Branding Lessons: MADmen Strategy for Developing a School Brand

A few posts back, I spoke of the TIME factor to develop a brand. Two to Three months seems to be the window in business and for schools

After that, live with the brand. Try it out internally before you even think about moving to Marketing the brand to the community.


As I write my book, "MADmen Principles to Inform School Principals", I'm using some respected frameworks from the PR/Marketing MADmen industry to help shape your powerful message: the value of bringing branding to your school. The book will be a quick read and user friendly. It's a desktop book guide for planning meetings and discussions around the topic of branding a public school. It can serve as a roadmap for introducing a branding concept to build identity for achievement in a school. Remember, if you go this route, you will be leading a new effort , linked to "New Thought" about connecting to "clients". It's a movement that can streamline language, attitude, and action related to genuinely LIVING a school identity/brand for student achievement'

School Branding is informed by the MADmen framework, but even in its definition, School Branding is different from Iconic Branding of COKE and COACH.

"School branding is the collective impressions that a community/clients holds about the school organization's service and product built through ongoing relationships."

Questions for MADmen Principals to explore and act upon are familiar on Madison Avenue, but not as recognized on Main Street...


What is Branding?
What is School Branding?
How to Define the School Brand?
How to Determine the Objectives of Use?
How to Define the Target Audience?
What are Barriers to School Branding?
How to Create a School Brand Packaging?

With these topics in hand, be ready to be A MADman, Mr./Ms Principal

Branding Lessons: Mining the Emotional Trigger to Define School Identity

Say Disney. Say NIke. Say Tiffany. Say Godiva. Now sit back and feel the magic. One of those brands or more than one has immediaely created an emotion in you.

Say Enron. Say Bernie Madoff.Say Bear Sterns .See the difference?

So If you are still wondering why you should care about understanding branding as a school leader, repeat the above exercise. See if the result doesn't lead you into valuing the power of branding and learning more about MADmen principles. See if you can think of brands, business or personal brands, that carry split second emotional response. They hold brand triggers. research says it takes about 9 seconds to know whether we want to engage with someone in face to face situations. Knowing if we want to engage with a brand though logo recognition is even quicker.

Say Paris Hilton. See what I mean?

If a school organization becomes more attuned to the market that it serves, it can use that awareness to create the school brand as an emotional trigger that promotes brand loyalty. Your chosen brand therefore, must not be taken on lightly. It must be a genuine match to the organization. It must be more than the logo. It must go immediately to a promise. The development of the brand should be intentionally mined over at least three months, so that when the process of BUILDING the brand is begun, the implied promise that the brand suggests will be easier to demonstrate, especially around key decision making times in a school calendar.

Branding is an implied promise. Getting the buy in from the community of teachers, students parents and administrators as they brand in developed is key. Going beyond the commercialization of schools, the emotional connection each of the groups has to the brand can make the promise easier to deliver. In schools, even more than in business, I think a key to finding a trigger is to mine the question, "Why do I like being here?" As a student, as an employee, as a homeowner...the question gets to emotional connection that can be the foundation of early talks on building the school brand.