Stories bring us together. Through storytelling, we share our past, describe who we are, and reveal who we want to be. Just as each individual has a story to tell, so too does the university. The University of Alberta’s story needs to be shared, understood, and valued by our many communities both here at home and much further afield. To do that, we must understand how that story is being shared and received today. That’s why University Relations is in the process of examining the university’s public reputation and profile. Vice-President (University Relations) Jacqui Tam sat down with The Quad to explain the project.
Why is the U of A undergoing a review and redevelopment of its brand now?
The U of A hasn’t undergone a process of brand redevelopment or refresh for a number of years. The last time, to my knowledge, was prior to the centenary in 2008. From time to time, all organizations and institutions should think about themselves and whether or not their brand platform reflects who they are today. They need to consider how others see them, how they see themselves, and how they are telling their story through words, visuals, design, etc.
We want to understand how aware both Albertans and Canadians are of the U of A and how they perceive us. Not surprisingly, we anticipate seeing differences between these groups.
The first step in the process is a brand audit. What’s involved?
A brand audit begins with comprehensive market analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data. We’re working with The Strategic Council, a firm which is familiar with the post-secondary landscape and often conducts market research for universities.
Throughout the fall, the qualitative research was completed. This involved close to a dozen focus groups and 59 one-on-one interviews. We heard from our alumni, students, prospective students, members of the general public, as well as faculty and staff. Community and post-secondary education leaders, other PSE experts, select members of the media and Alberta government officials, and other key stakeholders also offered their thoughts through this process. Whether as part of a focus group or interview, those who participated provided their perspectives on the U of A — its strengths, attributes, reputation, and personality.
This week, we’re moving onto the quantitative phase of the audit with the distribution of online surveys. A small number of surveys went out yesterday to the general Alberta population, and over the next several days, we will be ramping up the distribution right across the country.
We want to continue to hear from our internal community too, so online surveys will soon be sent to all faculty, staff, and students, to all members of the Board of Governors, Senate, and Alumni Council, and to a representative sample of alumni and donors. This has been a major effort and I’d like thank our colleagues in Governance, Senate, Human Resource Services, the Registrar’s Office, and Alumni Affairs for their help.
What do you hope to learn from the data collected?
There are three main things we hope to learn:
First, we want to establish baseline measures for perceptions and attitudes about the U of A.
Second, the data will help us understand which attributes the U of A “owns” and which ones we share with other post-secondary institutions. In other words, we hope to learn what differentiates the U of A from other universities.
And third, we want to understand what our current reputation is and identify areas of potential reputational growth.
Why is it important to hear from faculty, staff, and students in this process?
Input from our own community is absolutely vital. We need to know what we, ourselves, think about what we do and why we do it. Who are we at our core? What are our own self-perceptions?
It may transpire that the data tells us that the external community has much different perceptions of us than we have of ourselves. That doesn’t mean that we should change the U of A to match their perception, but this data will help us understand how we can change how we communicate so that external audiences understand us better.
There’s absolutely no way we can do this work without hearing from students, staff, and faculty. So I want to thank everyone in advance for taking the time to do the survey.
Can we expect to see a rebranding of the U of A as a result of this research?
From my perspective, I prefer using the term “brand refresh” rather than “rebranding” to describe this initiative. In my view a brand truly reflects who you are as an institution. A brand accrues over a long period time. There are times when an institution may fundamentally change who or what it is, but I don’t believe the U of A is in the process of making that kind of change. What we’re doing is trying to understand who we are today so that we can reflect, tell, and represent our strengths, values, and unique attributes with more precision and greater impact tomorrow and into the future.
In For the Public Good, the U of A community committed to “build and support an integrated, cross-institutional strategy to demonstrate and enhance the University of Alberta’s local, national and international story, so that it is shared, understood, and valued by the full University of Alberta community and its many stakeholders.” You can contribute to this by participating in the online survey later this month.For the Public Good, the U of A community committed to “build and support an integrated, cross-institutional strategy to demonstrate and enhance the University of Alberta’s local, national and international story, so that it is shared, understood, and valued by the full University of Alberta community and its many stakeholders.” You can contribute to this by participating in the online survey later this month.