Shipping Up to Brand Camp — Building Investment in Your Higher Ed Brand

The success of a higher ed brand is not found in the slick vendor deck stacked with messaging pillars and color palettes. Nor is it found in the splashy campaigns tacked onto the sides of buildings and buses. 

Rather, the success of your brand is found in its day-to-day implementation, among dozens and dozens of university staff who have been charged with some role to this end.

A consistent and impactful brand implementation is core to the success of so many other things — recruitment, fundraising, internal morale, reputation management, community outreach, and so on. How can an institution marshal so many disparate people to this critical purpose?

One approach has paid significant dividends for many institutions. Pack your steamer trunks — we’re going to Brand Camp!

What Is Brand Camp?

"Brand Camp" events are typically half- or full-day events dedicated to immersing participants in the university brand. The goals tend to include:

• Fostering more consistent brand communications among staff who hold marketing and communications responsibilities on campus
• Building alignment to brand and licensing guidelines and best practices
• Sharing updates on changes to the brand strategy, standards, and/or related processes
• Strengthen relationships and lines of contact between institutional brand stewards and university staff

Attendees may be full-time marcom staffers, or folks who have communications tasks in their purview among other responsibilities. Some institutions even open their brand camp up to any member of the university community who may be interested in learning about the brand. (If you have multiple campuses, it’s a great opportunity to bring everybody together around a shared purpose.)

"We aimed to equip attendees with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to represent Berea’s identity effectively," said Bee Lakes, strategic marketing manager at Berea College, of their Brand Camp event. "Key objectives included improving external communication practices, enhancing collaboration, and embedding brand education into the institution’s culture."

Some institutions also use brand camp events as an opportunity to bring licensed or approved vendors to campus to connect with campus marketers and promote their services, as well as receive training on institution brand guidelines or licensing updates.

Brand camps typically have a range of breakout sessions on brand-related topics. A survey of recent brand camp agendas across a range of institutions revealed session topics including:

• Messaging
• Canva
• Google Analytics 4
• News headline writing
• Usage of name, marks, logos, etc.
• Social media best practices
• Graphic design
• Email marketing & templates
• Photography and videography
• Trademark and licensing

How to Make Brand Camp a Success

Heather Ducote of Virginia Tech emphasizes the importance of having specific goals that your brand camp is intending to serve, and building programming around those goals.

Lakes echoes this. "The success of Berea College’s Brand Camp lies in its thoughtful approach to addressing a clear need," she said. "By identifying the challenges around inconsistent branding and communication, we designed a solution that was both intentional and engaging."

A brand camp event also presents an opportunity to invite an external speaker — maybe from a trusted vendor partner (like OHO!) or a marketing leader from a local company — to provide a broader industry or disciplinary perspective.

Another important thing to emphasize? Making brand camp fun. In addition to providing relevant content, enhance the experience for attendees with giveaways, lunch, open networking time, free headshots, a bookstore pop-up shop, and other value-adds. (UVA, for example, served s’mores!)

"Our goal was to make brand education enjoyable and accessible, rather than just another mandatory task,” said Lakes of Berea College’s summer camp-themed brand camp event, which combined interactive workshops, gamified sessions, and actionable resources. "Brand Camp focused on real-world applications and interactive learning and transformed abstract brand guidelines into actionable strategies, significantly improving our brand consistency.

Berea brand camp attendees received useful goodies such as a laptop sticker listing approved hex codes and fonts. Such giveaways "further amplified excitement and fostered a sense of pride among attendees, while also serving as a subtle tool to promote future events," said Lakes.

The success of a brand camp can be tied to how robust the institution’s marketing efforts — and thus, its marketing needs — are.

"It is a huge undertaking and is not something that can be done unless the university is making huge strides across multiple modalities each year," says John Rizzo, Director of Creative Services, Brand, Trademarks and Licensing at Miami University (Ohio). "Having the diversity of work, backed by strong inter-division relationships has made it successful [for Miami University].

The success of a brand camp can also be directly tied to the success of campus teams in bringing the brand to life, creating a positive reinforcement loop.

"Lots of hard work from the team each year pushes what the university can offer," says Rizzo. "This allows us to have a completely new schedule each year, bringing new ideas, opportunities and resources to the campus communicators."

Another important piece of the puzzle is to not have Brand Camp be an isolated event, but rather be part of a continuous rhythm of brand-related dialogue. University of New Mexico, for example, regularly hosts virtual "brand lab" office hours. This type of access, paired with clear processes for relevant marketing processes and easily accessible, current brand standards, helps make sure the learnings from Brand Camp can be implemented all year long.

Berea College hosted their inaugural brand camp in August 2024, and this year’s event nearly hit capacity within 24 hours of registration opening, reinforcing the value an event like this brings to the college and its brand marketers, Lake said.

"This response [to our Brand Camp] proves that when branding is paired with creativity and purpose, it not only resonates with audiences but also builds momentum for continued success."

Seattle University

A Holistic Approach to Digital Branding

View Case Study about Seattle University

Benefits of Brand Camp

For Berea College, the results from their Brand Camp have been extremely positive. In anonymous feedback surveys, attendees rated the Berea College event highly, reporting increased confidence in applying brand guidelines. 

"Communication practices became more consistent, with content better reflecting Berea’s core values and identity. Departments collaborated more effectively, producing cohesive messaging that resonated with key audiences, including prospective students, alumni, and supporters," explains Lakes. "Marketing and Communications staff are now recognized as subject matter experts and receive more outreach for collaboration and guidance."

These events can empower campus marketers with information relevant to their respective roles, while also keeping them connected to the brand in action. (A mailing list, like the one Johns Hopkins University maintains, can be a great way to stay connected to your university brand communicators year-round.)

"We have been able to keep the university apprised of recent work, successes, and new offerings that are now available to them as campus communicators," says Rizzo.

"We are seeing an increase in people aware of and compliant with our guidelines," says Ducote. "We also see that stronger relationships are building between the central team and people across campus."

To ensure continued success, it’s important to solicit feedback about what makes your events effective and how they could be improved, and acting upon that feedback to ensure the camp continues to be a valuable experience.

"Each year we do a ‘lessons learned’ to understand which sessions were of value to the audience and get feedback every time to improve or pivot on subject matter for the next year," says Rizzo.

Should You Sign Up for Brand Camp?

Many higher ed institutions struggle with consistent brand implementation and effective brand activation. While organizing a Brand Camp is certainly a major investment of time and resources, creating a touchpoint for encouraging effective brand communications across your institution can be priceless.

The other good thing about a Brand Camp-style event is that it can scale — you can have an event that works for a small liberal arts school like Berea College or a large public research institution like UVA. 

Of course, your institution needs to have a solid brand foundation defined in order for a Brand Camp to be effective. If you need help bringing clarity to your messaging or strengthening your visual identity, OHO can help.