been in my my office for about an hour on my first day here when I went to another meeting where I first met Allison. And we've had a great relationship for these past, I don't know, 18, 19 months working on this massive project. So when I arrived, we had a bit of a a stodgy kind of vibe. You can see it on the, I’m guessing, the left hand side of your screen. Carson-Newman, a Christian university, looks like it has the kind of a USPS Vibe logo. So that was our main mark when I got here. But we also had all these other ones on the screen. We were we were dealing with a lot of different imagery and messaging out there. Every department was doing their own thing. We did not have a cohesive look, feel anything across the board admissions, marketing, advancement, alumni, athletics. It was the Wild West, as it were. At one point we counted up almost 117 different versions of our name, our Mark, new logos, all logos, logos, students created and departments and divisions were using on campus. It was a giant mess. We had to try to reign it. It's okay to laugh because it is funny. This is not the norm. Yeah, we've we're working through some stuff and then there's still to kind of top it all off. There are a couple other universities that that sport, very similar branding to us. So that's not us. That's Catawba College in North Carolina, also not us. That's Christopher Newport University. Unfortunately, they sport the same letters as that seenu. So we've taken great pains to differentiate ourselves by saying we are see hyphen and the hyphen is actually the correct part of the correct spelling of our name and are now university brand guidelines. But we were constantly being confused with Catawba and Christopher Newport. And still to this day, we're having conversations with faculty and staff on campus about how we are not C hyphen enu or C in hyphen U or just U. So there's always a lot of work to be doing regardless of how well-established your brand is at this level. So what did we do to fix it? Well, the first thing we did was we partnered with up and Up. We had one meeting December 1st, 2021, and that immediately went into our Christmas vacation. One nice thing about working at a faith based institution is we take our Christmas holiday very seriously and the whole university shuts down for about three weeks. Unfortunately, we had a very compressed time window, so losing that three weeks wasn't great. But we put in a ton of work last spring and we got all our stuff formulated, presented and compiled from December 31st to July 31st. And and Alison and I had a really great time working together on this. Yeah, I'm just going to let everyone in on a secret. No one likes to work on projects this rushed No one. But that's okay because we figured out ways to work together and the outcome is great, but there's also a lot of learning, so we'll share that with you. So that way, if this is something that is top of mind, hopefully you can not make the same mistakes we made. Right? And this time on this project seemed fine to me because again, I came from local news live television, motorsports where everything is super fast paced, like, Oh, I have to put together a newscast between 930 and 4:00 in the afternoon. No problem. That's what I do every day. I have an hour and a half to go in Indy car race that's 55 laps long and a four mile track. And then I've got to turn around at 60 minutes or 60 seconds. Social media video in two and a half hours like that stuff I'm very used to doing. I was not prepared for the way people with letters after their name tend to process information just a little slower than I was used to. So whenever we were looking at some of the challenges that we were facing and this is going to get a little bit deeper into the project here, you know, whenever we came on to partner with Carson-Newman, we realized that there were a lot of things happening. And so as Kyle just alluded to, there marks were all over the place. And so we knew that there was not only going to be a rebranding occurring, but there had to be a logo development happening as well. There was also some issues with the website that were occurring, and then there was also this lack of new photography, because as many of you all experienced during COVID, there was a lot of photography with masks on, or maybe they were super old. And so making sure that you're doing a rebrand with things that are fresh and energizing and will really resonate with students was a challenge. And then again, their current campaign they had was super hyper focused on place. And so as Kyle alluded to, they are placed in a small city called Jefferson City, Tennessee, and it is one of those places where the entire campaign was around. You got to see this place, but it was actually focused on seeing all of the things around this place that so it really didn't resonate with their audiences. And so what I'm going to do now is just kind of walk you through the process of how we went through that rebrand and also kind of share some learnings along the way. So if you are in the process of doing a rebrand or it's something that you're interested in, these are going to be some of those steps that you're going to see. But the biggest thing is that we're going to start with qualitative qualitative insights. And the reason that's important is because you really do have to get that stakeholder buy in from the beginning. And this is one of those pieces that does take the most time. So it is very time consuming. You have to ensure that you get the right people in the room early on so that way you can hear from one another and understand how the brand impacts multiple stakeholders. So we met with leadership, we met with marketing, we met with admissions, we're meeting with current students. We also heard from faculty and staff, alumni, current students and even prospective students. And the goal here was to really hear themes around whenever you are describing Carson-Newman, what are some ways that you are describing them and learning a little bit more about, you know, misconceptions that are in the market? Or what do we think that Carson-Newman is known for? And then we paired that with doing a competitive assessment. And so that's what Kyle alluded to earlier, is when we were looking at institutions that are similar within their area, everyone's doing and saying the same thing. And so we're using the beautiful landscape, we're using all of these things and it's like you really couldn't tell who was who. We play the game where we actually marked out all of the logos from poor people's branding or like a print collateral piece. And we were like, okay, which one's what? And you couldn't tell because all the colors are the same, and all the usage of the photographs were pretty similar. So that's just an awareness that you may want to try that on yourself. And so doing a marketing review is also important. And so what we did with all of that information is we distill it down into key findings. And so this is important because we're really looking for themes of what we heard around really kind of the truth of like, who is Carson-Newman and what do people think today? So your key findings here are going to be on the right side of the screen. And then what we do as well is look at our strategic drivers. And so the strategic drivers are important to us because we have to understand the the business component of why we're here, Why is redoing a brand even important and then we match the two together to say, you know, is there anything that we did not hear correctly? Or maybe we're just totally off in left field about what's happening? And this point is incredibly impactful, especially if you do have changes in leadership. You've got new people who are joining the team. It's really helpful for everyone to get on the same page and have that level set of a foundation so that way we can kind of air out all of our dirty laundry and start moving forward. The next thing we did is we actually came back on campus and did a brand Pillars workshop. And so this is a piece that is incredibly important. So that way we can better understand what made Carson-Newman unique. And so in this, you know, we truly believe that y'all know your institution better than anyone. So pulling out those key buckets of that uniqueness actually lives with you all. And then we take that information paired with everything we heard in the insights and start to bring out those actual uniques or those brand pillars. And so the reason that's important is that your brain pillars, whether it is your institution, your department, whatnot, those are going to be really those core components that are unique to you. What I will say is that one of these, if you pulled it apart, is not going to be unique, right? There's a ton of Christian institutions, so Christ versed and always could be used for multiple institutions. But when you pair them together as a combination, that's what starts to pull out the pieces that only your institution can own. And so we'll walk you through how that all starts to play out the next. Sorry, go ahead. I would like to add real quick, the academic excellence was something that our president insisted on adding the marketing folks kind of all presumed that because we are, you know, a university, academia was sort of implied, but we need to say academic excellence. And I'm sure, like most of you watching and listening, you probably have had similar conversations, whereas we got to, you know, we got to drive home the academics. But academics alone aren't setting Castle Neumann apart as an institution. So working with up and up and identifying all these areas where we can differentiate ourselves was very, very important to building this process. Well, from the beginning. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. And I will say that that is one of those kind of cringe worthy moment moments a little bit from our perspective, right? It's like you're an academic institution, so of course you should have excellent academic. However, this is one of those moments where sometimes you have to get that buy in and you're like, okay, great. Like we let's do it. We'll put it on there. And then we work together with our marketing partner to see how that actually plays out. Right? And so appreciate you bringing up that point. So the next phase of this is bringing up the persona and so really thinking through who your personality is and starting to craft that messaging of how you would talk to your different audience types and then getting into the brand promise. And so working together to create that brand promise of what Carson-Newman actually promises to their perspective, students or faculty, staff and anyone who interacts with their brand. Another piece of it, why is doing their brand essence? And so the brand essence really is a jumping off point from an emotional impact, from the messaging of the brand strategy. So all of that is around the messaging. So making sure that you understand who you are and that you can clearly articulate it into going into this piece of bringing the brand to life with visuals. And so as a part of the process, we did present two different campaigns. We actually presented three, but the third was not even noteworthy. So it ended up not even making the leadership meeting. It wasn't great. Yeah, but that's okay. That is what happens. We all we always have ideas and I think a lot of times what will happen is that you're immediately drawn to either one or two. And that's really the whole purpose of having the multiple concepts. And so as a part of this, we did have the two different concepts. We presented the found, and then we also presented called. And I think the feedback that we had just resonated so well with the team at Carson-Newman for the one that we move forward. So how did you want to maybe make a note here? And when we when these three were presented to us, the one that got thrown out had a had some, I don't know, with an acid vibe to it. It was very a little pharmaceutical feeling. And to a person we all knew that wasn't going to work. And we narrowed it down to these to the found theme and then called. We liked them both, but one spoke to us as a team more than others, to other folks on my staff are also alums. One our multi-media specialist has been here for 37 years. He was actually one of my media instructors. So there are folks who have a deep understanding of what this institution means, which is very hard to capture in print materials and in video and things like that. But if you if you're here and you see it and you experience it, you know, we're talking about we have some anecdotal evidence from our admissions team that 70% of prospective students who come for a second visit end up enrolling. So once they're here on campus and they get to experience what Carson-Newman is, they're able to place themselves on this campus and see their future and kind of find all the things they're looking for in their academic experience. So we took these to our team, picked one up and a team picked one. And Alison, I think we only ended up pitching the one to leadership, right? We show them both. We were like, No, this is it. This is the one we need to go with. Yeah, so kind of alluded to it found is the one that we move forward forward with. And it was really, to Kyle's point is that a lot of it started to play out and come to fruition through our meetings with the team and it was something different around. When you're here, you find different pieces of yourself along the way. And then there was also this component that we could also make it a little fun and humorous and start to bring some of that to life. So these are the initial mock ups that came out of some of that concept thing. And then what we wanted to do is show how this paired with the clarity came to fruition through production and activation. So one thing you actually see here is that we were challenged with doing all of the brand, which is the messaging and the look and feel. And then when his team was actually working on the logo at the same time. So we ended up doing this with a lot of holds in place for the logo. And then again, as we were going into print, literally to the Wire, I'm asking Kyle for the logo and we're passing files back and forth so we could meet an actual deadline at the printer. But again, everything kind of played out and came came together. We are and I do not recommend this strategy. We did three projects simultaneously so we did our well for really. So we did all this brand work to better identify who we are so we can market ourselves and present who Carson-Newman is to the public. We needed to redo our logo, which is and you see it there on the screen. That's what we came up with. It's that we call the nested scene and we could trace it back 106 years. There's a version of this logo that has crept up throughout Carson- Newman history. So we said, okay, we're going to we're going to go back to the past and grab this logo that's been in use and really lean into it. So we did this, we did the brand. We kind of came up with this great idea, but then we had to convince everyone that this was the way to go. So we knew the view book, the brand, all that was happening. We had to convince leadership. So my VP who's who's in charge of our university relations, who's got a massive background in motorsports and marketing, he had to convince his fellow VP, is it like, Hey, this is the way we need to go because we're we're a little lost in the sauce. And we were also redoing our website again while we were doing this too. So we're us and up and up. I mean, I think I talk to Allison every day for like six straight months. Last year. Yeah, we did a lot of work. The website. We had to bring it over to a more user friendly platform. It was previously built kind of on a on a home grown themes that we couldn't really work with as a marketing team. So when updates needed to be made to program pages or for compliance reasons, we had to go to our vendor and they were charging us and and we kind of didn't really like that. It was costing us a ton of money. So I went to Allison, I think in in April, late May, early April of 2022, and I said, Hey, why are you doing all this? Can you all build up a new website? And they did it. We took the basic look and feel moved it over to WordPress, and then that gave us a lot more flexibility to kind of roll all these things out. But we're trying to hit this very specific deadline to get all this stuff printed and in the hands of our admissions reps and get it done before students come back so we can roll out the new logo, which also meant updating the website. And a lot of this got held up because we were waiting for that logo decision to be made. Finally, it was, and this is what we ended up with a very, very cool view book that we're all very proud of. It looks much better in person than it does on screen. The Eagle, which is our athletic mark, is embossed. So we had a die made and it's stamped on actually have it. I didn't plan that, but it's it's stamped and embossed, which is very cool. It's a different look now. You might be going, okay, well, that's not your primary logo. Well, it is here on the front. And we decided that using Orange, even though there is the giant orange gorilla about 35 minutes down the road from us, orange is going to make us stick out at a lot of college fairs because it's it's bright and it's vibrant in it. And it's us who we are. So this is what we went with. And we're very again, Allison and her team did an amazing job with this new book. It won an award last year. It won a gold certificate trophy. I'm not exactly sure that correct how they call it, but we entered it in the collegiate Advertising awards. In it, it won best in class for faith based institutions. So very proud of all the work we've done. And we're now going through the, you know, version to updates so we can update our course list. We won a couple of national championships this year. We've got some more All-Americans we've got to go through and update some facts and figures through this process. But we're showcasing all the things that make Carson-Newman unique. Yes, we have a beautiful campus. We're sandwiched the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains between two lakes. So we've got a bunch of trees outdoors are huge. We love to take aerial photography of our campus because the horizon is just outstanding. And then we can show where all the places are as we are. We're only on 100 acres here in East Tennessee, but there's a lot to do and we've got to communicate that effectively to students. So to activate it, we had to print pieces. We rolled out some purchased you know, we bought some media, we did a TV commercial that was all done entirely in-house. We had to launch a new style guide. Obviously, we launched our logo. We had to conduct brand training. One of the activation pieces we did, we incorporated the GPS coordinates of a spot on campus in our campaign. So if you go to our website, you'll see the tagline of Found your place, your path, your purpose, and then kind of at the end of our banner video, it shows the GPS coordinates of our cover center campus. We've got a giant eagle statue there. Now, we've also rolled out this spring a highly targeted social media campaign. So these are all the things we were doing to try to bring this brand to life. We produced the commercial in about two weeks, again, all done in-house. It's been really successful. We churned out the sticker sheet. We brought in a professional photographer to do some really high impact, very engaging athletic photography that we've used. Again, an example of the coordinate stickers we're handing out to prospective students. So if you punch those coordinates in to your GPS, it'll bring your right to where our prior walking, our eagle statue is. Next line is our commercial. It's 60 seconds long. Just kind of wanted to show you all how we brought this theme to life visually. Yeah. And I just wanted to add one thing before we pop over to that is kind of alluded to it, but the entire piece about sound as well was playing off of the tagline Your Path, your place, and your purpose. And so every single thing that we worked together to develop was actually built on those chapters of, you know, how do we define what finding your purpose actually means for students? And so that's where that found language comes in the place, obviously talking through campus and the surrounding area. And then the path is how do you get there. And so thinking through how we integrated those three main components specifically for Carson-Newman and all of these pieces so that it was easy to digest and easy for prospective students and families and everyone to understand. Sure, we've been around a while, 171 years to be exact, founded on the banks of a creek. This creek, Mossy Creek. We know the power of a liberal arts based Christian education and the tremendous potential of what can be found on this campus within this community. We are found here and here and here and here and also here in the classroom. On the field. We are adventurers, dreamers, believers, passionate and compassionate, curious and clever, driven by a common purpose towards a common goal. We are. We are. We are. We are. We are family. On a journey of discovery. I found my passion. I found my. Calling. I found family. I found a way to leave. I found a place to call my own. I found purpose. There's something for everyone. We are. We are. We are Carson-Newman. What will you find? So that's how we. We kind of brought that all together. That commercial is playing locally. It's on our website. We're using it in a lot of other branding and it's part of our exercise science program that are pre-professional health programs. It is modern, it is state of the art. We're also getting ready literally in the next day or two to start construction on a 110,000 square foot residence life complex, first new living facility on campus in more than 20 years, and the Draymond Ted Russell Center, which will be home to nursing, is the first academic building that's been on campus since 2003. So we're trying to move the ball forward and we've got all this stuff that says, Hey, you can come to Carson-Newman, you can learn who you are as a person. You can find what you want to do in your life. And we're going to equip you with the tools necessary to make that happen. It's actually turned out pretty well for us. We're spending about $3,000 a month with a media buying agency who's placing ads for us very strategically in front of our ideal student that's yielded 73 deposits just since April. So we've seen a huge spike in our deposits and commitments for the fall. Now, 73 students for a school our size is nearly $8 million in revenue. So we've got a massive ROI on this particular campaign and this ad spend that. The cool thing is we've also brought in 22 new ROTC cadets and those of you are familiar with how ROTC works. Those students pay all tuition, so nothing is getting discounted. They're actually bringing in more revenue per head. And we worked very closely with our ROTC battalion commander, who is also an alumni, to really hone in on how we can use this campaign with their campaign to help recruit those students. One thing Carson-Newman is known for is churning out pastors, teachers and nurses. But a lot of those nurses end up going to serve in the United States Army. And then real quick for a time in perspective so we can turn it over to get some questions answered. Is the biggest takeaways is that you got to make sure that you have the right people in the room at the right time. Everything was not gravy. Obviously, there was some there was some pushback whenever things started to get launched. And Kyle worked really closely with his internal departments to be able to navigate that and ensure that people understood the why and why this is important and how to use the brand to make sure that we could bring that to life. And then a big thing is obviously just take your time with something like this. It's not ideal to rush, but if you do find the right partner, insert click here, then it could be worth it. And then also trust your team and and what you're doing. I will say another big thing that would be applicable in this situation, because I know not everyone here is in charge of marketing for their institution, but this was so true to who Carson-Newman was that multiple departments and other people within the institution were just eager to jump in and take a hold of this brand and make it their own for their department. And that is huge. And so knowing that a lot of y'all are part of advancement. Gate With your marketing teams at the higher level and say, Hey, we're doing some of these projects, like I want to be a part of it because I want to have my voice heard and just be at the table. So with that. I do want to allow for I think I've got 7 minutes for questions. If there are questions, hopefully. There are plenty of questions. Thank you so much. First, and so our first question is, it seems like this was a large undertaking and it required a lot of help from different people. So how much of this work was done in-house compared to what was done with an agency? The question, it was highly collaborative. So Alison and her team would come up with a concept. They would pitch to us, we would kick it around internally and we would work to refine it. The logo was done all here on campus, so we were doing that internally. Allison and her team did the copywriting. We provided the imagery So it was it was a little bit, you know, some from column A, some from column B, I don't want to say it was 5050 some days it was. It was 30. Some days it was 6040. It kind of depended on what part of the project we were working on. Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like where and I'm not going to just say it for us, but we're a partner is most helpful is probably to get you all off your feet and into the foundational component of it. And for that the foundation would really be doing the insights, creating buy in, creating the brand strategy. So all of the messaging and then coming up with that general concept, that's typically a good place to have in mind of like, Hey, if I work with a partner, I definitely need those three things. And then potentially in-house, y'all could take on the rest because of the tight timeline and knowing that we had to get to production literally once we had that foundation within a month. I think that's why their team really relied on us heavily to help get those pieces off the ground. And then from there, like the commercial, we didn't touch the digital ads they've developed in-house. So just creating that foundation in the Carson-Newman team was able to take it and run with it, which is exactly what we would want to see happen. Absolutely. Alison and her team were force multipliers for us. I mean, I manage a team of five other people. I have one social media web photography video guy. I've got one. My deputy is our writer. I have two graphic designers. And then the third guy is sort of our catch all. He's our AVI guy on campus. Then I in where I can with my background in video. So I do video and I do web and all this stuff. So having an agency that knows what they're doing and can take your vision and run with it and then leave you with a product you can work with was super helpful. So, I mean, we we probably could have gotten something. Have we gone in a different direction than up and up? But everyone is super pleased with the process and what we have to work with, and that's based on basically mutual trust and respect that we've developed over this, you know, this time working together. Awesome. Thank you. I think we could squeeze one more question in. And so it is what sort of training have you implemented within this community college on how to use and engage properly with the brand? That is a work in progress. There are a number of one cool thing about Carson-Newman is that there are a lot of people who've been here for a very, very long time, so they're very set in their ways, shall we say, and we take a very gentle approach with folks who have questions, Hey, I'm trying to do this. How do I use the brand? Those folks who know better or repeat offenders have a little more of an unpleasant conversation with us over here in marketing when they when they go astray. But we rolled out we've got brand guidelines on our website. We created a style guide and we basically said, Hey, if you all have questions, here's where our offices, here's our phone number, here's our email address. Ask Is this sort of rebranding process was brand new for the university. They'd never done anything of this scope and scale before, so we wanted to have an opportunity for folks to come to us with questions rather than us just tossing a binder at him and saying, Good luck, figure it out. Awesome. Thank you. Let's see if we can fit one more question in What sort of compliance measures have you put in place to monitor improper usage of the logos of past logos? So our we worked very closely with our on campus print shop. So they have kind of carte blanche to reject anything to be printed that has an old logo on it. There are still some folks who skirt the system. They'll either print it on their own office printer or they'll use an outside vendor. But as we discover these things, we're working with those folks who might not understand the why, to better understand why we're doing it the way we're doing it. We were able to get a lot of buy in because folks didn't really care for the old logo because it was kind of weird, but they all kind of like this new one. So we've had much more buy in then we've had people resisting. One challenge we did have was with our bookstore vendor and getting all their partners up to speed on what our brand guidelines were and developing a style guide for that company to use, and then approving all those designs and things that were getting produced by the bookstore. And then also our athletic partners. So we've kind of are dealing with the cycle of uniforms that were ordered sort of during the pandemic, don't match our current brand guidelines because of delays in production. We also have some coaches who think that they can just kind of do whatever for their uniforms. So we're working closely with our athletic department to make sure they kind of understand what the expectations are for Brand on that side. You know, we take it one day at a time. People make mistakes. We try to provide as much grace as possible. I think you alluded to the one part, though, is the why. So like especially with projects like this, it just make sure that everyone really does understand the why behind what you're doing and that is going to help them hopefully create that buy in and get on board. Awesome. Thank you so much, Kyle and Allison for sharing your questions. Attendees for answering our questions and for the presentation. Before you go, just make sure to remember to throw that session feedback on the tab to the right before leaving, and you can now return to your agenda to find your next session. Thank you so much and thanks for joining.

rebranding

Carson-Newman University

collaboration

brand pillars

brand promise

visuals

brand implementation

prospective students