Maine Perspective Front Page
University Moves Ahead on Institutional Marketing
A nearly yearlong effort to launch a major integrated UMaine marketing effort, including an image make-over, for the institution has gained momentum with the recent appointment of a vice president for University Advancement.
Susan Reardon has been named vice president for University Advancement, effective April 1. The appointment is pending University of Maine System Board of Trustees approval.
Also critical to the University's promotional effort is the hiring this spring of a marketing director. A search committee chaired by Mark Anderson, interim vice president for Student Affairs, is now reviewing applications for the new position. Candidates will make campus visits after Reardon joins the University community.
Since last April, a standing committee appointed by Hoff has been drafting a marketing plan that Reardon and the new marketing director will help finalize. It is hoped that the University will have its new marketing plan, including elements of institutional graphic identity, ready for implementation by the next academic year.
The marketing plan is based on research done in 1997-98 by STAMATS, a national marketing consultant firm. A STAMATS report completed last fall focused on such areas as UMaine's target audience, institutional messages, current marketing strategies and image. With such a research base, the 15-member marketing committee, with Hoff as an active participant, has begun addressing three major areas - "look,"
involving the University image, from the first impressions of visitors to campus to establishment of University colors, typeface and logos; message; and strategy, how to implement the marketing plan and reach target audiences.
The goal is not to reinvent the University's image, says Anderson. Based on the marketing research, elements being considered are a mix of traditional and reinterpreted standards that have been part of UMaine's identity through the years. For example, last fall the marketing committee decided to return to two shades of "MAINE blue." However, the Maine Black Bear is undergoing a face lift.
"One of the issues with the pine bough look the University adopted a couple years ago was that it is not unique to Maine. We returned to the very traditional blue," says Anderson, who also serves on the marketing committee. "Research showed us that the University was unambiguously linked in people's minds with the black bear. We will do more with the bear."
Institutional images must be integrated and coordinated with the University's messages, says Anderson. The institutional message must be fundamental enough to resonate with a primary audience, as well as be viable when targeted for such efforts as student recruitment or legislative support-building.
The University moved forward on marketing before its leaders in university advancement were hired because "we could not afford to wait," says Anderson. Through the years, UMaine has had a number of unit-based marketing efforts, and a great deal of communication emanating from the campus, but little has been institutionally integrated or coordinated.
"It is clear that the institutional advancement area that includes marketing is one where we have underinvested," says Anderson. "In development, governmental affairs, public affairs, there's a whole cloth there to which we haven't paid enough attention.
"It is too important a process to the future of the University (to be neglected any longer)," he says. "It is a community effort that requires all in the University community to be involved. Marketing is not the sole responsibility of the Marketing Department. It is everyone's responsibility.
"I am struck that the problem here is, in a lot of cases, people have their primary affiliation with their own unit, department or division," says Anderson. "They secondarily, and sometimes begrudgingly, acknowledge that they are part of a larger institution. The challenge in this process is having people affiliate with the University as something important to them - as equally important as their unit. Until we get that mental shift, some of the other things (involving university advancement) are not going to work. That's why marketing is everyone's business. All units will succeed if the institution succeeds. And that's where we have a long way to go."
A practical tool for accomplishing an integrated, coordinated marketing effort is the creation of the University's first formal style guide, complete with graphics and editorial standards. Such a guide is key to achieving institutional identity and a consistent message, whether those messages are coming from the colleges, athletics or the Maine Center for the Arts, Anderson says.
"BearWorks has provided the University with a vision and action plan. If we take BearWorks as the foundation of the marketing plan, we start the process by looking at what it is we do, not how we tell people about it.
"BearWorks tells where the institution is going, its strengths. How the rest of the world understands what we're doing through communication is part of the marketing plan."