Update on marketing for June 2021

FOR THE DIFFERENCE Campaign

It’s an exciting time for the campaign as we’ve been able to define the parameters more clearly for the plan. We’ve finalized our paid media plan and partnered with Undergraduate Admission to align on central marketing efforts geared toward prospective undergraduate students. Next steps will be to collaborate with our campus partners and work towards aligning prospective graduate student advertising. We hope to build on some early wins this year when we combined our efforts for two print pieces.

We’ve also selected a vendor to film our institutional commercial this summer and are in the process of finalizing the contract now. Our goal is to feature students in the commercial as leads and background talent, in particular those that are working for the public good, a big part of the DU experience. In addition to this opportunity, we intend to build a roster for future opportunities for students to participate in DU video and photo shoots as we continue building out the University brand.

Strategic Messaging and Visual Identity

This week, the UVPs and their supporting proof points from the strategic messaging work group are headed out to current students via survey. The survey will be shared with graduate and undergraduate students, and we’re looking forward to learning more about what sets our students and the DU brand apart.

Our working group focused on DU’s visual identity kicked off last month. They have really hit the ground running to deliver a robust visual style guide for the brand, ensuring that DU’s brand is easy to use and apply in practice.

Over the past month, MarComm has been working on initiatives to enhance DU’s brand story, invite feedback on our visual toolkit, and collaborate with campus partners to be able to leverage the best parts of the identity elements developed during the preview brand refresh several years ago. We’re doing this by:

1. Implementing a series of discovery photo and video shoots to put DU’s personality traits into practice, aiding in the ultimate development and introduction of a new photo and video section of our style guide.
2. Conducting a survey for campus communications and marketing professionals, inviting feedback on what’s worked well in our visual toolkit to date, what hasn’t worked so well, and, finally, what’s on the wish list.
3. Hosting a “Swap and Share” experience, which is a place for campus communications and marketing professionals to share examples of how the brand has been interpreted and applied to date to support the working group as they leverage the best parts of the identity elements developed during the previous brand refresh.

This fall, I will be excited to share the final outcomes of the work from the strategic messaging and visual identity working groups. You can expect to receive an update next month on the insights we’ll gain from their early work. My thanks to MarComm team members Jon Stone, Evan Cotgageorge, and all the strategic messaging and visual identity working group team members and their collaborators for keeping this vital work going.