AMA Symposium on Higher Education New Orleans, LA November 12, 2012 Peter Holloran – President Cognitive Marketing Inc. Janet Morgan Riggs - President Gettysburg College Paul Redfern - Executive Director of Communications & Marketing Gettysburg College

1. Managing Brand Consistency
Through Presidential Transitions
AMA Conference
New Orleans, LA
November 12, 2012
Peter Holloran – President Cognitive Marketing Inc.
Janet Morgan Riggs - President Gettysburg College
Paul Redfern - Executive Director of Communications & Marketing Gettysburg College
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 1

2. Our Premise
• Your brand is your framework for the effective telling of the
your story: not the story of a given presidency.
• Take care to develop your brand: not every brand
articulation deserves to survive a transition.
• A great brand strategy by definition is designed to grow in
strength and relevance with the institution it presents. If
yours is a truthful, accessible, and compelling brand
identity, it can bend without breaking.
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3. Questions we‟ll address
• So what makes new leadership decide to retain instead of
replace a brand?
• What sort of brand building process can increase the
likelihood that a new president will stick with it?
• How do you educate your board and senior leadership
team?
• Why should you care?
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 3

4. Great „brand‟ schools have:
• Histories in which they take pride
• Traditions that bind the generations
• Alumni who remain engaged for life
• The confidence to be themselves
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 4

5. When developing your brand, be sure it is:
• Rooted in the institution’s core values
• Distinguishing
• Single-minded but inclusive
• Reflective of your reality and your aspiration
• Timeless, eloquent, elegant
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 5

6. Your new president is more likely to stick with your brand if
it:
• Isn’t personal to the previous president
• Is undeniably true
• Hasn’t been beaten to death through overexposure or
poor stewardship
• Is fertile enough soil in which to grow the legacy of a
new administration
• Exists as more than an ad campaign or a ―tagline‖
• Is flexible enough to bend
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7. Your new president would be wise to
“rebrand” if:
• The brand is thin, frail or obsolete
• The brand cannot support a new administration’s mandate
• The brand speaks narrowly to a previous administration’s
―version‖ of the truth of the institution
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8. Why is it desirable that a well-conceived
brand outlive those who created it?
• Because your brand is your institution’s story, and so long
as the institution exists, it can never be completely told
• Because your brand is supposed to help you build
institutional reputation, and its capacity to do this expands
with the passage of time
• Because it’s clear evidence of institutional integrity, good
stewardship, and constancy of purpose
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 8

9. Pres. Haaland • Marketing Committee
holds brand reshaped to be Brand Council
development • Search for new President
Pres. Riggs
workshop begins, positioning statement
era begins
used
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Long-term •New seal • Key messages
brand for 175th adopted
strategy • Integrated
approved marketing plan
and Pres. Will developed
implemented retains
brand
strategy
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 9

10. The Brand Signature of Gettysburg College:
Do great work
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11. Building brand coherent traditions:
• Class Flags/Convocation/Graduation
• The First-Year Walk
• The new and more proudly displayed college seal
• The History of the College exhibit
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 11

12. Considerations for maintaining brand:
• Just getting traction
• Represents Gettysburg well
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 12

13. Promise statement:
We will prepare students to lead energetic, engaged, and
enlightened lives.
Need for change due to close tie to person and prior
campaign.
Gettysburg College prepares students to be leaders and active
citizens in their professions, communities, nations and the
world.
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 13

14. Brand as it exists today
• Do Great Work
• Gettysburg Great
• What does it take to be Gettysburg Great?
• What will you do to be Gettysburg Great?
• Gettysburgreat—a campaign to make Gettysburg and Great
inseparable
• Examples of living the brand
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 14

15. Some Do‟s and Don‟ts
• Do: take care to guide the use of your brand, but also take care not to
suffocate it.
• Don’t: treat it like an ad campaign, or it will wear thin like an ad
campaign
• Do: think broadly about building brand; remember, it’s a three-
dimensional idea, not a three-word phrase!
• Don’t: Let your brand devolve to nothing more than a slogan—live it!
• Do: treat the brand with the same respect you wish others to give it
• Don’t: be impatient. The brand needs ultimately to come to live in the
minds and hearts of people, and for that to happen, one needs to take
time and care with it.
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16. Peter Holloran – President Cognitive Marketing Inc.
peterh@cogmark.com
Janet Morgan Riggs - President Gettysburg College
Paul Redfern - Executive Director of Communications & Marketing Gettysburg College
predfern@gettysburg.edu
Managing Brand Consistency Through Presidential 16