CU in the City

Challenge

Despite a successful rebrand and multi-year external advertising strategy, market research and stakeholder input revealed that CU Denver continued to lack clear marketplace differentiation with its local and regional competition. With the on-boarding of new campus leadership, the opportunity to reaffirm and reinvigorate the university’s brand could not be ignored.

Solution

An intensive listening tour was conducted with key stakeholders, including students, employees, alumni and area influencers. The qualitative and quantitative feedback received during this year-long effort informed the overall direction of the brand evolution, including revisions to the existing brand platform, personality and goals.

The resulting brand essence, “CU in the City,” was both a future-focused evolution and nod to the university’s history, tradition and deep communal connections with the city it calls home.

Taking advantage of previously-planned media buys, the initial deliverables were focused towards external advertising. Creative strategy, development and delivery was accomplished over an intensive 60-day period through an Agile-based process, engagement with senior leadership and active participation from external agency, video and audio production partners.

The creative strategy emphasized the brand’s personality by featuring authentic and diverse student, faculty and alumni talent interacting with Denver’s vibrant and dynamic urban environments.

Imagery and video relied on a mix of black & white, color and gold-toned content to display CU Denver’s people and places in ways that were unique, memorable and engaging. Messaging focused on connecting talent with the city around them.

The revised brand was unveiled at an on-campus launch event, as well as a as well a series of internal presentations, town halls and stakeholder meetings.

Results

In its first year, the CU in the City brand was very well-received. Internally, school and unit-level communications were quick to adopt the new direction in their messaging and creative tactics, leading to increased audience engagement and lower confusion across the range of customer experiences.

Externally, audiences responded equally well, including a 70% overall campaign recall, with most responders mentioning the visual style and imager. 72% of respondents correctly recalled the CU in the City slogan and attributed it to the university.