Are university brands all a bit samey, and what can we do about it?

Standing out in a crowded market is hard. And higher education is a crowded market.

We recently carried out a marketing and communication skills review for a UK university, which is a great way to uncover the strengths and gaps within your team. One of the most interesting things we found in this review was that although the staff at this university were very confident of their ability to explain what their institution’s brand was - what they stood for, what their vision and values were - when asked if they could define how that made them different from another university, they found it much harder.

Distinctiveness is something that a lot of people, a lot of brands, and definitely a lot of universities struggle with. We get asked about it a lot - how do we make ourselves stand out? How do we show that we’re different from everyone else?

Distinctiveness

That can actually be quite hard for a university, or a college, or a school. On the whole, they’re offering something that’s actually quite similar to each other. 

Universities teach people, usually at a degree level or above, usually in a combination of big lectures and in small seminars, over a three/four year period, and so on. And this means they end up operating in a similar sort of reputational space. 

Universities aren’t like supermarkets. No one wants to be seen as the “value brand” university. But that means that universities do end up all looking and sounding very similar. They have a similar tone of voice, and a similar - if not identical - way of presenting content. 

Recently I’ve looked at every university in the UK, compiling their brand values, how they talk about themselves, the colours they use on their websites, and a range of other things. I wanted to see how different they really were.

What do we stand for?

As an example of how universities struggle with this distinctiveness problem, let’s look at the words that different universities use to define their values. Most universities do this - they’ll have a set of 4-6 values or qualities that they say are the definition of who they are. But do these really help separate universities from each other?

The top 6 words used as values by UK universities are:

• Inclusivity 

• Excellence

• Ambition 

• Innovation

• Collaboration

• Creativity 

All of these are used by at least 15% of the UK’s universities, and the top two are used by more than a quarter. So when we talk about distinctiveness, is it really possible to see differences in institutions based on brand values?

How do people tell us apart?

And there’s another obvious way to demonstrate how universities can sometimes find it hard to demonstrate distinctiveness. We spend a lot of time working with universities on their digital presence - website planning, competitor analysis, user testing, a whole range of things - and something that comes up over and over again is just how similar university websites are. 

Everyone’s got a “study” section. They’ve got a “research” section. Perhaps one called “life at our university”. If they’re being bold, they might have a “business” heading. And, of course, “about”.

Then there’s probably a nice picture (maybe it’s a carousel because everyone knows universities love to use carousels) and then we get to something more unique to this university. 

What’s happening here is that we’re all operating within those expectations that the audience places on us. This is what a university website is supposed to include, so we do it. And it’s not a bad thing! We need to work within those expectations - we want people to be able to navigate our website, and we want them to find things they need. So if we chose a new navigation layout that’s unfamiliar to the audience as a way of demonstrating our difference, are we shooting ourselves in the foot? How far can we push that line of accepted behaviour in the name of “standing out” before we lose our connection with the audience?

Where does this leave us?

Now, distinctiveness isn’t just about brand values or the website, obviously. But this is just a demonstration of the narrow space that universities are operating in when it comes to how to stand apart from one another.

But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We can look at that space and start to really think about what it is that makes us different. 

There might be a lot of organisations saying similar things, but we know they’re still really different. The experience at one university is very different to the experience at another. 

There might be only a limited number of words we can use to define each institution or to use as stated values, but the experience doesn’t need to be limited in the same way. What we need to do is to bring that distinction to life in everything we do - including, very importantly, the content that people see from our different channels.

So how do we do that? How do we take those brand values and make them a reality for our audience?

If we say we’re a bold or risk-taking university, we need to make sure those who are creating content also feel that way. We need to embed that value in our communications with our audiences. Are we really being bold or innovative? Are we taking risks? Are we trying new things? 

If we say we’re collaborative, that makes a big difference in our content creation processes. We need to ensure we really are working across teams and departments, really breaking down silos. If “collaboration” is a brand value, can you say that you’re really embodying that?

Being an institution where people are actually living those values means that we’re able to express brand values naturally through any interaction our audiences have with us. We’re able to say “this is how our university is bold. This is how our university is ambitious.” 

So even though there’s still that small shared reputational space that everyone is occupying, embedding those values means you can carve out your own areas. It is possible to stand out. It’s hard work! But it’s doable. 

If you want to know more about how we can help you with defining what your distinctiveness actually is, get in touch. If you’re already confident in your niche, we can carry out a skills audit for you to help you understand if your organisation really does understand your brand. Or you could attend Tracy’s free workshop on the interactions between brand strategy and content strategy.