Blog Recap:
The Power of Higher Ed Branding – An Interview with Meloney Linder
Hey everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Higher Ed Demand Gen Podcast, brought to you by Concept 3D. If you’re a fan of higher education and marketing, you’re in for a treat. In our latest episode, we sat down with the fabulous Meloney Linder, the Vice President for Marketing and Communications at the University of North Dakota (UND). We’re diving deep into how powerful higher ed branding is and how it can lead to some pretty sweet double-digit growth.
So, why talk about branding in higher education? According to Meloney, branding is essentially the heartbeat of any institution. It’s who you are and creates a lasting impression that outlives all of us. Now, if you’re thinking, “Okay, so what?” – let’s put it into perspective. With UND’s branding theme, “Leaders in Action,” they’ve started telling stories that highlight their fantastic faculty and students. They show off those Midwest values: hard work, rolling up sleeves, and getting the job done!
Interestingly, UND’s branding journey had a unique twist. Back in 2012, they had to ditch their old “Fighting Sioux” logo due to NCAA regulations, so they dove into some deep research to come up with something new. Enter “Leaders in Action.” Meloney was brought on to breathe life into that brand, moving beyond just the athletics to spotlight academic achievements too.
One cool element UND embraced is the “halo effect.” This means their branding isn’t just internal but involves everyone – students, alums, and even the local community. It’s about creating a unified image that reinforces the brand at every level. Meloney stressed the importance of consistency and working closely with partners like their alumni association to share assets and stories.
Now, you might be wondering about the nitty-gritty – the measurements and numbers. Meloney’s team conducts a brand health survey every two years, collecting data from faculty, students, alumni, and prospective students to gauge how well the brand is perceived and where improvements can be made.
Overall, this episode was a goldmine of insights for anyone interested in higher ed marketing. If you haven’t yet, make sure to give it a listen. You won’t regret it!
Catch you in the next episode!
Read the transcription
Shiro:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Higher Ed Demand Gen Podcast hosted by Concept 3 d. If you like our content, please follow and subscribe to us on Spotify, Google, or Apple. And, yeah, throw us a throw us a comment if you’re on, Apple as well. We’d love to hear what you think about the show. My name is Shiro Torre, and I will be your host today. And I’m thrilled to talk about the power of higher ed branding and and how that can lead to double digit growth. And to discuss that topic today, I have a special guest.
Shiro:
Melanie Linder is gonna be joining us today. Melanie is serving as the vice president for marketing communications at the University of North Dakota, which we’ll be referencing it also as UND throughout this conversation today. Melanie, welcome to the show.
Meloney Linder:
Thank you. I’m excited to be here.
Shiro:
It’s great to have you. And, if you’ve listened to the episode before episodes before, I do ask all my guests this icebreaker, which is please tell me what you love about higher ed.
Meloney Linder:
Oh my gosh. I love higher ed. I love the energy of higher ed. I like the cyclical nature of the higher ed, but most important, I truly believe in higher ed. So I love the fact that I get to work, go to work every day doing something I truly believe in.
Shiro:
Thank you so much for sharing that. Can you start us off a little bit about your background and your role here today?
Meloney Linder:
So as you mentioned, I am the vice president for marketing and communications at the University of North Dakota. I’ve just finished up my 6th year here at UND. Before that, I was at the University of Wisconsin Madison at their school of business. And before that, I was at a small teaching institution, University of Texas at Brownsville, which is now the University of Texas RGV for the Rio Grande Valley. But before that, I was in private sector. So I’m one of those individuals that started out my career in marketing in private sector, started working with higher ed clients, and realized how much I loved loved education and made the switch over.
Shiro:
Thank you. That’s awesome. Well, I know you love talking about branding, and so this will be a key theme for today. And, you know, the power of higher ed branding and how that’s actually led to significant results at UND. Can you tell us a little bit more about why brand? Like, why is that important in in higher ed today?
Meloney Linder:
Well, branding is who you are. It’s the institution as a whole, and it will outlive all of us that are in our current shares. When when your brand is strong, people understand what are the core values of your institution or your organization, and they have those points of pride of why for us, why UND is great. So our brand is leader in action. We’re doers. We get things done. We’re Midwest modest. We roll up our sleeves, and we do the work.
Meloney Linder:
So when we’re talking about our branding, we tell stories or facts around items that actually just reinforce that. When you and I met originally, I I talked to you about how UND had a logo issue back in about 2012. We were the fighting suit. We were told by the NCAA that we needed to change our logo and we not unlike most institutions of higher ed, you know, a lot of our brand was around athletics. So this was a real pivotal issue for us. The university then did a great deal of research about what makes you Wendy great. And that’s where Leaders in Action came out. When I was hired, the Leader in Action brand had gone through the research phase.
Meloney Linder:
My job was to bring it to life with the team that was in place. So we moved into the storytelling mode of why we are leaders in actions. We highlight our amazing faculty, our amazing students, and we tell stories about our achievements around the academic areas. In addition to athletics, athletics is always an important part of institutions of institutions of higher ed. It’s a lot of community building, but the university as a whole is so much more than that. And so if you’re able to build a brand through story telling and have consistency in how that is done, it creates that halo effect. The other piece that I think is really important that the University of North Dakota has done is we are closely aligned with our sister institution, our alumni association and foundation. They’re a separate entity.
Meloney Linder:
But when we created the leader in action brand, the alumni association and foundation adopted that and are so closely aligned in how they do their storytelling and how we do our storytelling. And we actually share assets and stories on a pretty regular basis because again, talking about that halo, whether you’re talking to prospective students, parents, community stakeholders, or you’re talking to alumni, you’re one institution. So that consistency creates a greater halo than any one entity on its own.
Shiro:
That’s fantastic that you were able to get, you know, 3 different areas come together on on one one brand because yeah. I mean, I think there’s it’s it’s very hard to calculate or measure this, but so many students do end up going to institution because of or applying to an institution because of a referral, whether it’s a friend, family member, right, someone they know. It has so much impact. That’s really hard to calculate and measure, but, I think you talking about that halo effect is is spot on that you can it compounds into more later down the road.
Meloney Linder:
And if I can add to that, Sherry, you know, you mentioned measuring it can be really difficult. One of the things that I think is really important is measurement. Because we do a brand health survey that mirrors what was done with the initial brand development, but we add on, additional pieces to it till we have a better understanding how prospective students may view us now. But that BRAND Health survey we do every 2 years. It goes out to faculty, staff, alumni, key stakeholders to the university, including the Grand Forks community, which is where we’re located. And we send it to prospective students. And those prospective students come from lists that they may or may not have any familiarity with the University of North Dakota. So when we get those results back, and we’ve been doing it now since the first one was in 2017, we have enough data to show where we’re moving the needle with the brand.
Meloney Linder:
And we can also see where there’s dips. And then you’re able to adjust accordingly to make sure that you’re hitting the high marks in the areas that you wanna hit the high marks. But just as importantly, you may see areas where you’re not doing as well or your brand is not seen as favorably as you’d like it to do, and then those are areas that you need to focus some attention on. So while the brand, as you said, sometimes can be difficult to measure, there are ways that you can do that to get some insights that are extremely powerful, and it’s worth the investment of time and dollars.
Shiro:
Are you are you willing to share it if there are any, you know, points within the last 5 5 years since the rebrand that, you know, you learned from these results and measurements?
Meloney Linder:
Well, as I mentioned yeah. Well, as I mentioned to you, we had the athletic logo issue.
Shiro:
Right.
Meloney Linder:
And that always comes up as a major issue because, you know, an athletic logo is an affinity for alums and community members that are highly tied. But what we’ve seen over time is that we are making great headway in other areas, where that logo issue isn’t as big of a as a pain point as it was when we first started. It still is a major issue primarily with alumni. But no. But the data points of where they have other proof points to talk about some of our amazing academic programs continues to rise. So it starts to balance out. So that’s been really helpful because often, we’ll get questioned by alumni or donors or just community members in general about their affinity to the old logo. But then we start talking about, well, when we’re measuring it, we’re also seeing that people are actually are really starting to talk about some of our just really key academic programs as being just as important.
Meloney Linder:
So now you have some data to have stronger conversations with stakeholders when questioned.
Shiro:
Yeah. That’s fantastic. And, like, you know, one thing I heard from you telling me this story is, like, don’t act on your results, like, in year 1. Right? You need a plan that is more forething in 5 to 10 years, because you’re seeing that the data change through the couple years, and you’re it’s helping to reflect that, you know, this this was potentially the right call to make. So
Meloney Linder:
And just for a little bit of fun, we always hear that we’re cold. And, yes, we do live in North Dakota, and it does it is cold. But even hearing that in the first couple of surveys, we actually have a lot of fun in the winter too. So that was a charge in our marketing to say, how do we show that you can have a great time in the winter too?
Shiro:
That’s just great. That’s amazing. And and so, you said, you know, you brought you were brought on. Some of the research had already been done. The was it leaders in action? Is that right?
Meloney Linder:
Mhmm. Leaders in action.
Shiro:
That branding had already been put in place, but you were responsible for executing it. Was that, like, once you joined the team, that launch of a new brand happened after you joined the team?
Meloney Linder:
Came on. They were just starting to try to roll it out, and they had
Shiro:
Uh-huh.
Meloney Linder:
A first, phase of, I would say, the graphic elements around the brand.
Shiro:
Gotcha. So you were there, like, right there at the execution moment?
Meloney Linder:
I I was. And and I have to say it it was about the storytelling. Right? People seeing themselves and whether it was recruitment materials, whether it was stories going out in our newsletters, we kept reemphasizing that we lead and we’re doers, those brand pillars. And then over time, people we we did a lot of roadshows around campus as well, getting our various schools and colleges and other divisions when trained on the brand, trained on the importance of why consistency of the brand creates that Halo effect. Because in the marketplace, it doesn’t matter what piece they’re seeing from the university, be coming from a school or college or be coming from the main university. It’s just UND. And so that consistency is really important because it creates that repetition and the reach about the brand. If everybody is doing their own thing, it can get really muddled.
Meloney Linder:
Right? And it’s harder to have, just let’s say people see Kelly Green in our neck of the woods as we as we like to say. They know it’s you, Wendy. Right? People, when we just did our new strategic plan, it launched about, oh, a year ago now. The committee came up. Our new pillars are leads, learning, equity, affinity, discovery, service. It’s right on brand. That wasn’t even our team that suggested it. That really was the community saying, well, we’re leaders.
Meloney Linder:
Like, we need to put that out there. And so when you have that level of buy in, people start to see themselves in it Mhmm. Then that that happens kind of organically, which is a really powerful place to be.
Shiro:
That’s amazing. And was this one of your first times you’ve been a part of a rebrand execution? Like, how did you feel in that moment?
Meloney Linder:
No. This is about my 4th or 5th Nice. Rebrand. Yeah. No. I’ve I’ve been doing this, for a long time.
Shiro:
That’s amazing. So you have confidence. That’s how that helps.
Meloney Linder:
Well, I I have experience, which which can help you sometimes know where some of the landmines are and and and see pathways to get buy in a little bit easier as well.
Shiro:
That’s amazing. And you’re a part of the second strategic planning process, which seems to be building upon the last one that you’re a part of, which is really good to see.
Meloney Linder:
It is you know, a strategic plan, like a brand, it lives. Right? And and institutions of higher ed evolved based on the needs of our community and the broader community as a whole because we need to be responsive. So, yeah, they’re they’re all evolutions, so to speak.
Shiro:
Gotcha. And, you know, it sounds like you’ve had a lot of experience with this. And I don’t think every school is gonna have to change their logo, you know, to new, to new restrictions or laws. But, you know, how can someone in your position, like, start the conversation if brand is not a priority at their institution at the moment?
Meloney Linder:
Start by listening. Find out why people are not buying into the brand. Start there. It’s always important to understand the pain points and where the gaps are. Once you know that, then you can start having about is the central organization that oversees the brand, how you can bridge those pain points and and have conversations about how speaking with one voice, one appearance creates a halo for everyone. Every institution, most institutions of higher Ed, there’s not an unlimited budget for marketing. So you have to work smarter, particularly in this current timeframe when the enrollment competition is stronger than it’s ever been as we’re reaching that enrollment clip that they say is coming in 2026. You have to be smarter with your dollars.
Meloney Linder:
And having a strong brand and having consistent branding gives you that level of repetition and reach that you need from your brand. So when you can explain that to your stakeholders and and say just our our pieces match your pieces and show them the overall, appearance that it gives, it helps. The other thing that’s really important is, again, find making it easy for people. What are you know, we we have tons of templates and we have training videos And you name it, you ask for it, our team will create it to make it easy for you. So there’s things that people can do that self serve. Again, easy. And then there are things we say we can engage, and we can set you up for success for the long term. Make yourself and your division a valuable resource that people want to go to because they know the level of quality is gonna be there.
Meloney Linder:
Everybody wants to represent themselves and their program, their college in the most professional way possible. So be that resource that helps them do that. The other phase of it is really about data collection, and I’m a real believer in data. It tells you what’s working and it tells you what’s not working. I’m a real believer if something’s not working, that’s not punitive, that means change. Try something new. Stuff But you don’t want to keep doing what you’ve been doing and data will help you with that. And when you have that data, then you can share that with your stakeholders.
Meloney Linder:
And that continues to show the power of the brand, the power of the marketing that you have in the marketplace that is bringing the students to your front door. And it’s been, we report out at a minimum twice a year, each fall semester and spring semester to all of our stakeholders in our school and colleges so that they’re able to see the work that’s happening. We do that from a recruitment perspective. We do that from a brand health perspective, and we do it from a media relations perspective as well.
Shiro:
Can you can you tell me a little bit more about, like, the numbers that people like or your executives, right, your those above you like to hear and and see. Because I’m I’m assuming, like, impressions on the social media campaign, that’s that’s too detailed. Right? Like, how do you roll that information up? Because there’s so much data.
Meloney Linder:
There there is. So from a media perspective, people wanna know where UND and our faculty are being seen on a national, regional, and local level. And they love seeing big names, you know, big national publications, and they like to see trends over time. They also like to see how you’re faring compared to your what you would deem as your as your major competitors. And then I always like to throw in a few aspirational peers in there too because you wanna have a target to shoot for. When it comes from the brand health survey, again, those are key points, whether it’s academics, locations, just general brand, they like to see just how are we doing in present time and then how are we improving over time. So we give them snapshots of where we’ve seen incremental growth over time. And the thing to keep in mind with a brand is you are not going to move that needle to a grand scale in one cycle.
Meloney Linder:
A brand is part of the DNA, and it takes time. So incremental improvements. I always like say one foot forward, you know, baby steps, get you there. So monitoring that progress over time from when we started it to where we are now, you start to you’re starting to see some significant improvement. Then when it comes to recruitment, we show how our advertising converts to people inquiring about programs who then inquire and apply. And now we’re then able to see apply to deposit to enroll. And so they’re wanting to see again what are those conversion rates. Some of it marketing can control.
Meloney Linder:
Some of it we’re a strategic partner because when you’re looking at converting applications to deposits to enroll, you kind of you start to hand some of that off, to other areas. You’re still a partner, but you’re it’s collectively. So they wanna see that you’re tracking all points of that of that funnel for the prospective student.
Shiro:
That’s great. I mean, the if you’re struggling to report metrics up, you just have to listen to the last 2 minutes there. That was fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing key.
Meloney Linder:
Right.
Shiro:
Right. And, I mean, this, you know, this is, like, marketing 101. Right? A lot of this I can relate to as well as, you know, we have partners in sales, right, that, we talk to, and we do hand some some of the business that way. And, you know, we do work as a team in order to, to bring more sales. And so I I completely agree with that process, and that’s been great. Do you ever report on team as well? Like, I know people like, your your head count. Right? Your employee and staff is is is something harder to report on, but it made me think about that for some reason.
Meloney Linder:
So, you know, I I think a key a key way to track how the team is doing is when it gets to your basics, but retention.
Shiro:
Gotcha. Yep.
Meloney Linder:
You know, if you’re if you’re keeping your team, your team is happy, they produce well. If you’re having a high turnover rate, something is wrong, and you need to then take a look at why. So we don’t necessarily in our division report on that piece. It’s something that I monitor within my division, and I know the university as a whole will take a look at that. Another indicator, again, is via your brand, but it’s related to your question of team is your recruiting of faculty and staff. We often talk just about the students. But if you have a strong and healthy brand and your and people that are within the institution love and are ambassadors for the institution, then your recruiting of top talent is gonna be easier as well.
Shiro:
Yeah. That’s a great, great point. Another, like, compounding, like, derivative of of a good brand is is, yeah, recruiting of of staff and faculty. That’s fantastic. Yeah. Just moving on a little bit more, you talked a lot about data, which is amazing. Can you tell us some of the student success metrics that UND has seen since 2019?
Meloney Linder:
Sure. So when when we’ve spoken before, I I had mentioned to you, we’re really proud of our retention rate. Our retention rate right now is at it’s just under it’s, like, 82.96. So just under 83%, which is fantastic, and it’s the the highest that it’s been for us since the the North Dakota University System started recording retention rates. So we’re doing really good, because, you know, that’s the goal. You get students here, and you want them to graduate. And our graduation rates are doing really well as as well. So we have a 39% graduation rate at 4 years.
Meloney Linder:
It jumps to 55.72 at the 5 year mark, and we’re at 63.33 at the 6 year mark. And that is just having continual improvement, Where where marketing and communication plays a role in that. I mean, we obviously work to help get students here, but we also wanna make sure when they’re here, they’re successful. So we work very closely on communicating and marketing resources for our our students, whether it’s advising, whether it’s mental health, wellness. We do a great deal of work about reminders, for people to register for classes, you know, buy for your housing, you name it, and we do we always have to have new ways of doing it. You know? Email used to be the end all, be all, and our students just don’t read email. Or if they if they do, they’d still need to see it in 1 or more ways. We found texting to be highly successful, but texting in a very methodical way, meaning you can’t text about everything or become spam, and students are gonna unsubscribe or completely tune you out.
Meloney Linder:
So we’re really, thoughtful to make sure it’s about deadlines. It’s about, emergency communications. Up here in North Dakota, we sometimes have snowstorms. Texting is a great way to let students know if the campus is closing or going to be closed. So be methodical about that. Also have a communication matrix because as I mentioned, you can’t just communicate one way. People need to hear and see a message in a multitude of ways for it to register. So that’s something to keep in mind too.
Meloney Linder:
Like, we have a UND app. We have the website. We have email. We have our learning management system in addition to texting. And those are just a few ways, you know, that we’re able to communicate with our students that keep them engaged on campus, keep them feeling like they’re part of the community and able to get them to the academic support that they need and then their well-being support as well.
Shiro:
That’s fantastic. Yeah. I know I mean, I think when I when it came to calendars, thinking back to my college days, the academic calendar is the one calendar I looked at the most because
Meloney Linder:
Yeah.
Shiro:
It’s when all the deadlines were in. I I’d imagine if I got a text message about that, that’d be super, super helpful.
Meloney Linder:
I wish they had that when I was in school too. Would have been a lot easier.
Shiro:
I I missed I can tell you one. I missed the deadline for signing up for
Meloney Linder:
that was interesting. Wonderful experience, but maybe not the one you were hoping for.
Shiro:
It was very interesting. Still good. It’s a fun story now. It’s a blip in time. Yeah. Well, that’s great. Awesome. Well, I think we’re just out about time now.
Shiro:
I’m wondering where our listeners can follow-up with with you, Melanie, to figure out, you know, some of the good work you’re doing or if they have any questions to directly message you.
Meloney Linder:
Yeah. They can directly message me. My email address is melony.linder@u nd.edu, or they can find me on LinkedIn. And happy to answer any questions that people might have.
Shiro:
Well, thank you so much again for joining us and sharing all that information with us today. It’s been delightful conversation, and thanks to all listeners for tuning in. Thank you so much.
Meloney Linder:
Thank you for having me.
Shiro:
It’s a pleasure. Thank you.
