Volume 2, Number 4

Case Study: Oglethorpe University

A small, liberal arts university with a national reputation for academic excellence, Atlanta-based Oglethorpe University is faced with increasingly fierce competition for students and donors. Georgia's HOPE scholarship pays full tuition and fees for many of the state's students, but offers significantly less to students choosing private institutions such as Oglethorpe. In addition, Oglethorpe, like other liberal arts institutions, is challenged with proving the relevancy of a liberal arts college in a society where parents' chief worry is whether or not their children will receive the kind of education that will lead directly to a job.

Our Solution: Establish the Brand

To compete against "free," Oglethorpe recognized that it needed a strong, well-articulated market position that clearly differentiated it from other colleges and universities. Working in tandem with the university's PR department and Board of Trustees' marketing committee, see see eye used existing research to contribute to the development of the university's first-ever brand promise statement. In addition, see see eye redesigned two important communications tools that were among the first purveyors of the new brand look and message: Oglethorpe's annual report and its Web site.

The annual report emphasized Oglethorpe's ability to provide the best of both worlds to students: a small, intimate and academically challenging learning environment located within a large, cosmopolitan city.

The Web site was reorganized and designed to make it easy for a variety of stakeholders – parents, prospective students, alumni, faculty and others – to go directly to those sections that most pertained to their needs. The look and feel of the site captured the yin/yang quality of the brand position and created an engaging message by featuring photos and quotes from actual students.

While logos, collateral materials and Web sites are important representations of an organization's brand, they are not the brand. A brand is a perception of a company or organization, formed through a stakeholder's experience with its business, products, services or people.

How well does your organization understand its brand? How well do your identity and print and online communications represent it? Contact Don Mitchell to find out how see see eye can help your organization.

About Us

see see eye is an award-winning graphic design firm that helps Fortune 1000 companies and other organizations build stakeholder confidence. The firm uses strategic creative design and effective message development to produce annual reports, branded collateral programs, Web sites and other communications targeted to investors, customers, employees and community members. Additional information can be found at the company's Web site, www.seeseeeye.com.