Our unique Aberdeen blend of heritage and innovation through the centuries is at the heart of the brand.
Our brand will be successful because it is founded upon a strong, single organising thought. This is 'Illumination'. It is a thought which has integrity and has real relevance to all our audiences, across all our markets. Our brand will have to work hard for us in order to have impact both in our current markets but also in new ones, where we are less known and where our reputation is less strong.
In short, our brand is a critically important asset and driver in assuring our success: the realisation of our business strategy and the achievement of our ambition. We intend to be better known throughout the world, where we will gain attention and prominence.
To help you utilise our brand we have a set of clear guidelines, a quick-guide to our brand messaging and downloadable templates. If you have any questions on how you should use this creative please contact the brandcomms team.
Differentiation
- We stand for innovation and investigation throughout the centuries, making a real difference to people’s lives, providing excellent teaching and research, championing tolerance in the face of adversity and the strength and identity of our University of Aberdeen community.
- We will establish a narrative that differentiates and gives us competitive advantage by focusing on our strengths and achievements, our warmth, our transformational power and our ambition.
- One word or Organising Thought which will act as our touchstone: Illumination
Our Approach
Our stakeholder research revealed that knowledge of the University’s strengths and ambitions is relatively low in some areas. Furthermore, representation of the brand is tired and hugely underplayed at an institutional level.
In an attempt to address this, the strategy will be to give more visibility and prominence to the institutional brand by having it used clearly in all university marketing and communications. Perceived sub-brands will not be used except in the rare circumstances of appealing more clearly to an audience that cannot be reached by the University brand alone.
The guidelines outline clearly that all of our audiences have been considered and are addressed in the guidance on messages, tone of voice, narrative and visual style.