When many people hear the word “brand,” they immediately think of a logo, an advertising campaign or a product. While these things represent how a brand is communicated, a brand is something different.

A brand is what we stand for in people’s minds. It’s a composite of the images, identities, values, attributes, experiences and equities that its name connotes among critical audiences. It’s constructed from the interactions they have with us over time.

Our brand is also the promise we make to people about the experiences they will have with us. It sets expectations about how DePaul will interact with them, whether they are a student, alumnus, corporation or trustee.

To be successful, a brand must be:

• Distinctive–it is different from other brands in the market.
• Capable of being owned–it accurately represents what you stand for and fits with the actual, lived experience of key audiences.
• Focused on benefits–it evokes positive emotion and conveys values that people are seeking in their affiliation with the university.

Therefore, a university’s brand must be consistent with its mission, its strategic priorities and its preferred position in the increasingly competitive and cacophonous marketplace that higher education institutions occupy.

To define our brand, we have to understand how people think about us, decide how we want people to think about DePaul, and change what we do and say to close the gap. DePaul has spent the past decade understanding how our many audiences perceive us, how we want to be perceived, and working to bring those ideas into alignment.

Mission and Brand
It’s important to distinguish between DePaul’s mission, which is the reason we were founded and continue to stay in business, and the DePaul brand, which is what we want to stand for in the minds of people outside of the university.

Our mission comes from our founding goal of providing access to education, particularly to disadvantaged students, and to serve society. However, our brand reflects our larger goal of preparing students to work, succeed and contribute in the global community. Our mission may not be relevant to some of our audiences, but our brand promise is relevant to all of them.

Therefore, we need to use brand language when we communicate to external audiences. We can use mission language (or both brand and mission language) when we communicate internally.