Exchange Magazine, Fall 2003 - Duke University's Fuqua School of ...

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FUQUA EXCHANGE
BRANDING FUQUA
FEATURE BY ASSOCIATE DEAN JIM GRAY
WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON BRANDING OUR SCHOOL AND PRODUCTS VIA THE INTERNET.
What do Wachovia Bank and Duke’s Fuqua School of Business
have in common? Both are extremely focused on their brands.
Pick up the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, and you
are likely to see a full-page ad by the bank that has this headline:
Wa-Ko-Vee-Ah. The ad talks about the merger of First
Union and Wachovia, good-naturedly educating readers about
the new brand.
And Few-Kwa? We, too, are extremely sensitive to not only
how our external audiences pronounce our name, but also to
what they think of us. Do prospective students and corporate
executives see us as we see ourselves—innovative, collaborative
with our Team Fuqua culture, and absolutely deserving to
be regarded as a leader in the world of business schools? Will
our brand help recruit more and better students and generate
the kind of donor and corporate support needed to continue
expanding our school?
One small, yet powerful group of educators sees us in that
elite group.The accreditation review team of deans that visited
us recently from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools
of Business (AACSB) wrote that our “brand development” has
been “significant.” “This distinct, consistent and well-executed
brand campaign is a benchmark for any business school seeking
to develop its brand,” the report said.
The current “campaign” at Fuqua is both a formal and informal
effort to position Duke as a leader which deserves to be in
that top echelon of international business schools. To take full
advantage of the sterling brand image of Duke University, we
emphasize Duke over “Fuqua” in all of our brand communications
as evidenced by our logo. Duke is on a roll from a
branding standpoint with unprecedented strides in academic
reputation coupled with the hallowed basketball program led
by a remarkable leader, Mike Krzyzewski.
The other branding effort that is in its third year is the
emphasis on “The Duke MBA,” which is our program brand or
product brand. Because the increasing number and complexity
of our MBA programs were confusing to key audiences, the
decision was made to position The Duke MBA as one degree
that is earned in four formats —daytime and three executive
MBA programs. To further help outsiders understand our educational
products, we also try to restrict to internal use the
growing number of confusing acronyms such as CCMBA,
WEMBA and GEMBA. The nomenclature now is to call them
The Duke MBA– Global Executive and so forth.
We spend a lot of time on branding our school and products
via the Internet. Every day our web space gets better at branding
us as a leader. We show off our technology and innovation
through the web as well. Perhaps no other school pushes more
persuasive video through its web site to audiences or breaks
new ground in inquiry flow and registration.
The final plank in the current branding campaign is emphasis
on Fuqua’s high rankings in various media surveys such as
BusinessWeek and U.S. News & World Report. Like them or not,
the surveys do rank the competing brands in prospective students’
minds, especially overseas.
So how is our branding coming along?
Three of our top marketing faculty members agreed that we
have made good progress in our branding but face a major
challenge ahead to be in the brand league of Harvard, Wharton
and a few other power brands in business schools.
“We come across as young and aggressive, and much
progress has been made in the last few years,” said Christine
Moorman, marketing professor and marketing area coordinator,
“but many constituencies still view Fuqua as a regional
school with a global presence. We are correct to describe ourselves
as belonging among the best b-school brands in the
world—our faculty has grown in size and quality to among
some of the best in the world. When that fact catches up with
beliefs, our reputation will soar to even greater heights.”
John Lynch, the Merilee and Roy Bostock Family Professor
of Marketing, recently returned from a year’s teaching at the
London School of Business. He tells the story of the Duke
men’s basketball game in London last winter. Only about 200
people attended—obviously not as excited about the Blue
Devils as the Cameron Crazies. “Our brand is nowhere near as
strong in Europe as it is the States,” Lynch said. “Sometimes we
inflate our own importance, so it is important that we know
that impressions move very slowly across the globe.”
Lynch talked with numerous business people and potential
MBA students while in London.“Duke and Fuqua did not have
the top-of-mind awareness of European schools such as
INSEAD, LBS or IMD that generally rank well below us in
U.S.-based reputational rankings,” he said.