Michael Strysick, PhD, is Executive Director of College Relations, at Austin College. We met recently at a CASE conference in Little Rock, Arkansas. We immediately struck up a great conversation about the recent progress Austin College has made developing its brand strategy. Here are the highlights of an interview I recently conducted with Michael. 

Q: How did Austin College recognize the need to engage in a branding initiative?

A: Austin College has had a great deal of success in recent years. We've engaged in $100M in capital projects. The number of million dollar donors has increased from 11 to 46. And, our ranking has gone up. But, marketing was not given a lot of attention because of funding priorities. We had a Board member with a great deal of business savvy; he wanted to beef up the marketing effort.

Q: So, how did you develop the momentum to actually get the money you needed?

A: I put together a powerpoint filled with data; I made my case with the numbers and that really spoke to our board and our President. I collected all kinds of tracking data on where our competitors were advertising (through TNS media intelligence) and was able to provide detailed and compelling data. For example, I was able to show that one competitor was spending 1500% more on advertising per student than we were. I felt like Al Gore with that powerpoint. I gave that presentation over and over again to anyone who would listen. Finally, they did.

Q. Where did you start?

A: With research. A board member put up the seed money for the research; it did not come out of the operating budget. We gathered a huge amount of data through a partnership with a firm called The Richards Group. We did IDIs (in-depth interviews). We did web-surveys. We mined all of our existing data such as ASQ, NSSE, NEIR, CIRP, all that stuff. We looked at our old marketing audits from way back when. We reviewed our strategic planning documents, anything we could get our hands on.

Q: Then what did you do?

A: We locked some alumni, faculty, staff, and trustees in a room for a full-day to plow through all of this information. We wrestled with everything. It was critical for us to include a broad swatch of people; we needed that type of buy-in. The process was so authentic. It was honest and truthful. I am a big believer in the kind of creative tension we had that day. Our charge was that we could not leave the room until we developed a one-pager; we specifically limited ourselves to one page. That one page included a sentence fragment that describes the essence of our College (and we did not allow ourselves to use the word "excellence"). We identified the personality attributes of our brand, the vision for our brand, and wrote a lengthier statement about what our brand stands for.

Q: Where are you now?

A: I view this as a three step process. Step 1 is to develop the brand strategy. Step 2 is to develop a new logo and creative platform. Step three is to develop an integrated marketing plan. We are at the very end of Step 1. We are finalizing our creative brief and then we are moving on to work on our visual identity and creative concepts. Then, we'll move on to actual ads and stuff.

Q: Can we check in with you in about 6 months and see how things are going?

A: Absolutely!

About Michael: He taught English at the college-level for years. Made the transition eight years ago from faculty to administration and learned the communications business by being in the trenches. He sounds a lot more like he's from the corporate world than faculty. Feel free to email him at mstrysick@austincollege.edu. He usually has a good marketing book on hand that he has just finished and can recommend.  Just this morning, he sent me a note recommending The Origin of Brands: How Product Evolution Creates Endless Possibilities for New Brands by Al Ries.

--Elizabeth Scarborough