How to engage your campus in the work of brand-building without losing control of the process.
In higher education, brand projects often come with high hopes and even higher stakes. And the work of building campus-wide understanding and support often determines whether a brand project truly takes root.
Marcom leaders know they need cross-campus buy-in. But it can be hard to develop a clear plan for how to build it before, during, and after a brand project. That’s where a strategy for sharing information and soliciting feedback from your campus community is imperative. Without a plan (let me hold your hand while I say this), even the most promising efforts can drag on, get watered down, or fail to resonate as an authentic expression of your institution.
Yikes, right? That’s not what any of us want. So, how do we work together to get ahead of this?
Here are six ways we’ve seen teams proactively set their brand projects up for success by planning early, communicating clearly, and bringing the right people along at the right time.
1. Start socialization by syncing with your agency partner (hi, that’s us!)
Building a socialization plan doesn’t start with the first campus email or feedback session; it starts with your agency partner. Kick-off is the perfect moment to share who your key stakeholders are, how you envision them being engaged, and who the decision-makers will be for each project phase. And we’re here to advise on what deliverables will entail and who should weigh in. There are definitely deliverables that need broad-based feedback to ensure we’re creating an authentic brand expression, and others that are best reviewed by tighter groups of your marcom subject matter experts.
Ultimately, you know your campus culture best. We know how to move the work forward.
When we combine those perspectives early, we can co-create a more formalized socialization plan that fits both your institution and the brand-building process. Don’t miss the chance to treat onboarding and kick-off as the first (and most strategic) step to building buy-in.
2. Bring in the not-so-obvious stakeholders.
Students, faculty, alums, and leadership usually top the stakeholder list. But successful socialization often hinges on identifying unexpected influencers and potential brand champions who should be factored into your plan, too.
Lana Fontenot, Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement and External Relations at South Louisiana Community College, knows this well. As a multi-campus, regional community college, we had to consider and engage with a wide range of non-traditional stakeholders, including community leaders and government officials. The team assessed the needs of these groups and ultimately, Lana said:
“We treated external partners like any other stakeholder group. We made sure they felt like they were part of something important, and that sense of being ‘in the loop’ helped build early excitement and trust. The main difference in working with them was that we often had to take a step back and provide a little more context, since they weren’t as close to the day-to-day work of the college. But once they were caught up, their feedback was incredibly valuable.”
Similarly, when the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts & Sciences embarked on its first-ever sub-brand project, it knew stakeholders in key central offices at UGA had to be a part of the process. As the university’s largest college, alignment with the institutional brand and how it is expressed needed to be an ever-present consideration.
“Having in-person meetings, Zoom calls, and sharing progress along the way to gather [central marcom] feedback and input was important,” said Susan Ambrosetti, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications at UGA Franklin. “Sprints of work showing the creative and then defined windows of time for [stakeholders] to share input helped generate a collaborative output while keeping the project momentum and timeline.”
Whether it’s central marketing in a sub-branding project, community or government partners in a regional system, or trusted faculty who shape departmental culture, great teams think beyond the obvious when it comes to building a solid socialization plan.
3. Build a feedback structure that works (and works for you).
Gathering input from campus stakeholders is important, but without a thoughtful plan for how feedback will be gathered, reviewed, and applied, it can easily overwhelm or derail the work. Yes, you want input. But you also need clarity on who’s making the actual decisions.
Samara Sit, Chief Communications Officer at Bryn Mawr College, put it well:
“I approached it by creating a strategic communications and engagement plan based on what I wanted their [individual campus stakeholder groups’] level of decision-making to be.”
That’s the key distinction between input and decision-making.
Great brands are rarely built by consensus. They’re led by small, empowered leadership teams who can synthesize insights and make clear calls. Stakeholder engagement should be structured to support that, not replace it.
That means:
- Knowing when to listen broadly and when to decide narrowly
- Clearly identifying who reviews and interprets the feedback
- Naming a single decision-maker who keeps the work moving forward
And finally, be transparent. Let contributors know how their input will be used, and where it might not be. That kind of honest engagement builds trust and keeps the process focused, strategic, and aligned.
4. Communicate early, often, and with intention.
Every brand project generates questions. What’s the timeline? What decisions have been made? Who made them? What’s next?
Too often, the same message is sent to every audience—or no message at all—until something is “final.”
Building trust requires a layered communication approach. Senior leaders may need strategic framing. Department staff may want clarity on implementation. Peers may need to see how it intersects with their work. Handling these segmented communications can look a lot of different ways.
One approach UGA Franklin took was forming a Brand Advisory Group, which they called the BRAG, made up of stakeholders from across the college and university.
“[Through the BRAG] we sought representation by faculty from all five divisions of Franklin, as well as Franklin and Central marcom,” Susan said. “It was most challenging to achieve strong representation among our students because they are 12,000 strong, but we relied on leaders who had already emerged among undergrads and did work through grad coordinators to identify grad student participants.”
BRAG members agreed to tackle two jobs as part of their participation in the group: 1. Provide feedback on project deliverables as the voice of their area, and 2. Share out project updates with their colleagues.
This approach enabled broad-based participation in the project, fostering good conversations about questions/updates that individual areas needed to feel informed and included. It also added a complementary layer to UGA Franklin’s communication strategy. Stakeholders received the bigger picture, college-wide updates on the project from the dean, and more area-specific updates from marcom and BRAG team members. This kept communication frequent and reinforced buy-in across offices and divisions.
5. Decide when to lead the room.
Agency-led presentations are crucial for unpacking complex deliverables. But finding the right moments and meetings to share parts of the work solo helps position you as the strategic leader of the brand for your institution.
Samara’s approach built on the agency-led brand trainings: post-launch presentations and cheat sheets, led and created by her team, helped stakeholders see how the brand applied to their area. That kind of proactive engagement was key to positioning the Bryn Mawr communications team as the college’s brand experts.
Susan took a similar approach, using the UGA Franklin sub-brand training SimpsonScarborough conducted in January 2025 as the first of a series of events to keep college stakeholders engaged post-launch.
“Part of our plan included department engagement, and we rolled out monthly lunch and learn sessions across critical topics including content writing, newsletters, graphics, PowerPoints and more,” said Susan. “We had over 25 departments use our templates, and marcom has provided creative support [to stakeholders] by launching a process for [project request] submissions. This has resulted in over 600 projects in the initial five months of the year.”
Owning their trainings and establishing a process for marketing support naturally transitioned the work of “building the sub-brand” post-launch to Susan and her team.
Finding these moments throughout the branding project and beyond provides the perfect opportunity to better define the work your marcom team does in the minds of stakeholders across your campus.
6. Embrace creative solutions and tools that scale socialization and elevate feedback.
Socialization doesn’t always require a meeting. Some of the most effective efforts use asynchronous tools that are accessible, repeatable, and low lift.
Samara created a blog to share updates and revisit key takeaways for Bryn Mawr’s brand engagement. At other institutions, we’ve worked together to provide stakeholders with pre-recorded walkthroughs or pre-read materials that explain what a deliverable is, how it’s used, and how to give productive feedback.
These tools don’t just broaden participation; they also raise the quality of feedback your team receives.
Together, we’ve got this!
Brand success in higher ed doesn’t come from one big reveal, but instead from a thousand thoughtful moments of inclusion and communication. A socialization plan isn’t a luxury. It’s the backbone of your project’s success, and ultimately, your brand’s success.
Here’s the good news: You don’t have to figure this all out alone. When you combine your deep institutional knowledge with your agency’s experience moving brand work forward, you create the conditions for it to thrive.
So yes, it’s a lot. But it’s doable. And when it works, your stakeholders feel informed, included, and engaged in the work of brand building at your institution.
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