Getting the Community College Brand Just Right

A community college brand strategy is much like Goldilocks’ quest for the perfect porridge—too hot, too cold, and somewhere in between. Just as Goldilocks sought that “just right” bowl of porridge, a community college must balance various elements to achieve a brand strategy that is both effective and resonant. However, community college brands are far more complex than a simple bowl of porridge.

The community college brand pyramid offers a structured approach to navigating this complexity, helping colleges achieve the right balance in their brand strategy. To create a “just right” community college brand, the brand pyramid guides colleges in aligning their foundation, perception, and expression to create a cohesive and authentic brand.

Many colleges focus heavily on brand expression and foundation to develop their brand strategy, overlooking perception. The college itself may disregard perception, because it’s not considered an operational priority, or there’s a lack of resources, and/or the college is underestimating the impact perception has on their brand strategy. However, without perception as the backbone, the entire structure becomes unbalanced, leading to a brand that lacks authenticity and cohesion. To create a strong, effective brand strategy, colleges must treat perception as a core component and ensure it aligns with their brand expression.

What is a Community College brand? 

A community college brand is the collective identity and perception that a college cultivates. It is shaped by the college’s foundational elements—such as its mission and values—and is expressed through its messaging, visual identity, and interactions with students, staff, and the broader community. One way to conceptualize the elements of a brand is through the above Community College Brand Pyramid. The Brand Pyramid is made up of three distinct categories: foundation, perception and expression, and each category is made up of different elements that create the college’s brand. 

FOUNDATION 

• Values and Mission: The core principles the college stands for and mission statement that guides the college’s actions and decisions. 

PERCEPTION

• Experience: The experience students have with the brand including service, offerings, and interactions. 
• Reputation: The public opinion and trust in the brand, which is built over time through consistent delivery and positive student experience. 
• Differentiation: What makes the college unique and distinct from competitors, unique value propositions that highlight the brand’s advantages. 

EXPRESSION

• Voice and Messaging: The tone and style of communication of a brand, messaging that conveys the brand’s values and personality. 
• Image: How the brand is received in terms of quality, reliability, and value in the community.
• Identity: College Name, Logo, Wordmark, Tagline

Many community colleges only think of their brand as a logo, wordmark, mascot, and messaging, but a community college brand is much more than its expression. While these elements may be how the brand is presented, a community college brand is successive – building upon foundation and perception to create expression. Like constructing a pyramid, there is a distinct order to how a community college brand is built. You can’t start with expression and then work your way backwards through perception and foundation. Instead, the brand evolves from the foundational elements of Values and Mission, flowing into Experience, Reputation, and Differentiation that make up perception, which then shape the Image, Voice, Messaging, and Identity that create the brand expression.

While colleges often mistake expression and foundation as their brand strategy, the true strength or weakness of a brand lies in the alignment between the elements of perception and expression. 

Community College Branding Blunders

Marketers often spin their wheels trying to create a brand awareness strategy and message that attracts students, but when they underestimate perception as the source of their strategy, it’s like trying to build a pyramid without the center. The pyramid is missing structure, unstable, and archaeologists discovering the pyramid could quickly tell the pyramid is damaged. (In this case, the archaeologists are prospective students).

When community colleges fail to unify brand expression with perception, they ultimately weaken their brand’s performance. However, the interaction between the perception and expression layers is the most difficult to manage. Challenges in crafting compelling messaging often stems from a lack of thorough consideration of the key elements of perception—experience, reputation, and differentiation. Without deeply considering these elements, the following blunders  will undermine the college’s brand strategy:

Branding Blunder #1: Brand Dilution

Because community colleges serve stakeholders across faculty, staff, community members, families, students, and employers, they take an overgeneralized approach that lacks focus in their brand messaging. By trying to be “everything to everyone,” colleges often fail to distinguish themselves from competitors, making it difficult for potential students to understand their unique value proposition. 

Example: 

A college develops a marketing tagline of “Start here, go anywhere”. The advertisements highlight a wide range of programs, but fail to highlight specific strengths of individual programs. Key audiences struggle to identify why they should choose a particular community college over others due to the absence of a clear, compelling offer.

The root cause for this pain point is a lack of strategic focus, including: 

• The college is attempting to serve diverse stakeholders without prioritization
• There is a fear of excluding potential students or community members
• There is a lack of audience & program prioritization in marketing and branding efforts

Impact on College Perception: 

The impact of brand dilution is typically difficult for internal stakeholders to identify, because it is not inherently negative; however, these approaches stealthily limit the college’s relevance in some of the following ways:

• Identity Crisis: The college lacks a strong, distinctive identity that resonates with specific target audiences.
• Competitive Disadvantage: Without emphasizing unique strengths, the college may lose potential students to institutions with more focused branding.
• Missed Opportunities: By not highlighting specific program strengths, the college fails to attract students who might be interested in those particular areas of study

Branding Blunder #3: Brand Exaggeration

Brand Exaggeration is where  a significant gap exists between the college’s promotional materials and the real-world experience of students, because a college is over-promising and under-delivering.

Example: 

A college boasts of flexibility for students; however, in reality, time slots for scheduling classes are extremely limited, such as a lack of evening offerings. 

This usually points to root causes that reflect internal misalignments and resource constraints.

• Disconnect between marketing and operations departments
• Lack of regular feedback loop on student needs and experiences
• Pressure on marketing departments to fix enrollment issues that result from shortcomings elsewhere in the college can lead to exaggerated claims
• Insufficient resources to fully implement exaggerated promises

Impact on College Perception:

Brand Exaggeration is the most damaging as the impact can be extremely difficult to repair: 

• Damaged Reputation: When students experience a reality that doesn’t match the college’s promises, it leads to disappointment and negative word-of-mouth.
• Eroded Trust: Inconsistencies between marketing claims and actual experiences lead to a loss of trust in the institution.
• Weakened Differentiation: If the college can’t deliver on its promise, it loses a potential competitive advantage in the education market.

Aligning Perception with Brand Expression: Case Studies

Strength-based community college brand strategy starts with experience as the foundational element to drive brands forward through developing their reputation and differentiation. Listed below are examples of colleges who have applied their strongest perception attributes to their brand’s expression:

Experience Example – Milwaukee Area Technical College

Milwaukee Area Technical College shared this simple video asking students at graduation what degree they are earning and where they are headed next. The strength of this short-form video lies in its clear representation of the outcomes for MATC (or any community college) students. It effectively captures the student experience and reputation, demonstrating that graduates secure jobs or transfer, thus fulfilling the college’s promise of positive student outcomes.

Reputation Example – St. Petersburg College

St. Petersburg College took a new approach to highlighting the college’s diverse range of offerings by adding a navigational element to their website for “Friends + Partners”. The navigation is subtle, but successfully showcases the college’s support of their community with direct examples of how they do this with community resources.  

This inherently communicates their “community” mission, aligning the external perception of the college being a part of the community with an expression of this on their website.

Differentiation Example – Coastline College

Coastline College offers excellent cybersecurity programs, but so do many other schools, so they showcased a unique industry designation on their home page, which would be a draw for students interested in cybersecurity programs. This presents a focused brand strategy that emphasizes unique selling points for their programs.

Regardless of the medium (website, video, or other collateral), each one of these college examples utilizes a deep understanding of their college’s perception to create a compelling brand expression strategy. In order to leverage strengths and overcome weaknesses in a college brand strategy, colleges can align perceptions to expressions by understanding the experience of their students, reputation, and differentiation.

Perception is Your Brand Builder

A successful community college brand strategy involves more than just marketing expression—it needs to build off of the college’s perception and be guided by a foundation rooted in the college’s mission and values. Building a strong brand means informing brand expression with the strengths of how your college is perceived in its experience, reputation, and differentiation. Ignoring perception and these elements can lead to diluted, undervalued, or exaggerated branding. These misalignments can undermine marketing efforts, waste resources, and impact enrollment negatively. Community colleges that excel in brand strategy understand and align perception to expression, highlighting and avoiding common branding blunders. Regularly evaluate your college’s brand strategy with a focus on perception, not just expression. By analyzing your institution’s experience, reputation, and differentiation, you can pinpoint areas for improvement, leverage strengths in your messaging, and enhance your community college’s brand.