Ball State University is planning to drop its famous logo “Education Redefined” and replace it with a yet to be determined “brand refresh” one for its promotion campaigns (DN Feb. 19, 2015). The existing or any would-be slogan raises many interesting questions: Is it necessary for an academic institution to have a slogan similar to commercial organizations? What is the value of having a “tagline?” What is the perception of Ball State University’s tagline among its constituents? Is it wise to allocate resources of Ball State University for developing and promoting taglines? Why are we dropping the existing one? I will address only two of the above questions, i.e., the questions of value and perception.
When Ball State University adopted its now disgraced “Education Redefined “ logo, I surveyed a sample of 250 subjects from each constituent group, i.e., faculty, staff, students, and alumni. My samples were not random in a true statistical sense, i.e., every individual in respective populations did not have equal probability of being selected. I asked the participants two questions: 1) Are you aware of the new slogan? (If the answer was negative, I read the new slogan to them); 2) what does new slogan mean to you?
Faculty had the highest awareness percentage, followed by staff, students, and alumni. For the second question the faculty members gave the most colorful and cynical answers. Omitting expletive answers, the frequently mentioned answers were: “empty phrase,” “pure nonsense,” “promotional phrase,” “you tell me,” “I don’t know,” “administration’s new selling tool,” “wasting taxpayers money,” and “we are starting a new game.” The most prevalent answer among other groups was: “I do not know.”
Now a quick fill-in-the blank test for the administrators of Ball State University:
Fill-in-the blanks by the names of American universities with the corresponding taglines:
Advancing Knowledge. Transforming Lives. _________________
Knowledge to Go Places. _________________________________
Open Minds. Creating Futures. _____________________________
Grasp the forces driving the change. ________________________
Forward Together. _______________________________
Changing the world by degrees. ___________________
The Character of Success. _____________________________
If the results of my convenience sample of faculty, staff, and students were a predictor of the administrators’ performance on the test, they would receive a resounding failing grade.
My main point here is that public in general either does not know or cares the least about the commercial slogans of universities. Stanford University is not known for its tagline of “Grasp the forces driving the change” or University of Wisconsin-Madison (College of Business) for its tagline of “Forward Together.” These universities have distinguished themselves by their superior research, renowned faculty, and highly ranked academic programs. It is very unlikely that students choose Stanford University with a tuition fee of $45,000.00 because the university has an appealing tagline.
In my opinion paying exorbitant consulting fee for the logo of “education redefined” at a time when tuition fees were on the rise was an unwise decision. Unfortunately bad decisions have a tendency to be perpetuated in organizations and the new administration attempts to outdo its predecessors by making more lavish bad decisions.
If at all Ball State University must have a new advertising slogan, its value and significance will depend on how the concept is operationalized. The operational definition of a culinary dish lies in its recipe. Administration should present a list of ingredients and a set of directions (operations) for cooking the concept of its new slogan so as to convince Ball State University stakeholders that they are doing something worth bragging about. Otherwise, the tagline will fall within the category of hokum words. Hokum, as Barzun uses it, is the counterfeit of true intellectual currency. It is words without meaning, verbal filler, and artificial apples of knowledge. Hokum is vague and empty language, used to wrap up emptiness of heart and lack of thought. In my view, if we have any claim to be a member of an intellectual community, we should avoid hokums at any cost.
Dr. Shaheen Borna
Professor of Marketing
Miller College of Business
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