Lehigh launches rebrand in “The Real Campaign”

On Oct. 28, a video from President Joseph Helble unveiled Lehigh’s new brand, “The Real Campaign,” to the campus community.

In the video, Helble said Lehigh makes an impact on society by inspiring leaders, innovators and problem solvers to take on the world’s most pressing challenges. He said those aspects have always defined the Lehigh community, and it can now be expressed through the campaign.

Brett Ludwig, the vice president of university communications and public affairs, said the Real Campaign, which launched in the first weekend of October during Founder’s Weekend, was created after 18 months of data collection, brand research and collaboration between administrators, professors, students and board trustees. 

Ludwig said the university wanted to find a way to highlight the value proposition Lehigh offers within higher education to its almost 90,000 alumni, faculty, staff and students.  

“Let’s figure out a way to talk about it, to really highlight our key points of differentiation,” Ludwig said.

He said there are four main pillars of The Real Campaign: academic excellence, student success, a sense of place on campus and in Bethlehem, and a connection to the larger Lehigh community and network. 

Ludwig said The Real Campaign was not created to redefine Lehigh’s story and grounding principles. Rather, he said its goal is to provide the community with the proper language to tell Lehigh’s story through a distinct and uniform approach.

He said the push for a rebrand of this nature originated a couple of years ago during a group conversation of leaders from the community. They spoke about a special essence they believed Lehigh possessed, but had not been sufficiently marketed to those beyond campus. 

Ira Rubien, the associate vice president of brand and admissions marketing, said the goal of the project is to raise Lehigh’s national and global profile.

He said he believes increasing Lehigh’s school pride beyond Bethlehem is one way to promote undergraduate and graduate admissions

“You’ve got to sing this from the rooftops,” Rubien said.  

He said a top priority for the campaign’s senior leadership team was to showcase student achievements. 

After the leadership team consisting of the Board of Trustees and the deans of all five of Lehigh’s academic colleges met, a need was demonstrated to change marketing.  Ludwig said the goal was to represent Lehigh’s values and “it factor.” 

Ludwig said a four-person brand team within university communications was created with an additional 15-person brand council. The council is made up of the provost, deans and other leaders on campus.

He said the 15-person team was meant to represent the entirety of the university. Lehigh then hired Ologie, a brand-marketing company that specializes in work with higher education institutions. 

Ludwig said the company, along with the help of Lehigh’s newly-established brand teams, conducted interviews with students, alumni, prospective students and families, and high school counselors. 

He also said a subsequent competitive analysis was then completed to understand what successful brand strategies other competitors used. He did not specify the names of the competitors.

Following this initial discovery period, dependent on data-collection around Lehigh’s public perception, Ludwig said an individualized brand campaign-strategy began. This part of the process relied heavily on input from the Board of Trustees. 

To finalize the brand strategy, Ludwig said a final round of research was conducted by Ologie. He said the company tested which of three possible brand options performed the best when marketed to Lehigh’s target audiences, speaking to 145 current students and over 1150 prospective students.  

Ludwig said The Real Campaign out-performed the other options by a landslide. 

Rubien said since the launch, The Real Campaign has manifested on campus in the form of posters, banners and the release of the brand anthem video. 

The Lehigh Home website has also undergone design changes, with new taglines reading, “Real People Making an Essential Impact,” “Proof in the Making” and “Real learning. Real people. Real progress.”

Rubien said informational sessions and guided tours of campus for potential undergraduate students will also now reflect the new brand, implementing language around The Real Campaign’s four major tenants. 

Student tour guide Eireann Walsh, ‘28, said the tour guide program underwent transformations this fall, now prompting guides to speak specifically about the four pillars on their tours for prospective students and families. 

Walsh said student tour guides learned about the new brand from email correspondences detailing what it encompasses, along with additional communication in monthly meetings.

“I do appreciate them giving us kind of a stronger backbone of what Lehigh’s core pillars and values are,” she said. “That way we can incorporate our experiences and our knowledge about the history of the school and what this school has to offer based on those core principles.”

Ludwig said creating this brand strategy was based on many conversations and debates about what it means to be a part of Lehigh. He provided The Brown and White with quotes from anonymous current and prospective students that they received during their research.

“What has been a Lehigh truism, no matter the age, is the ‘Roll up your sleeves and get to work’ attitude,” said an anonymous Lehigh student who was interviewed for brand research. “That’s what we call pragmatism.”

Ludwig said a brand has to be both reflective of where a community is today, while showing the aspirational elements of where it wants to head.

“I think we got it right,” he said.