Dalhousie brand refresh shifts into gear

Through growth we have evolution and with evolution comes change. This much can be said about a brand. Whether you’re a postsecondary institution, a large corporation, or a small business, what your brand — and its accompanying elements — say about you matters.

Dal is no different. As our student body grows, as our research evolves and as our community changes, we need to ensure that what our brand says about us aligns with who we are and who we strive to be.

Dal is currently in the early stages of a Brand Refresh Project with the goal of grounding our focus and establishing ourselves at the forefront of the post-secondary sector. To guide us through this process, we have partnered with m5 Marketing & Communications to achieve these objectives and push us further so we are able to truly articulate the essence of Dal — both as an institution and as a member of the community.

To kickoff this project we took a step back to fully understand who we are, where we’ve come from, where we want to go and how we can get there. Led by our partners at m5, this exercise provided us with an in-depth and holistic look and understanding of Dal’s current brand and reputation from both an internal and external perspective. Following this discovery exercise, we then held engagement sessions with stakeholders from across the Dal community, including senior leadership, deans, undergraduate students, graduate students, alumni, communicators within the university and our governing Project Advisory Committee (which is comprised of representatives across the institution). Along with the information garnered from our community survey, the results from the engagement sessions were utilized to produce a Summary of Findings — a document that provided detailed insight into the perceptions, opinions, objectives and goals that our community currently has towards the Dal brand.

With this wealth of information, we are now immersed in the development of a brand strategy. This strategy will define Dalhousie University — what we stand for, the personalities we convey, the pillars we stand on and the messages we want to share with the region, country and world. It will act as the foundation that our brand is built upon; it will represent Dalhousie as we are today and the goals we will strive for as we grow and evolve.

Each stage of the brand refresh project brings forth excitement and inspiration and we want to share this sentiment as we move through this project. For ongoing updates and an invitation to connect with the Dalhousie marketing team, visit dal.ca/brandrefresh or contact us at dalbrand@dal.ca.