"When We Say Smaller" Became a Big Deal
D. White & Co. is guilty of not looking back at our successes – even though we spend a lot of time researching other brand’s successes and failures. One of the biggest wins for our team came when Shelly and I worked at Texas Wesleyan University in 2016 – A little more than a year before DWCo. began.
Several years into the TXWES “Smaller. Smarter.” brand was the perfect time to think big. I’d worked closely with our brand – and our campus – for several years and wrote from experience, not a spreadsheet. And our internal workflow hummed with the effectiveness that growing budgets and new hires bring.
Our close-knit team often stayed after 5 p.m. to swap stories and ideas. Students popped in. We discussed students who were thriving, professors engaging their classes in new ways – and sometimes we just complained, brainstormed ideas, or played ‘80s rock like Billy Squier’s “Lonely is the Night” very, very loud. I was driving home from one of those sessions with Chuck Greeson, our university videographer, when the words started to come to me all at once: “When we say smaller it means we know you by name.”
I’m able to look back on those early experiences through the lens of more than four years as a higher ed brand consultant. Public, private, regional, global, national – colleges have many unique brand variables. But here are a few key tips from “When We Say Smaller” that you can apply to almost any higher ed brand anywhere.
Our brand was ready for its closeup
Read the Fort Worth Business press article
Inspiration does strike once in a blue moon. I may have even called John Veilleux, Vice President for Marketing & Communications, to run a few script lines by him to test the idea. He liked it. Within days Chuck cut a powerful video using existing footage, a script, and some powerful voiceover acting courtesy of our account at voices.com.
Chuck worked for years creating a video library with b-roll we already knew connected with our audience. John leveraged his relationships with ad representatives to turn a commercial into an event for our entire university community by buying time during a Dallas Cowboys game. Ann Davis, director of communications, placed a terrific business feature about the ad event.
We knew our students by name
“When we say smaller, it means we know you by name. It means you can walk through the door anytime, any day, and we'll listen. When we say smaller, it means we believe that one moment with one professor can change the course of your life, forever. When we say smaller, it means your degree isn't something you hang on the wall. It's a part of who you are – it's valuable. It means we believe that what you do after you leave here is just as important to us as what you do when you're here. When we say smaller, it means we believe in you. And that's why when we say smaller, we really don't mean anything small at all.”
This language is rife with the essential values that make up Texas Wesleyan’s identity – an intentionally small school that delivered a niche value in the Dallas-Fort Worth media market, where nine out of their 10 competitors referred to themselves as “large” or “comprehensive.” We knew we could deliver these promises. The best advertising messages are effective to recruit new students and get the heads of your faculty and staff nodding up and down – “yes, that’s us.”
Our brand voice hit the right tone
Higher ed brand overrate big and clever at the expense of personality and likability. One of the secret strengths of the Texas Wesleyan brand was that it had personality. The inspiration boards in our marketing office often had campaigns from Southwest Airlines or the famous “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” series from Apple. A TV commercial commandeers the living room. A digital ad jumps into bed with you. It’s OK to tone down your voice to match the message. People watch a lot of ads. They’ll get it.
The best part about “When We Say Smaller” was that it was both on-brand – and an opportunity for us to continue to stretch and evolve our brand as it matured. Because we stayed on brand, the university was able to create a new series “When We Say Smarter” that focused on campus academics.
Darren White is the principal consultant at D. White & Co., a brand firm based in Murray Hill. His own “scholarly pursuits” include gardening, running, and popping wheelies on his bicycle.
