Tag: hungry

OWU’s branding platform presented to senators

WCSA crest. Photo courtesy of the owu website.
WCSA crest. Photo courtesy of the owu website.

After short reports by the Wesleyan Council on Student Affairs (WCSA) committee chairs,  Will Kopp presented OWU’s new publicity strategies to the Oct. 12 full senate.

Kopp, Ohio Wesleyan’s chief communications officer, calls the fresh approach to marketing the “OWU Branding Platform.” Changes include a major overhaul of the website, updated promotional materials sent out to prospective students and alumni and physical modifications to campus.

Facing a declining enrollment, Kopp and his office of about seven full-time staffers asked why OWU wasn’t drawing students. “Research showed that OWU was not students’ No. 1 choice,” he said. “There was no emotional connection for them. We had a lack of identity in the marketplace.”

The new identity is all about impact.

“We wanted to tell the OWU story in a bold, compelling way,” said Kopp. “It’s a crowed marketplace out there. We had to be bold, to stand out, to highlight our strengths and to differentiate us from all our competitors. We wanted to increase enrollment right now.”

Focus groups were organized and an outside branding consultant, MindPower, was called in. After only two months, the communications office settled on a theme: hunger. Kopp emphasized that this theme is encapsulated in a metaphor, not a tagline.

“OWU students are hungry,” Kopp said. “They are insatiable problem solvers, they feast on a bounty of interconnected experiences. Basically, OWU students are hungry to get involved.”

When he had reached the end of his slideshow, Kopp asked for questions. When that didn’t get any response, he asked for complaints.

Sophomore Areena Arora, chair of the academic affairs committee asked if “we are using ‘Opposite of Ordinary’ at all anymore?”

Kopp said that no, the former tagline would not be used in the future.

Senator Billy George, a senior, asked if there was “anywhere online I can find out more about the OWU connection? Because I still don’t understand it.”

Kopp said that the current website has a wealth of information about the OWU Connection and that the new website will have even more.

Senior Emma Drongowski, vice president of WCSA, asked if there had been “any response or feedback from students so far?”

“Yes,” Kopp said, “on social media it has been overwhelmingly positive. Lots of students and parents have been seen taking pictures with the new banners and putting them online. We even had one of the city managers of Delaware, whose son is starting to look at colleges, say that the OWU promotional piece they got in the mail was far better than other schools’.”

Kopp concluded his presentation–and the full senate meeting–by saying that school visits were up, a trend he hopes continues.

OWU’s marketing: a banquet of changes

Advertisement for OWU using its new metaphor of hunger. The student featured in the ad is Aletta Doran '17. Photo courtesy of the OWU website.
Advertisement for OWU using its new metaphor of hunger. The student featured in the ad is Aletta Doran ’17. Photo courtesy of the OWU website.

Are you hungry for excellence? Ravenous to learn? Have an insatiable appetite?

Ohio Wesleyan’s marketing team has chosen the theme of hunger to create a new, bold look for promotional materials, the website and campus itself.

“Everyone knows what being hungry feels like, but we’re trying to take that beyond the belly to hunger in your heart and hunger in your mind,” Will Kopp, the chief communications officer of OWU said. “It’s that passion and fire that a coach wants their players to have, that an employer wants their new hire to have. That’s hunger and that’s what we saw here with the students.”

OWU decided to make these changes in an effort to increase enrollment, a statistic that has been on the decline for the past few years.

The communications team, led by Kopp, met with focus groups, students and faculty to figure out how to present the school in a different way and to make everyone proud to be a Bishop.

“Students talked about everything they’re involved in. You come to Ohio Wesleyan and you want to do this, you want to do that,” Kopp said. “They want to do everything.”

The involvement of students in clubs, athletics and academics across campus led Kopp to the metaphor. The team even talked to prospective students who chose not to come to OWU to figure out the reasons.

“There wasn’t an emotional connection and they didn’t get a feel of what OWU was about,” Kopp said. “We weren’t the top choice for a lot of the students that came here.”

Kopp is not a fan of slogans, which is why “Opposite of Ordinary” is no longer OWU’s official tagline. Instead of having one line describe OWU, they created multiple phrases to capture student spirit. There are 33 new banners across campus, all with different sayings that line up with the theme. Kopp was careful to not overdo it. Only three of those banners use the word “hungry.”

“That’s enough to get across the metaphor,” he said.

Along with a new marketing look, OWU is changing social media, the website and mailings they send out to high school students.

Jessica Vogel, the head of social media, uses the different platforms to engage students and tell Ohio Wesleyan’s story.

“My main goal is to tell the story of the university, of the students, of the alumni in the most engaging way possible,” Vogel said.

One feature of the new website will be an Instagram feed that runs along the bottom. Students will be able to populate the feed with their own photos by using hashtags.

“The students here are so talented,” she said. “We’re really hoping they will populate that with their images.”

Students are hoping their peers will use the hashtags as well.

“It’s a good idea because Instagram is so popular right now,” senior Gunnar Bloecher said. “I just hope people actually used it.”

When starting this project, Kopp’s main objective was to be different and bold.

“No other school says anything about being ravenous.”