For starters, it's been around 125 years, has over 100 academic programs and has graduated nearly 70,000 individuals. But is there one – or maybe a few – key ingredients that make Eastern so special?
Nearly two years ago, University Marketing and Communications set out to discover those select ingredients. You - our students, future students, alumni, faculty, staff and community members – gave us the answer.
First, we conducted 11 focus groups between Cheney, Spokane and Seattle. Then, with the help of this input, we put together an online image survey, called the Image, Marketing and Academic Perceptions (IMAP) survey – to garner more of your ideas and help us better understand the University's strengths, challenges and opportunities.
The IMAP survey received an outstanding response, with nearly 6,000 completed surveys. We gave away six iPods as a small token of appreciation for your help.
Next, we assembled an all-star group of communicators from around the University to serve as a "branding team." The branding team was charged with analyzing this wealth of data. Following a best-practice model, the branding team distilled all of the input into three key concepts that not only define Eastern, but will drive our progress into the next 125 years:
Tradition, Connections and Opportunity
These key concepts, together with the results of the IMAP survey, were presented and made available to Eastern's President's Executive Council, Board of Trustees, Dean's Council and volunteer boards.
So what does this all mean to you – our constituents? Two key volunteers on our branding team provided the creative inspiration to clarify this:
- Randi Neilson, retired vice president of marketing for Itron, who led this multi-million dollar company through its visioning and rebranding campaign
- Jeff Sanborn, alumnus and partner of Magner-Sanborn, a Spokane-based marketing and advertising agency. Jeff's business partner, Dennis Magner, also joined the effort
The branding team developed two "taglines" to creatively define what makes Eastern so special. We conducted another online survey to get your input on the best option.
Your choice was "start something big." And that couldn't be more appropriate.
The traditions, connections and opportunities provided by Eastern enable our constituents to "start something big." And it is our promise as a University to seek out "what's big" to you and give you the tools to realize it.
So what's next? University Marketing and Communications and members of the branding team will be visiting every college and department at Eastern to fully present our renewed promise and brainstorm new ways to "live the promise."
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