Branding on campus: Go Palefaces!

The following essay is the first part of a series that briefly explores the marketing and branding of US colleges and universities. I’ll post a few more essays throughout the month.

In what is probably not a very timely or original observation, I’ve noticed over the past decade the enormous amount energy and thinking with which US colleges and universities market and brand themselves, and this effort plays out in diverse ways. There are the more obvious efforts, such as the sheer number of logos and word marks that have been redesigned since 2000. Then there are more complex marketing dilemmas, such as the kind affecting national rankings, competitiveness, admissions, and various other administration concerns.

The number of schools with redesigned marks are so many, I won’t list them here, but the language accompanying the rollout of these marks rarely differs from one another—it’s almost as if the firm in New York that designs these things also sells a PR boilerplate for schools to use. The announcement a few years ago by California State University at Bakersfield is a perfect example of the platitudes echoed around the country when schools go live with their redesigns. In CSUB’s case, new president Horace Mitchell uttered the following, ahem, immortal words, as captured in a press release,

“I am delighted with the committee’s work,” Mitchell said. “Their efforts reflect our commitment to excellence, and their results represent our new vision and have improved our visual identity.

“We began this project because we wanted to better represent the university’s spirit and mission, and to establish a sense of distinctiveness. We wanted to offer a new and vibrant image for the campus, and to reinforce our identity. The committee has been very successful in this endeavor.

“Their work has shown respect for the traditions that have emerged at CSUB, and at the same time reinforced our unique identity. I’m sure the community will like the change as much as the committee members and I do.”

Oh, brother.

Sometimes, the logo and word-mark changes come on the heels of a change in the school’s mascot. Such changes have long been a part of the scene on campus, although, recently, they have more politically charged and emotional affairs. For example, how many folks remember what the Stanford University mascot/nickname was before they settled upon the Cardinal? For about 40 years, it was the Stanford Indians, but in a bout of nascent political correctness, the school changed it to Cardinal (the color, not the bird, as any Stanford grad will be quick to tell you) in the early 1970s, long before such a concern became a commonplace. Since then, several schools have changed their Native American mascots to inoffensive—and often, plain silly—alternatives. Miami University in Ohio, once the Redskins, is now the RedHawks (yuck!); the erstwhile Hurons of Eastern Michigan University are now the Eagles (do we really need another team called the Eagles?); and just last year, the University of Louisiana-Monroe changed their mascot from Indians to Warhawks (what the frack is a warhawk?). Naturally, there are numerous other examples.

Of course, what a school chooses as its mascot is its own business—and business is the operative word—but must they always choose the least interesting alternative? It’s almost always a hackneyed mascot used by a dozen other schools, or a goofy neologism that struck somebody—somewhere, somehow—as ‘cool’ and ‘different.’

And then there are schools that seem palsied by the all the choices. After dropping Warriors in the 1990s due to its purported political incorrectness (the University of Hawaii would disagree), Marquette had a hell of a time settling on a new name. It had adopted Warriors in the 1950s, and then shifted to Golden Eagles in 1994. But controversy brewed anew when some school trustees offered to donate $1 million each if the school would bring back the old Warriors mascot. In its predictable fit of righteous outrage, the school declined and, instead, decided to shift again to simply Gold, a move that angered students and alums because they were not consulted. Oy.

Ultimately, after a vote of all the stakeholders, the school chose the name it had for the past eleven years (Golden Eagles), prompting president Rev. Robert Wild to proclaim, “We did give the people a choice. They want tradition.” Some tradition. Tradition would dictate that Marquette vote on all this again around 2018.

Before one gets the impression that ditching and switching mascots is the exclusive preserve of schools with Native American mascots, consider Sonoma State University in California. Until 2002, it had what I considered to be one of the most original and interesting mascots of all US universities, but alas, some within the school’s community disagreed, and the name was changed to Seawolves (ugh!). The corresponding press release regarding the mascot change stated:

While there is a segment of constituents who would prefer to continue the use of the Cossack name, another group of the campus community, including some faculty and alumni, has long felt the Cossacks an inappropriate symbol due to their aggressive past.

“The Cossack mascot has served us for the 40 years of the University. The issue of the negative connotation of the Cossacks came up enough times that the possibilities for change needed to be explored. The Alternative Mascot Committee was charged by the Associated Students to come up with possible alternatives that we could then present to the President for consideration. We did that and he chose one of our alternatives,” said [student president Remy] Heng.

Cossacks are too aggressive for the shrinking violets at Sonoma State, but predatory animals that hunt in packs are fine. This leads us to the question: what the hell, then, is a seawolf, if not a wolf that hits the beach? The school, in the release linked above, claims it to be “a mythical creature,” that the name was inspired by Jack London’s book. The school’s Jack London Collection houses much memorabilia about London, well, you can connect the dots. Admittedly, this is a better derivation than most schools’ choices, and at the very least, those SSU students who desire an ‘aggressive’ mascot can allow themselves the notion that Seawolf refers to Anarhichas lupus, or perhaps the US Navy’s lethal class of attack submarine…or a wolf that enjoys beach volleyball. The case of Sonoma State does make one wonder what future lies ahead for the Notre Dame University Fighting Irish, the Iona College Gaels, the Furman Paladins, the Holy Cross Crusaders, and the University of Pennsylvania Quakers, let alone the Florida State University Seminoles, University of Illinois Fighting Illini, and the Central Michigan University Chippewas.

Not all changes in mascot are driven by political correctness; sometimes schools do make a change purely for marketing purposes, but in any event—whether changes result from PC or marketing—the search for a new mascot, and the branding related to it, is pretty much the same process. The aftermath of that process has not received much attention from scholars who, instead, prefer to pick at scabs. There has been a mountain of literature published on the ‘mascoting’ of Native Americans since 1996, mostly from the scholarly denizens of sociology departments and allied fields, but relatively little published—by economists—on the economic effects of mascot changes, no matter the motivations for such changes. It would be wonderful to know, for instance, how Hofstra University has fared since dropping Flying Dutchmen for the Pride. I’ve not come across many cost-benefit analyses, let alone a general meta-review of the relevant literature.

Warning: Bleg Alert. If any kind person out there in cyberspace can point to—or better yet, supply—articles of this ilk, I’d be much obliged.