In 2019, I was a part of the UCLA Strategic Communications team that launched an updated brand strategy and new brand advertising campaign for UCLA. The updated brand strategy and new campaign built upon the Optimist theme from prior branding and marketing efforts but shifted the conversation from touting prominent students, faculty, and alumni to touting UCLA's work on current global issues.
The strategy was based on UCLA's primary purpose as a public research university in the creation, dissemination, preservation and application of knowledge for the betterment of our global society. And inspired by the quote from UCLA's influential chancellor, Franklin Murphy. Chancellor Murphy said "We must be in the library, but we must also be in Watts. We must be in the laboratory, but we must also be on the moon. We will be in the lecture rooms, but we will also be in the operating rooms. Without apology, indeed with undisturbed and I hope growing commitment, we will server the world of pure scholarship and the world of man and his problems, and both with distinction."
This lead us to a new definition of UCLA's audience as Changemakers. Changemakers are students, educators, researchers, and community members who are driven towards understanding our world and changing it for the better. The share the traits of openness, creativity, leadership, drive, ideals, progressivism, and believe in education.
We defined our audience as Changemakers, with the attributes of openness, creativity, drive, natural leadership, ideals, progressiveness, and belief in education.
After defining the Changemaker audience. We developed a manifesto to guide internal groups in communicating to the new audience.
In addition to defining a new audience, we created a manifesto to guide internal teams on how to communicate our position.
And from there, we moved on to create a new campaign based on UCLA's mission and director toward the audience of Changemakers. The idea behind the campaign is that the first step towards changing something is understanding it. That knowing the facts should influence change. To some this up, we developed the tagline "Change starts with Knowledge."
We built a campaign around this tagline that put facts forward. Each headline feature a fact generated by UCLA researchers about a current issue in modern society. And following copy told the story of how UCLA researchers were using those facts to make positive change.
The campaign included out-of-home, print, digital, and CRM marketing.
Print ad featuring UCLA's research anxiety and depression.
Print ad featuring UCLA's research in news and social media.
Print ad featuring UCLA's outreach to the homeless.
Billboard featuring UCLA's outreach to the homeless.
