Elevating an institution’s reputation with a meaningfully distinct brand narrative

Brand management activities involve making decisions over time about: (a) what brand messages to deliver to stakeholders, (b) what brand experiences to deliver as stakeholders engage with their firm or institution and (c) how to improve the performance of the firm or institution. While brand management has been widely studied in commercial industries, brand management research within the higher education industry is quite limited. This paper introduces a new brand management framework that illuminates an institution’s meaningfully distinct value proposition and activation paths to help elevate the institution’s reputation and class profile. The authors have named this new methodology the Brand Integrity (BI) framework. This field study deployed the BI framework’s qualitative and quantitative research activities across multiple stakeholder groups to identify the salient University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business (MCOB) brand promises that would most resonate with several stakeholder groups, including prospective students, existing students, alumni, faculty, staff and advisory board members. Upon identification of the core brand promises for MCOB, the new brand narrative was powerfully activated and the implications on school popularity and enrolment have been significant. Since the activation of the new brand narrative, MCOB graduate programmes have experienced increases in the number of applications, enrolment selectivity, total enrolled students, female students, and underrepresented minority students. This paper highlights the relevant contributions for both scholars and practitioners.