U T A H   V A L L E Y   U N I V E R S I T Y

Aligning brand measurement with the President's vision

A group of Utah Valley University students and higher ed professionals along with a Campus Sonar team member

How we're helping UVU

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Utah Valley University’s (UVU) marketing and communications team is undergoing a strategic transformation. They’re focused on expanding brand awareness and developing a mission-aligned, outcome-driven strategy. The team uses social intelligence insights to listen to and learn from their priority audiences as well as contextualize opportunities and risks.

As the largest public university in Utah and growing, they need to continually build their reputation with different audiences. Utah has a continuous flow of new residents due to Silicon Slopes, a hub of technology and business companies like Adobe, Ancestry.com, and eBay. 

Every three years, the team does a brand and reputation survey, but it has limited participation and involves a lot of people, resources, and money. The survey results are valuable, but the team needed more relevant and timely insights to make decisions on a semester, weekly, monthly, and even daily basis—they needed social intelligence data to fill in the gaps.

UVU Marketing is aligning with the University’s vision and mission. The data-backed insights from social intelligence will help them see where they’re making an impact and find opportunities to extend it. The team is working to understand four key aspects of brand health.

Partnership goals

  1. Align the brand with the university’s vision.
  2. Track the brand’s impact, especially using messaging pillars.
  3. Develop deeper insights into audience engagement through new segmentations.
  4. Use additional insights to evolve UVU’s story.
Matt Serrao, Associate VP Marketing, UVU

“We discuss our Brandwatch dashboard, that was set up by Campus Sonar, monthly. We discuss trends month over month to see what is working and where we need to pivot. We also use the dashboards annually to set goals, and track progress year over year to see if our brand and reputation campaign is making an impact. Our partnership with Campus Sonar provides us the data needed to make decisions that make a difference.”

— Matt Serrao, Associate Vice President Marketing

UVU's progress

UVU is evolving their brand strategy and student experience while driving ROI by aligning their enrollment lifecycle with their marketing funnel. Critical support enables them to make progress on their goals.

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Aligning the brand with the university's vision

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President Tuminez’s Vision 2030 focuses on three action commitments: Include, Engage, Achieve. The team uses their data and insights to understand audience perceptions and how their owned content aligns with their mission.

They’re expanding on engagement opportunities, such as elevating campaign messaging new students. Building the messaging into audience experiences and vocabulary strengthens the UVU brand, and they’re seeing it reflected in earned mentions as students adopt it.

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Growing positive sentiment around the brand and mission

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UVU has made tremendous progress on growing positive sentiment, moving the needle through owned content and engagement. As a barometer of how your audience feels about your campus, increased positive sentiment indicates strengthened brand perception and health. 

They’ve shared and reframed content with strategic language to evoke emotion; celebrated successes by lauding the achievements of community members; and highlighted key partnerships as opportunities to drive positive sentiment and get audiences excited. 

When the men's basketball team made the quarterfinals for the NIT tournament, President Tuminez received positive coverage for her enthusiasm at the games. The flagship accounts saw success with their owned conversation based on the strong foundation they had in place to boost mentions of UVU and President Tuminez.

“We hit our goal. And when you hit goals, you get funding."

— Matt Serrao

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Tracking the conversation helps the team be transparent with their cabinet. They began tracking when they launched their new brand messaging to see if it made a difference in conversation about them.

The conversation started at 10% positive (in line with industry benchmarks for a campus of their size). They met their goal of increasing positive sentiment to 20%.

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Identifying engaging content

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The team has increased audience engagement in a way that keeps the interactions sustainable and meaningful. And they’ve succeeded in managing a brand where audiences feel connected, heard, and responded to—in line with their goals of building relationships and brand affinity.

  • Engaging recent graduates as they celebrate and pairing it with a call to action—inspiring them to follow the university into the alumni online space—and inserting alumni-targeted opportunities in main content helps them reconsider their new status with the university.
  • Celebrating alongside individuals who express gratitude to UVU for contributing to their achievements helps community members feel seen and encourages others to add their voice to the conversation.
  • Welcoming alumni back to campus for events or speaking opportunities boosts alumni engagement beyond recent graduates and supports affinity for those more removed from their time on campus.

Why it's working

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UVU is building capacity and expanding their capabilities as a team to reach their outcomes.

The number oneBrand messaging pillars

They use the dashboard to shift messaging and brand pillars to ensure all three are represented consistently and cohesively. Every piece of content aligns to a messaging pillar. 

The number twoStrategy sessions

Strategic training focused on driving positive sentiment deepens their understanding of creating content to drive engagement and establishes effective communicate best practices.

The number threeInsights reports

Reports identify unique storytelling opportunities to grow brand awareness as the largest public university in Utah and a campus with a dual mission (combining the rigor of a first-rate teaching university with the vocational programs of a community college).

“The most amazing thing is seeing our graduates respond with messages in our pillars. This is how we know it’s working—they’re reflecting back what we’re putting out there.”

— Matt Serrao

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