It’s been more than 6 hours since the chancellor of the university I work for announced the proposed new name for our campus. It’s been 24 hours or so since we gave our online alumni advance notice of the plan and told them the proposed name. Since then there’s been a relative feeding frenzy on our Name Change Conversations blog, where alumni and students have fired off their views in the comments section. Now I feel the pain Wired‘s online editors must have experienced after announcing the site’s extreme makeover last week.
Meanwhile, back at the university still known as UMR, comments about the proposed name change are running about 8-to-1 in opposition. These early results have led one campus official to question why we continue to keep the site running. I reminded this person of our original reasons for creating this blog in the first place: to provide “useful information about the proposed name change,” “a forum for discussion about the issues being raised by the proposal” and “an avenue for providing up-to-the-minute information about the proposal.” I also mentioned something about transparency, and as I said that word my mind clicked back to a post on Strumpette that said transparency and all this conversational marketing crap is stupid, or that PR is too stupid to do conversational marketing, or something along those lines. And for a moment, as I sifted through the critiques of some of our most passionate and pissed-off alumni and students, I began to wonder if maybe Strumpette and the administrator aren’t right. I even wondered whether having a blog like this was actually the wrong thing for the organization at this point.
It was just a fleeting thought, a weak moment.
Still later, between comment moderation, I checked in on the Marcom Blog to find a post that brought me back to my senses. The post was an amplification of earlier remarks the blogger, Allan Jenkins, had posted about Dee Rambeau’s decision to stop blogging. Jenkins takes on three “myths” Rambeau leveled in his parting shot. And what Jenkins has to say is so spot on — at least for me, at least today — than I am cutting and pasting the bulk of his post for your reading pleasure. (But you really should clicky-click and read Jenkins’ original post, just to give the Marcom Blog some extra traffic.)
Let’s take each myth in turn, and then add them up.
Communicators control corporate communication. Wrong. Dee seems to think corporate communicators are in a position to “allow” or “not allow” senior executives to blog. They never are. Never have been. Never will be.
The good corporate communicator is, at best, a trusted adviser to the CEO. And that is a wonderful place to be, but the communicator who thinks she is going to “allow” or “not allow” the CEO to blog or speak at a convention, etc, is demented.
C-level executives shouldn’t be allowed to communicate on their own hook. Wrong. Many C-level managers are great spokespersons for their companies: they know the products and markets, and are enthusiastic. We all know that; that’s why we try to get managers interviewed in Fortune or onto a speaker’s list at a convention.
So why Dee thinks these same managers shoudn’t blog is beyond me. As Mark Cuban points out, why spend an hour a week in interviews that the journalist screws up, when you could just spend an hour a week blogging? [Ooh! That’s good. score one for Cuban. – ed.]
Maybe Dee thinks Fortune interviews and convention speeches are done by the PR department.
Communication needs of public and private companies are vastly different. Wrong.
Dee says executives of public (traded on the stockmarket) companies especially should stay away from blogs. That’s surely because he knows a blogger could affect investor sentiment.
Well, yes, a blogging executive could. Just as he or she could affect investor sentiment in a dozen other ways. Why blogging is singled out is beyond me.
But Dee misses a far bigger trend: investors increasingly matter less. Money is cheap; for most companies, it is instantly available. Especially for newer, growing public companies, stock market price is largely irrelevant.
And now to, in Sullivanese, the “money quote”:
The scarcest input today is, in fact, people: employees and customers. Employees gravitate to companies they feel an affinity for. Customers gravitate to companies they feel an affinity for. Who’s behind those companies? Invariably, it’s one or several senior managers who are good public communicators. Who can make employees, potential employees, prospects and customers feel welcome at the company.
The same could be said, I think, for educational institutions. Students and former students have an affinity for their schools. In an environment like UMR’s, which is a technological research university, we should use technology to our advantage and strengthen those affinities.
So, the Name Change Conversations blog, and this “c-level executive” blogger, will continue until both blog and blogger have served their purpose. The conversation is only getting started.
Andy writes! 
Rebranding a university is much harder than rebranding a company. With a university the stakeholders feel much more ownership of the branding than the stakeholders in a company.
Think about it… how many students shell out hundreds of dollars for the privilege of advertising the university on their chest, backpack, notebooks, car plates. How about alumni?
Most employees want the company to give them branded merchandise, not have them buy it. Most retirees don’t sport the brand like alumni of a university will and do.
I hope your university’s rebranding goes smoothly. It can be tough!
Chris Brown
Branding & Marketing blog
brandandmarket.blogspot.com
Hang in there, Andy :-)
Your post got me thinking. I guess it’s normal for current students and alums to be against the change. The name of your institution is at the core of their individual identity (where did you graduate from?).
A bit as if I asked you to change your last name. It would take time for you to agree and then get used to it.
But, then, when my mother married my father, she did change her name for his. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t use her maiden name anymore: it’s still her name. And, for my sis and me, her last name is my father’s name.
Ok, so where do I want to go with all this basic genealogy?
I guess that your name change problem could find a solution in the way some families handle theirs.
A tagline or a compound name including UMR might be what your alums and current students’ would like to be reassured and lift their opposition (but again, I haven’t studied closely the proposition so you might have already offered this).
It would also reassure the new generation of students, too.
Some brands don’t change overnight, but do incremental changes in their names (I’ve seen that in the recent case of mergers). More and more websites are also redesigned incrementally.
If it’s not an option, you could also try to invite admitted students and parents to this discussion. They are the ones that would get the instant benefits of the name change (without losing their identity). They are about to become part of this community and represent their future, so their voice should also be counted.
Chris – I agree with your point that the stakeholders of universities feel much more connection with their institutions than do stakeholders of other organizations.
Karine – Your points are well taken. One challenge our alumni association will face has to do with how it will rebrand. Currently, the association is known as “the MSM-UMR Alumni Association.” (The “MSM” referring to UMR’s original name, which was the University of Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, which was then shortened to Missouri School of Mines. Are you still with me?) The association will need to determine what name it should take if a new name is granted by our governing board.