This past fall, BU’s branding firm, Ologie, asked all BU students to complete a survey to share what makes the university “special.” On Wednesday, they returned to campus to share their findings and strategies for rebranding the university.

The purpose of this survey and Ologie’s efforts are to get “a creative take on who we are as an institution and what that looks like and sounds like,” says Associate Vice President of Marking and Communications Jennifer Umberger.

Ologie is a branding, marketing and digital agency located in Columbus, Ohio.

Ologie’s Associate Strategy Director, Doug Edwards, started off the forum by asking the audience what they associate with the word “brand.”

He explained that it is much more than just a logo or a tag line, including the relationships you have with the people you know and with the staff and faculty at the university. Additionally, it includes the businesses in the community and how people think and feel about their experiences. Essentially, as Edwards explained, a “brand” is the total experience you create for all audiences.

The new brand Ologie proposed to the student forum included phrases such as “this is the uphill way” and “onward and upward,” shown on various advertisements and newsletters. They also proposed creating social media ads on platforms relatable to young people, such as Instagram.

One student commented that they like the “upward and onward [slogan]…because you [can] start at the bottom and make your way up.”

They also focused on the core colors of the university and wanted to visualize the “onward and upward” theme in their layouts of the ads.

One student commented that “[I] think that utilizing our color scheme…on social media would make people stop scrolling and read about it. Using the bright yellow and bright red will grab people’s attention.”

Many of the advertisements appealed to the goal of Bloomsburg University. When it came to photography, they wanted to stay away from the mundane “high five on the quad” pictures. Instead they wanted to express student’s story’s, by picturing students in healthcare careers, education careers or business careers.