The idea of referring to the University of Akron as “Ohio’s Polytechnic University” just hasn’t clicked the way administrators had hoped.
The rebranding campaign that unleashed waves of outrage from students, alumni and faculty has quietly receded from an upfront boast to an occasional tagline.
“It isn’t understood by our audience, so we’re going to adjust,” said Lawrence Burns, vice president of advancement at UA. “The name will never vary — it’s the University of Akron.”
President Scott Scarborough announced his plan to rebrand UA a year ago. He said the new slogan was an effort to attract new students. Even then, he admitted it was a risky strategy — but said doing nothing was just as risky.
On UA’s website, you’ll now see “Home of Williams Honors College” next to the University of Akron in the spot that had touted the polytechnic title.
UA Board of Trustees Chairman Jonathan Pavloff talked about the rebranding efforts to members of the Akron Ohio Student Association on May 12. Pavloff said it was a way to make UA the distinctive choice for students who are deciding where to go, but said that it failed.
“It didn’t work. ... I’ll offer that it’s not something that will continue,” he was quoted as saying on the student organization’s website: https://www.facebook.com/Akron OhioStudentAssociation. “The fact that it didn’t work, I’ll be the first to stand up and apologize.”
riday, Burns said the rebranding name has quietly been downplayed and “hasn’t been used as prominent for several months.” He said the administration had agreed to give it a test period when it was initiated.
“If it was universally accepted over a three-month period of time, we probably would have kept it as the main and only tagline. But it hasn’t been,” he said. “We knew the word ‘polytechnic’ was going to be a challenge to explain. It was not accepted well in other fields. So we made a decision not to totally abandon the term, but not use it in the forefront of everything.”
Lee Gardner, a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education, a trade publication that covers the industry, said rebranding is used by institutions looking for “that thing that makes them special and makes them stand out from others.”
He said his gut reaction to stopping a rebranding campaign after a year is that it may not have been given enough time to work.
“If you introduce something new and different, a certain percentage of your audience is going to tend to hate it no matter what,” he said. “But if they actually saw declines in ways they could measure such as a decline in enrollment or fundraising, than maybe it was a smart choice.”
Burns said the administration made adjustments based on its constituency, who he described as prospective students, alumni, donors and employees.
There was an online campaign collecting signatures in protest to the rebranding.
“Some people love it and some people don’t like it at all and some don’t care,” Burns said. “We want to be more sensitive to the audience we’re communicating to.”
One brand marketing consultant said naming a product or institution is just like naming a kid; everybody is going to have an opinion.
Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, a New Mexico advertising firm, said after a period of years, the name becomes defined by the kid.
“There are two functions of a name; one is recognition and one is meaning,” he said. “If considering a name change, you have to ask: Is the marginal gain in meaning worth the loss in recognition?”
The administration said the biggest obstacle with the rebranding was the word “polytechnic,” because the name confused people. McKee said there is bound to be community reaction when an anchor institution such as a university tries something different.
“People are feeling like you are violating a community trust. [It’s like] ‘Hey, administration, it’s not your name to change. It’s the community’s name,’ ” he said. “That’s not legally true, but emotionally it may be true. What really matters is what people think polytechnic means. If they think it excludes liberal arts, even though it technically doesn’t, then it does.”
He said he sees both sides and is also sympathetic to the administration.
“If I’m president of the university — and I have an obligation to sustain and grow this institution for the community — and it’s my consideration that we need a name change in order to do that, that’s legit,” McKee said. “The motivation is not wrong.”
Marilyn Miller can be reached at 330-996-3098 or mmiller@thebeaconjournal.com.