ivy.covered.

Brands in a League of Their Own
by Barry Silverstein, BrandChannel.com, October 27, 2008 issue

The Ivies are renowned for their history, reputation, quality, and selectivity. While average consumers may not be able to name every one of the eight “Ivy League” schools, they know exactly the type of institution to which the term refers. (For the record, the schools are, in alphabetical order, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale.)

The Ivy League is a collection of schools along the east coast of the United States that are among the country’s oldest. They are also at the pinnacle of the competitive admissions scale. While “Ivy” refers to the plant that adorns the buildings on some of the campuses, the famous label actually resulted from the fact that these schools competed with each other in the same athletic conference. A sports writer coined the term “Ivy League” in the 1930s, and it remained as the name associated with the schools. Only years later did these competitors think of themselves truly as a collective force.

From a branding perspective, cooperation turned out to be a strategically wise move. Over the years, Ivy League has taken on a meaning far beyond its original intention. Now the term connotes an exceptional education, prestige, and business connections that virtually guarantee career success. While other colleges and universities may be of equal or even better quality, they can never achieve the perceived status of the Ivy League. To demonstrate the point, Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), two outstanding universities in their own right, are sometimes referred to as the “Ivy Plus” schools.

But the brand image is not always positive. The Ivy League is perceived by some to smack of elitism. That perception would not be entirely erroneous. Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker in 2005 that Ivy League admission directors “are in the luxury-brand-management business, and ‘The Chosen,’ in the end, is a testament to just how well the brand managers in Cambridge, New Haven, and Princeton have done their job in the past seventy-five years.”

A 2007 BusinessWeek article entitled “The Dangerous Wealth of the Ivy League” reports that “… the wealth gap between the Ivies and everyone else has never been wider. The $5.7 billion in investment gains generated by Harvard’s endowment for the year ended June 30 exceeded the total endowment assets of all but six U.S. universities…” . . .

While the eight schools are privileged to be part of the Ivy League, each must also pay close to attention to its individual brand. Sometimes that brand may need refurbishing, as was the case with Cornell. Several years ago, a group of students became concerned about the university’s “country cousin” status in the Ivy League. According to an article in The New York Times (“Cornell’s Worried Image Makers Wrap Themselves in Ivy,” April 22, 2006), the students felt Cornell was underappreciated. They formed a committee, “making it their mission to press the university into marketing and branding itself more aggressively.”

The result of the student push was the abandonment of the university’s modern logo—the word CORNELL in contemporary type on a red background—in favor of using the traditional school crest. “The committee also persuaded the bookstore to stock a line of vintage hats and sweatshirts that decidedly emphasize Cornell’s Ivy League roots,” said the Times article. The university’s website was revamped to be “more traditional and more elegant.” As one student put it, the image committee confirmed that “we are an Ivy League school, and it’s O.K. to be an Ivy League school.” . . .

~ Full aricle here