When a Sub-Brand Confuses

I co-led the strategy and research—insights research with students, competitive analysis of the continuing-studies landscape, and brand-articulation interviews with leadership and faculty—to uncover the "why" the move was supposed to express, and to express it in a way that felt authentic both to SCS and to the parent institution.

In our research, prospective and current students expressed confusion about whether the SCS sub-brand represented the "real" Georgetown. The confusion extended back to the main campus, where the purpose of SCS within the parent institution remained unclear. A bold physical statement had been made; the question of what the statement meant was still open.

The Work

The research surfaced an SCS purpose that was real but had not been articulated: a Georgetown education for students whose lives, careers, and circumstances did not fit the traditional four-year residential model. I co-authored and designed a Brand Expression Guide that summarized that purpose in an actionable way, with positioning, voice, messaging architecture, and visual direction the school could apply across digital, physical, and person-to-person touchpoints.

On that foundation, I led the design of a new mobile-first SCS website, updating the visual identity, UX, and content strategy to engage students and the wider community in the SCS purpose. I collaborated with the team's technical partners on the integration points between the website, enrollment marketing, and CRM communication plans, so the brand promise the website made was the same promise the follow-up communications kept.

Results

Enrollment grew 10%. The Brand Expression Guide was adopted across SCS's digital, physical, and person-to-person communications, giving the institution a single, coherent answer to the "what does SCS mean?" question that the move had raised.

The Takeaway

A new building certainly sends a signal, but what is it? When a physical space substitutes for a fully articulated promise, the promise is left to be inferred from whatever experience people happen to have. This is a particularly perilous issue for a sub-brand, which offers the least powerful identity to shape audience understanding. Brand work does two important things: it gives audiences a frame for what a space, a digital experience, or an in-person interaction means, and it sets the experiential promise the institution intends to keep for the people it serves in all those places.

Role

Strategist
Researcher
Designer

Key Deliverables

Strategic Recommendations
Brand Expression Guide
CRM Comm Plans
Mobile-First Website