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Branding- Don’t destroy your niche

Building a brand is what any business wants to do. From Coca- Cola to McDonalds, every major business success has a brand recognizable to its customers. Of course, there are times when trusted brands need a makeover, but what happens when the makeover goes too far?

The University of Sydney is currently going through just such a situation.

Looking to upgrade their look and stay competitive with other top universities around the world, the university appointed a management branding committee to upgrade the university’s appeal. One of the first things the committee did was insist that each department within the university lose its unique identity.

No longer would each department use its own letterhead. A fortune was spent on replacing department letterheads with the new standard university letterhead featuring the new, unpopular insignia.

Departments were also subject to increased paperwork, higher costs and little accountability for those costs thanks to other branding recommendations.

Handbooks were issued explaining how faculty and other staff should speak to students, a useless expenditure for a university that has been able to speak to students for more than 150 years without help from a management handbook. More importantly, class size rose and educational quality has gone down accordingly.

Ranked as one of the top universities in the world, The University of Sydney did not need to undergo a major change to its brand to service its community and students as it had always done.

The university had a major flaw in its vision. Rather than looking at ways to lower costs for students, who have seen tuition rise exponentially, the University made a decision to try to fix something that was already working, their brand.

Was the brand really the problem? It wasn’t before, but it is now, as the university losses part of its historic appeal and pays for the right to do so in the process.

This is an important lesson for business owners to understand. Remember, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Always test and measure any marketing campaign before you start. Don’t dive into a strategy that will cost you money, productivity, quality and, possibly customers, like the University of Sydney did.

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