A representative from Educational Marketing Group, a company based out of Denver that works exclusively with colleges and universities on their marketing strategies, was on campus Wednesday to speak with students, staff and faculty about their perceptions of Baker University.
“It will be interesting what they make us think about in terms of our brand,” University President Pat Long said.
Representatives from the company spent this week visiting the School of Professional and Graduate Studies, the School of Nursing, the School of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences to help administrators come up with a positioning platform that would best represent Baker as a whole.
“We’ve been working together for a year to talk about how we want to market the university in an integrated way,” Annette Galluzzi, vice president for marketing, said. “We brought these consultants in because we really feel like we need a branding campaign to help clarify in a very powerful way in the market place who Baker University is.”
Galluzzi said Baker’s growth to more than one location has appealed not only to traditional college students, but also to working adults, people in the healthcare profession, educators in Kansas and Missouri and people in rural and metropolitan areas.
“Baker University means a lot of different things to different people,” she said. “But when someone hears Baker University, what is it that we want them to immediately think in their mind? What is that thing we want to be known for?”
That is the answer representatives from the marketing group are designed to come up with for an advertising campaign intended to influence Baker’s growth and image to future students, employers, beneficiaries, faculty and staff.
“The end result, we hope, will support and strengthen our student-recruiting efforts, our fundraising efforts and our image in general,” she said.