Texas A&M guards brands

By: Erin Wood

Posted: 11/14/07

The Division of Marketing and Communications unveiled a Texas A&M Brand Guide, a set of guidelines that outline standardized fonts, layouts, logos and stationary sanctioned by the University.

In an introductory letter to the guide, Eddie J. Davis, the interim A&M president, said "the strengthened University brand will be beneficial for us all and will further highlight the magnificent work that is happening here."

A&M has realized the value of consistency in style and is in the same position as fortune 500 companies and select universities, Davis said.

One of these style consistencies was the school's personalized shade of "Aggie Maroon" that was developed by color specialist Pantone.

Steve Moore, the chief marketing officer and vice president of communications in the Division of Marketing and Communications, said the Brand Guide is important because it creates a unified presentation.

"It not only presents a common signature, but it also has the ability to reinforce our unique elements such as a common logo, color and visual representation," Moore said.

Julie Graham, a senior marketing major, said branding unifies organizations.

"While allowing any organization or business to branch out in different ways, branding not only creates value to these individual parts, but it also unifies everything under one umbrella," Graham said.

Branding was something that corporations have already focused on, but it was new to institutions.

"You see the importance of branding every day in the commercial world, but we have been slow to adopt this in the academic world," Moore said. "We want to be a leader in that area at Texas A&M."

He said the campus has realized the need for branding for a long time but lacked a common objective and focus. The approach was not delivering a common identity, voice, understanding or experience to A&M's audiences.

"That became the required impetus for change," Moore said.

The marketing department worked with GSD&M, a marketing firm from Austin, to focus this brand alignment. Then, a team of lead communicators from the University and the Brand Council began to develop the guide.

Olga West, the executive director of the Division of Marketing and Communications, said the guide will be modified and added to as time goes on.

She said that an example of an upcoming addition is the templates section of the guide. A few templates are ready, but they plan to add more to assist the University in applying the brand.

"More than anything, we want to expand on the guide so that it makes it easy for everyone to implement this branding initiative," West said. "We also want to present it in such a way that they will want to embrace the branding."