THE UNIVERSITY has spent over £40,000 re-branding itself with a new corporate identity and website, despite criticisms from senior academics that doing so was “naïve”.
The cost breakdown, obtained through a request under the Freedom of Information Act, includes £35,000 on consultancy fees, £1,500 for the production of the style guide, and £6,000 on the purchase of new fonts for use within the University.
The re-branding involved a redesign of the University crest and the commissioning of a new font, and coincided with the launch of the University’s Internet homepage.
It has also developed a single logo, dubbed the ‘Quadrangle’, to be used as the ‘primary branding device’ for all public relations material, and has specified the exact colour and font sizes to be used. In addition, it provides a ‘branding toolkit’ website for staff, which includes a style guide and exact instructions how the logo is to be used.
But a professor at the Saïd Business School has criticised the decision to spend the money on a new corporate identity. Douglas Holt, L’Oreal Professor of Marketing, called the branding exercise “trivial” and said that the University’s reputation did not depend on its brand image.
“It is an unfortunate misperception of branding that it is largely to do with visual images,” he said. “Visual identity can be a very important aspect of branding if you’re talking about vodka or fashion. But usually brands are forged in the hard work of delivering a superior product over many years. This is certainly true in the case of Oxford. Oxford’s trademark is the vessel that carries hundreds of years of experiences with, media reports on, and discussions about the University.
“The value of the brand didn’t come from having a nice logo, but for creating knowledge and delivering education in a distinctive way and becoming famous for doing so. For brands with trademarks so deeply embedded in historical meaning, it is usually quite dangerous to mess with them much, which thankfully they didn’t.
“To think that a modest tweaking of the visual identity system will have significant impact on how people perceive Oxford would be naive.”
A spokesperson for the University said that the re-branding was necessary for commercial reasons. She said, “The purpose of the re-branding is to ensure that the University’s visual identity reflects Oxford’s rich history and its ambitions for the future. We hope that this new branding will make Oxford University stand out in the competitive global arena.”
Additional reporting by
Tom Seymour
Academics criticise £40,000 University re-branding
