Brand Strategy & Management

The SUNY Adirondack rebrand by far ranks as the most exciting project I’ve experienced in a very long time.  When I arrived at Adirondack Community College (ACC) in the summer of 2009, I was presented with an interesting challenge.  ACC had traditionally been known as a two-year, liberal arts transfer school, a reputation that came at the expense of its career-path business, healthcare, and technology programs.  Like other community colleges, it also had a solid “13th Grade” reputation among high school students.  When asked about ACC, a frequent response any teenager would give was “Anybody Can Come”.  At the same time, the college was experiencing negative public relations due to the fact that its accreditation agency had placed its accreditation on probation and warning.  And increased competition from regional and online colleges, combined with an ongoing declines in local high school graduates, made it clear that ACC needed a plan.  And fast.

When the college launched its current Strategic Plan, one of the top priorities was a new brand identity.  What that would be was not described.When I started at ACC in the summer of 2009, the branding project became my top priority.  Like any solid marketing project, we developed a team of internal and external experts to help conduct objective market research.  While we found a constant appreciation for the quality of the college’s academic programs, we found a complete embarrassment in being associated with the college’s current brand.  In fact, students were more likely to wear clothing with their high school mascots than they would their current college mascot.

There was also another fascinating fact that emerged from the market research.  Even though ACC had been a campus of the State University of New York since its founding in 1961, few students, parents, residents, and businesses knew of the connection.  On top of that, the SUNY brand name tested extremely favorably in surveys and focus groups — local residents were proud of their state university.  When the brand concept “SUNY Adirondack” was tested, all audiences instantly embraced it.  In fact, we even had people referring to us by the new name before our college board had decided to approve the new identity.  We went from starting the project research to board approval in under 4 months, a timeline almost unheard of in committee-heavy, bureaucratic public organizations.

On April 1, 2010, Adirondack Community College officially became SUNY Adirondack.  Adoption of the name was almost instant.  In fact, a planned 12-month awareness campaign had been condensed to just a third of that length.  The following fall, SUNY Adirondack experienced record-high enrollments.  The rebrand continues to position SUNY Adirondack at a competitive advantage:  no other SUNY campus in the New York Capital Region uses the SUNY name in its primary brand.  To me, that’s like owning a McDonald’s franchise and not putting out the golden arches.  The SUNY Adirondack rebrand became more than just a name and logo change, it helped to launch a new, forward-looking era for the college.  Combined with a new Strategic Enrollment Management plan, SUNY Adirondack became a competitive force in upstate New York’s crowded higher education landscape.