Secret Powers of Middle Children: Heroic Websites as a Small Brand Within a Big University

For middle brands, such as a college or school at a larger university, getting your website and content projects off the ground means dealing with a unique set of challenges. It’s a bit like being a middle child in a large family; we’re under tremendous pressure but with scarcer resources, a smaller team, and a mere slice of the university brand spotlight. Furthermore, we’re often tasked with honoring our “brand within a brand” and the vision of our own boards or advisory councils, while needing to leverage the larger campus brand for visibility. How do we balance smaller budgets and fewer in-house staff resources with the big tasks of launching our own websites? How can we work effectively with our eldest child siblings (campus collaborators) and network of friends (agency partners) while stuck on middle child island? In this session we’ll explore how to take advantage of the ins and outs of being a big university “middle brand” – resourcefulness, negotiation, and calculated risks – to produce spotlight-worthy websites. In a deeper dive, we will cover a DIY approach to developing your own content models, audience personas, brand messaging pillars, competitive analysis, user research — as well as how to find and keep your rag tag team of collaborators, from central university resources to agency partners. And we’ll do this all within the framework of having a limited budget as well as imperative business goals, such as enrollment targets and brand reputation management.

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