Higher Education

The Brand Academy
For Colleges and Universities

The Brand Academy
For Colleges and Universities

With more than twenty years’ experience working with colleges and universities to uncover and position differentiating brands, BVK has developed a rigorous and reliable method of helping institutions stand out from the crowd through compelling messaging and authentic experiences. Through the Brand Academy, institutions can learn this approach, developing their capabilities and learning the required skills through a curriculum customized to your specific needs.

Brand Academy Workshops

The Brand Academy’s higher education workshops are organized into three series that explain BVK’s approach to developing and leveraging a differentiating brand position. The workshops are available as described, or they can be modified or combined in ways that best meet the needs of your college or university.

Brand 100 Series: Expression

Brand 200 Series: Experience

Brand 300 Series: Impact

Free Presentation: It Takes a Campus to Make a Brand

Brand 100 Series: Expression

The Basics of Brand Development

Learn the building blocks of a successful brand initiative. Helps to fill the gap in the absence of a full-service partner or better prepare your institution for a successful consulting engagement.

Brand 100 Series: Expression

The Basics of Brand Development

Learn the building blocks of a successful brand initiative. Helps to fill the gap in the absence of a full-service partner or better prepare your institution for a successful consulting engagement.

The Courses

Build internal support by learning the importance of brand in higher education and completing a SWOT analysis specific to your institution.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $10,000 plus travel

Evaluate your organizational readiness for a brand campaign by completing a Brand Readiness Assessment, including an action plan for addressing identified shortcomings.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $10,000 plus travel

Learn BVK’s three-step process to uncover and clarify your organizational identity, and create your own brand framework with a core value, positioning statement, and messaging pillars.

Format: 6-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $30,000 plus travel

Learn how to evaluate an existing brand and implement needed refinements by conducting your own Brand Health Study.

Format: 3-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $20,000 plus travel

Brand 200 Series: Experience

Living Your Brand

Expand your brand beyond marketing by communicating your identity through your actions, not just your words: how you teach and support students, how you engage alumni and stakeholders, how you solve community and societal problems.

The Courses

STEP 1: Align Your Strategy

Align your brand with your strategic planning to achieve genuine differentiation.

Locate gaps between your institution’s brand promise and the lived experience of your stakeholders to create a list of strategic opportunities to better live your brand.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $20,000 plus travel

Create brand value KPIs focused both on your brand messaging and brand experience, and a plan for collecting the data required to measure and improve performance.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

STEP 2: Align Your People

Leverage your brand internally to improve organizational culture and engage faculty and staff members.

Utilize your brand position internally to strengthen morale, improve employee hiring and retention, and build a collaborative campus culture.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

Live your brand in the classroom by engaging faculty members to create a Brand Experience Roadmap specific to their own (individual/department’s/college’s) teaching, scholarship, and community engagement.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

Improve student retention by evaluating the brand experiences associated with academic support, student life, financial aid, and campus climate.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

STEP 3: Align Your Communications

Be strategic with your brand communications across the organization.

Create a customized Brand Activation Toolkit to ensure that each of your colleges, departments, and units is communicating strategically and with a unified voice.

Format: 3-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $20,000 plus travel

Evaluate and revise key brand messaging to tailor your communication to the generational values and expectations of your unique prospective students.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $10,000 plus travel

Brand 300 Series: Impact

Differentiated Market Positioning

Maximize the impact of brand as a market positioning tool by aligning brand messaging with brand experience for each of your key audiences.

The Courses

Aligning Recruitment Communications with Brand

Create a matrix with brand-aligned messaging templates for use by all campus representatives involved in recruitment at all stages of the admissions funnel.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

Delivering a Brand Experience to Prospective Students

Create a strategic plan for delivering an improved brand experience to prospective students, from walk-in campus tours and day-long visits through admitted student events to summer orientations.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

Leverage your institutional brand to create unique messaging and authentic experiences for prospective donors, to improve both annual giving and capital campaigns.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

Create brand messaging and experiences tailored specifically to your local and regional stakeholders, including businesses and employers, educational partners, and politicians.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

Evaluate and improve your alumni engagement by developing brand experiences specifically tailored to these important stakeholders.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $15,000 plus travel

Create a strategic communications plan, with timeline and tactics, for leveraging your brand as a platform to strengthen your perception among higher education peers.s.

Format: 2-hour workshop, in-person or virtual
Pricing: $10,000 plus travel

Free Presentation

It Takes a Campus To Make a Brand

Learn how to build brand marketing partnerships with university leadership, faculty, admissions, alumni relations, and human resources in our FREE presentation, It Takes a Campus To Make a Brand.

Have a question? Want to learn more?

Meet the Brand Academy Experts

Mike Milligan

Tam Powell

SVP, Group Account Director

As a pioneer of higher education marketing at BVK, Tam focuses her efforts on how she and the higher education team can help clients break through the clutter. Tam is an expert in brand positioning and has authored countless whitepapers detailing the past, present and future of the education industry. Her mantra is “never stop learning,” and that’s exactly how she operates. Tam is responsible for all aspects of marketing, communications, planning and strategy on behalf of BVK’s broad portfolio of higher education clients across the country. As BVK’s higher education brand champion, she drives a culture of accountability, collaboration and excellence on behalf of her clients. Her relentless pursuit of creating impactful dialogues and innovative ideas make her a vital partner to BVK and its clients. Under Tam’s leadership, the education industry has recognized BVK as Best of Show in the Higher Education Marketing Awards, and multiple CASE Circle of Excellence Platinum Awards, among others.

Email Tam at tamalyn.powell@bvk.com

Mike Milligan

Greg Summers, PhD

Senior Advisor

Greg is a scholar of higher education and a former faculty member and administrator, with ten years serving as a university provost. In that capacity, Greg helped manage the many challenges facing higher education today. His experience includes everything from curricular reform, accreditation, and improving student recruitment and retention to advancing strategic plans, capital campaigns, new budget models, and institutional restructuring. At BVK, he helps colleges and universities maximize the impact of their brands, especially by cultivating authentic brand experiences to create truly differentiated market positioning (from recruitment through fundraising), improved internal culture, and more focused and successful strategic planning.

Email Greg at greg.summers@bvk.com