Georgia Southern University is a cornerstone in Southeast Georgia’s rise in the coming decade. Like the Port of Savannah. Like I-16 and I-95. Like Fort Stewart. The shared future of business, culture, sustainability, communication and research are intertwined between these large organizations and the deep-rooted communities they serve.

Or at least that was how the University System of Georgia saw it when they consolidated Georgia Southern with Armstrong State University and included a growing focus on its Hinesville presence, which serves a large military community.

Mergers are messy, and this one stirred up deep emotions across the region. “Unmerge my university” signs popped up in a few yards. There were conflicting viewpoints from Statesboro to Savannah and all points near, far and in between. The value in a bigger, better Georgia Southern was clear – its community still remembers its ’80s glory days as a party campus – a culture that made its way to Nashville in the form of country megastar Luke Bryan ’99 – with equal measure of both contempt and pride. Likewise, Savannah – home of a vibrant art scene – is ready to show it’s more than a delightful tourist destination. Big things were on the horizon, but how would the community … do this together?

D. White & Co. was fortunate to partner with Stamats on this branding project – and we’re grateful for their experience and our relationship.

Problem

How can Georgia Southern articulate a fractured backstory into a brand message that connects the narrative and seizes the moment?

Approach

Listen to everyone

There was a lot to catch up on at Georgia Southern, and the most effective insight came from an early project listening tour that went for two days and touched nearly every stakeholder group in the community. Stakeholders were still raw from the merger and ready to share their opinions on the past, present and future of the institution. This unfiltered feedback – the ability for the community to have a real, if difficult, conversation was a secret strength for the community.

These listening sessions serve two purposes. The first one is clear – we want to hear about the university with our own ears. The second is that listening sessions transfer information among the participants and encourage them to come together in a way they might not without the session. We’re listening to – and stoking – a conversation that is already happening across your campus. This reveals much – the big picture is sometimes lost on team members who are working hard within their space to impact student lives. Leaders – who are confronted with the university’s worst problems day in and day out – are often surprised to find out just how much good work is going on across their campus. These conversations are energizing.

At times this could make for unflinching honesty, like when a Black student on the Savannah campus told us he felt unwelcome on the Statesboro campus. These conversations are important. As brand experts, it isn’t our job to paper over reality. It’s our job to understand, articulate and deliver the promise our brand makes within that reality. Viewpoints – and suggestions – can vary wildly from person to person and from group to group. But through extensively listening consistent themes emerge.

Meet your region’s needs first

Georgia Southern is not the University of Georgia, nor is it Georgia Tech. These institutions both practically define “global university” through their extensive research, corporate partnership, athletics achievements and donor bases. Their reach is limitless. Their demand is endless. They have years and billions of dollars that add up to an insurmountable competitive advantage for schools like Columbus State, Georgia Southern and Kennesaw State.

And yet the demand for these institutions is growing like never before, in part because they offer precisely what smaller institutions are unable to provide – and what larger institutions are too big to manage – in the form of a hands-on university experience. Students at large and prestigious suburban schools may spend their entire high school experience playing second fiddle to Ivy League-bound valedictorians and SEC-bound starting quarterbacks. Students from underfunded city or rural high schools are ready to see or do anything other than the doldrums they’ve endured in their education.

Adult students may have some college experience and are itching to do it quicker, cheaper and better so they can move up the career ladder. Area corporations depend on the university to graduate critical thinkers they can plug into solving tough challenges associated with climate change, growing the economy, and breaking down barriers to increase diversity, equity and inclusion.

Georgia Southern is a bridge, and opportunity rests on the other side. Georgia Southern is headed for greatness – so are its stakeholders. Everyone can play a needle-moving role in articulating the importance of that moment.

Test the big story

Two ideas resonated. One was the power Georgia Southern had in the region – to empower, to unite and to create upward social mobility for residents in the region. The other idea was that Southeast Georgia residents were ready to seize the moment together thanks to their experiences in recent years.

“Summing it all up” isn’t just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks – it’s a research-based process that reveals the intersections and shared interests of stakeholders across an institution. It must get everyone’s head nodding. Inclusion is fuel for the brand process. To do that means answering the key question on stakeholders’ minds – “how will we move forward?”

Good brand concepts should not be far-flung. They should work like brackets around your large brand idea. One expression of that idea puts collective and individual power at the forefront. Another puts immediacy and preparation out front. We developed extensive messaging, including sample messaging targeted by audience, to storylines that could flow into an integrated marketing campaign.

We put together a few storyboards – we called them ad-like objects or “adlobs” – and tested each idea’s resonance. Again and again stakeholders resonated with the immediacy Georgia Southern offered to the region – and it flowed nicely into its GATA culture. Most importantly, we could confirm the idea would connect because it was rooted in research. We also continued to tweak the message based on feedback – the first step in creating a managed process for hearing, sorting, filtering and applying continued feedback as part of a healthy and functional brand culture.

Train the trainers

The Georgia Southern UCM team is unique and talented. The team is diverse and cross disciplined. Its members are smart and funny. They care deeply about their work and both the people and the region they serve. Now the weight of the work rested on them – understanding their audience’s ideas, emotions, feelings, hopes and fears – and they were more than up to the challenge. But no marketing and communications team can shape a brand all on their own. Growing the brand would require them to take an organized, strategic approach to spreading the core brand ideas and tell university stories in a way that supported that message. The team needed to build campus buy-in.

The final Ready brand built positive sentiment and increased brand buy-in across campus, thanks to the collaborative power of the Georgia Southern UCM team. They engaged brand stakeholders with “brand boxes” that positioned the office as a strategic partner on campus.

The Georgia Southern UCM team is larger than many higher ed teams, but it is not able to be all things to all people across its vast community. In fact, those resources stretch thin quick when you consider all the achievements happening in Statesboro, Savannah and Hinesville. For that reason, the UCM team takes a proactive approach to training and professional development, including kickoff sessions in 2020 and strategic planning sessions in 2022 – with more sessions on deck for 2023.  

The UCM team becomes more effective by leaps and bounds thanks to its continued investment in this approach and will continue to do so because it aligns with the university’s mission to “grow ourselves to grow others,” and puts people at the heart of the community’s storytelling efforts. It also means continued strategic management, including visual reports, further team integration, and a renewed focus on key partners – like advancement and admissions – after an all-hands-on-deck COVID response.

Results

Georgia Southern is still early in its brand-building work. Brands begin to grow their effectiveness in three to five years (if they last that long) when the team can focus on bringing the big message down to earth by supporting its strategic partners like admissions, academics and advancement. The UCM team is creating a pipeline of brand information – one that travels back and forth between stakeholders and strategic experts.

The key elements of effective marketing are audience, message and timing. Georgia Southern started its process by understanding its audience clearly – its needs, its current state, and what opportunities Georgia Southern provided for them. It refined that message with its audience’s input. Lastly, it timed its brand planning and strategic management processes nearly perfectly.

Georgia Southern’s brand was developed just a few steps behind its strategic plan. That gave its brand a purpose – and ideas to build on. It also meant that when the unexpected happened – like COVID – it was able to continue building its brand when others were struggling to define their shared purpose.

The team is connecting its strategic measurements into an actionable dashboard that tracks its overall progress to shared goals. Stakeholder collaboration is up. Fundraising is up. The university is preparing for extensive outreach campaigns in its Savannah and Hinesville markets to better connect with its community. Web visitors increased nearly 23 percent in 2022.

Conclusion

To see Georgia Southern today is to see a university in the process of a remarkable transformation. Like the Southeast Georgia region, it is integrating and connecting the dots in new ways that create shared opportunity. After the university’s most successful brand launch in recent history – as well as an admirable COVID-19 response – it is duly turning its eyes to the numbers. They are tracking critical KPIs that move admissions and fundraising needles – and they are comparing those measurements to better refine their integrated marketing and communications system.

Some key connections will be important for the Georgia Southern brand to make in the future – first it must deliver its promise by communicating its story in a way that both represents everyone and adds up to greater meaning in the minds of its region. Secondly, it must use its expanded information-gathering capabilities to advocate for more resources and a more substantive seat at the table in strategic planning. It must build on the past without getting stuck in its ways but, likewise, it cannot tinker itself to death. There are more residents than ever in the Southeast Georgia region who are ready to power up new ideas and connect the dots in ways that will grow Georgia Southern’s brand even more.