Category: blogging

On meeting some friends for the first time

The end of September marked my seven-year anniversary on Twitter. Perhaps not coincidentally, the anniversary occurred on the first day of the 2014 Aggregate Conference, which I was fortunate enough to attend at the invitation of a long-time social networking pal, Ron Bronson, who curated this wonderful little conference.

Ron and I go way back, in Internet years.

Not long after I started this blog in 2005, our digital paths crossed somewhere and we started sharing ideas online about higher ed, digital culture, books and our mutual love of music. (The higher ed blogging community was pretty small back then.) We shared ideas via comments on each other’s blogs. I’d read something on Ron’s blog that would spark my interest, and occasionally I would riff on his idea, if not outright pilfer it.

Eventually more of the discussion moved to Twitter and Facebook.  A few years ago, I had an idea to pull together a group of fellow music lovers from the higher ed sphere (there are many of us out there) to create a collaborative group for online music discussion. Ron was one of the first I contacted, even though we don’t always agree on what constitutes good music. But that’s part of the fun of it. I get to learn about new music from Ron, and maybe he even learns something from me in return.

Through the years and the digital ether, Ron and I became friends. But I’d never met Ron, person-to-person, until the Aggregate Conference last Sunday. I met a lot of other longtime social media friends that night and throughout the conference, too.

I’ve written before in this space about how Twitter is my go-to learning network. The people and organizations that I follow are founts of knowledge. We have some great discussions on that network and exchange ideas about all sorts of topics. I think Twitter has made me smarter, thanks to the people I’ve learned from there.

It’s also expanded my network of friends, many of whom I’ve never met in the flesh. That was the case with Ron and several others at the conference — too many to list here.

But there are still many more friends I haven’t yet met in the flesh whom I’ve gotten to know through Twitter. It’s a very cool thing. It’s also kind of weird. But sometimes, cool and weird work out.

Branding rules in Cornell’s ‘breaking the rules’ campaign for engineering

Cornell Engineering's Brand Ambassador Kit focuses on "breaking the rules"
Cornell Engineering’s Brand Ambassador Kit focuses on “breaking the rules”

Maybe it’s because I work at a STEM-focused university where engineering has been a big deal for nearly 150 years.

Or maybe it’s because I’m a geek for stories about brand strategies in higher education.

Maybe (probably) it’s a combination. But this tweet from Allen Ward of Cornell University’s engineering school caught my attention.

The magazine article discusses the rationale behind a recent rebranding of Cornell’s College of Engineering. Or as they like to call it on their website, Cornell Engineering — no reference to “college of.” This is part of the brand strategy, for according to the engineering alumni magazine article, “Simply connecting the word ‘engineering’ to the reputation of Cornell changes the outcome dramatically” in terms of equating the college with the reputation of Cornell.

I was intrigued by this brand strategy because, at first blush, I wouldn’t think that Cornell’s engineering programs to have much of a brand identity problem. They’re baked in to a 150-year-old Ivy League university, so the prestige of the Cornell name is in the engineering college’s DNA. The latest U.S. News & World Report rankings place Cornell Engineering seventh among all doctorate-granting engineering schools. Furthermore, “The college … [has] world-class faculty, students, staff, and alumni working at the frontiers of their disciplines in fields as diverse as nanobiotechnology and satellite design,” the article points out. But market research revealed that “the broader public didn’t know much about” the college.

Then came the article’s money quote, from the college’s dean, Lance Collins:

There is a humility here at Cornell Engineering that might be called humility to a fault. I realized that we need to tell our story more effectively.

This seems to be a universal concern among leaders of STEM-focused institutions. Our hard-working engineers and scientists are more concerned about solving problems and making things than about promoting what they do.

So Cornell Engineering hired Dawn McWillliams, its first marketing director, and a marketing firm to build a brand strategy and get the word out. They developed a brand identity around the theme of “breaking the rules.” (This notion of rule-breaking was not immediately accepted by the cautions engineering faculty. As McWilliams says in the article: “Some people raised the question: Do we really want to be telling 18-year-olds to break the rules? In the end, it was good to hear their concerns because they helped us sharpen our message.”)

A branding microsite for the college provides a wealth of information to help the college students, staff and faculty share the brand. It goes into great detail — all the way down to specific phrases. The humble but (very likely) detail-oriented engineers at Cornell ought to appreciate the site’s level of detail.

In addition to the marketing firm, Cornell Engineering has hired a creative firm to develop some promotional videos, like this one:

There’s a lot to like about Cornell Engineering’s approach with the new brand rollout. It emphasizes strong visuals, marshaling brand ambassadors among students, alumni, staff and faculty, and content marketing (i.e., storytelling). Yet as with all marketing campaigns, the storytelling must be informed by listening. The humble engineers of Cornell and their leader, Dean Collins, must do more than tell their story more effectively. They must be sure that those they want to hear the story are listening.

Overall, this approach to branding doesn’t break any new ground. But it appears to be well-thought-out and well-planned.

To break the rules, you first have to know the rules. And it seems that Cornell Engineering know the rules well.