The University Brand 

Brand Story

"The University of Adelaide has a long established and continuing reputation for life impact. It has an impact improving the lives and opportunities of its students and on society through its research and graduates."

Through teaching and learning of high quality, through outstanding research, and a strong tradition of community service, the University of Adelaide has built a continuing reputation for life impact.  This is the University's brand story.  

The public image and reputation of any organisation are built over time as a result of a number of experiences, stories and outcomes associated with the organisation, which are simple and sustainable, and are based on substance. Their consolidation and articulation in a way that makes it easy for people to convey and to understand what the organisation is about can be described as the brand story.

For the brand story to be sustainable, an organisation has to live it. Organisations that claim to be the best or the cheapest or the most flexible need to be able to match that rhetoric with real outcomes for their stakeholders. For this reason, employees need to understand, believe in, and live the brand story.

The brand story is a strategic benchmark against which external communication and marketing activities can be tested. It is a starting point for every marketing brief and a template for speech writing, advertising, media releases, creative execution and presentations.

Other Brands

The University of Adelaide has a 135-year history upon which very strong brand attributes have been built. Every part of the University shares in the benefit of that brand.

If areas within the University community establish their own identity independent of the University, and promote this identity at the expense of the University identity, the value of the University brand is diluted. Equally important for the area, its promotional efforts are less effective due to the investment required to build any form of awareness for the new identity.

For this reason, faculties, divisions, schools and branches are not permitted to develop other brands. The University identity must always take priority and core functions of the University must be marketed under the brand of the University. In this way, all programs benefit from the strength that the University brand provides.