Inside the war room Branding the college

Author: Nicole Lam, Mary Lane and Derek Schlickeisen

James Carville, the "Ragin' Cajun" who helped elect Bill Clinton president in 1992, once said that good communications is all about storytelling. It is a lesson not lost on Michael McKenna, the College's vice president for Communications.

"We are the College's storytellers," he explained.

McKenna's Communications Department employs 16 people, from graphics and Web site designers to writers to spokespersons responsible for handling press relations, in its mission to build a unique Middlebury "brand" in the public eye.

"The whole idea is to get past the 'Club Midd' image," McKenna said. "When I came here, the trustees believed we certainly weren't getting the credit we deserved for being such a wonderful place. Our job is to show how are we different, and why people should care? That's our job."

This week, The Campus looks at how Middlebury's storytellers work to make the transition from "Club Midd" to "Liberal Arts, Global Action," the College's new tagline as it embarks on a $500 million capital campaign and looks to cement its place among the top few liberal arts schools in America.

Just as it did with Carville's campaign for Clinton, McKenna and his team's work for Middlebury starts in a "war room," the converted town courtroom where McKenna and nearly all of his staff work together in open cubicles.

"The space we have is really set up like a city newspaper room or a creative department at an ad agency," said McKenna. "That lends itself to collaboration and brainstorming, the fluid interaction you need when you're creating media communications."

It is a war room with an important mission: in a new Strategic Plan approved in May 2006, the College identified stronger communications and setting the College apart from its peers as necessities.

"Middlebury should demonstrate its unique differences and societal relevance," the plan reads. "[The College should] continue concerted efforts to raise Middlebury's visibility externally and develop an approach to its own publications and communications tools that consistently reflect the objectives of its various constituencies."

McKenna's own resume reveals the depth of Middlebury's commitment to re-shaping its image. A graduate of Wesleyan University, McKenna served as President and CEO of Marsteller Advertising, a unit of the worldwide advertising firm Burson-Marsteller that counts NASCAR and Merrill-Lynch among its clients.

McKenna brings to the Middlebury job an approach that has suited Marsteller's corporate clients in the past. When the College wanted to put out a new viewbook for prospective applicants, he turned to a time-tested tool common to professional advertising agencies: the focus group. Working with prospective students and their parents, admitted students who were coming to Middlebury, as well as applicants who chose to enroll elsewhere, McKenna and his team picked apart the old viewbook and built a new one from the ground up.

"People said there was way too much writing," he said. "They said they wanted it to be simpler, with much more bullet-pointed information. And they said it looked like every other college admissions booklet, with scenes of students walking across campus in the fall. They said every one of these places looks exactly the same. So we decided to see if we couldn't make ours a little different. It's all based on research."

Pamela Fogg, the Department's art director, explained that the once-complex viewbook was boiled down into three main themes, each chosen because it offered something that made Middlebury different from other college.

"We took three things - community on campus, our environmental mission and the College's global reach - and wove all of the standard messages you find in college viewbooks into them," said Fogg. "We saw those as the main differentiators." It is an approach that seems to be succeeding, with prospective applicants citing the College's environmental reputation and its internationally-oriented programs - from languages here in Middlebury to schools overseas - as forming their first impressions of the school.

"I was definitely into the environment and languages parts of Middlebury," said Jason Poe, a prospective member of the class of 2012 visiting campus for the first time. "So much of the mail I got from Middlebury was talking about its Spanish or French programs, and the mailing would be printed on recycled paper. It was definitely clear where the priorities were."

Even outside of the prospective applicant pool, the College's environmentalism seems to have gotten around.

"When I tell people I go to Midd, they usually ask if it's that really environmental school," said Jason Jude '08. "I mean, that's if they've heard of it at all. But the first two things that come up are usually our intellectual ability and the environmental activism."

The mission does not stop there, however. In addition to helping re-brand Middlebury as part of the Strategic Plan, the Communications Department is responsible for the messaging associated with the potentially record-setting $500 million "Middlebury Initiative" launched this fall.

"You can't build someplace like Middlebury from scratch," said McKenna. "What we're doing is identifying what's so different and compelling about the College that it's worth $500 million in support for donors."

For the Initiative (so named because they wanted people to understand it's more than a fundraising campaign), McKenna and his team conceived of a two-part communications plan based on personal stories and the idea of a journey.

"We talk about the Initiative as a journey - not just 'give us money, see you later,'" explained McKenna. "We invite donors to take part in that journey with their support and with the printed literature."

Invitations sent to local alumni chapters for Initiative receptions this April say it all.

"Middlebury is in a unique position to define the kind of liberal arts college that will best meet the needs of its students and the world in the 21st century," the card reads. The message is part of the overall theme "Liberal Arts, Global Action" that Middlebury has attached to its fundraising.

"It's not just this little college up in Vermont, but one that really has a global footprint," said McKenna. "It doesn't mean everyone's going to go out and become global business leaders or diplomats, but they will have a sense of being part of something bigger."

At the same time, however, the College is trying not to lose its rhetorical focus on the individual as it plays up an increasingly global scale. In addition to a mock "passport" for the journey in which donors will partake when they support the Initiative, the College recently produced a pamphlet entitled "Self-described." The piece profiles dozens of students, faculty and staff at Middlebury, emphasizing the diversity of individual experiences possible at the College ­ experiences made possible by the Initiative.

"We tell stories with the initiative," said Fogg. "It's less institutional, it's more first-person."

The new focus on personal stories once again came from the focus groups McKenna and his team conducted. The old book, participants said, did not show how their own experience at Middlebury would differ from what they might get at another school.

"We've actually seen people citing the 'self-described' piece in their admissions essays," said Maggie Paine '79, director of college communications. "And that's really unheard of."

For all of their focus on the College's national image and global reach, the storytellers take a back seat when it comes to shaping perceptions right here in Vermont.

Without regular access to the focus group-tested mailers and sleek Web videos aimed at donors and potential applicants, town residents build their ow
n image of Middlebury from a broad variety of sources - with sometimes unexpected results.

"The first thing I think of is Geraldine Ferraro's son," said Geoffrey Abernethy, an employee at Main Street Stationary. "That was the only thing I knew about Middlebury College before I moved here from Los Angeles in 1992."

Celebrity relations aside, Abernethy - in what became a pattern in speaking with Middlebury residents - said his perceptions of the College are largely shaped by what he hears about in the local media.

"One thing I read about recently was the ban on Wikipedia," he said, "and John McCardell's deciding to make an issue about lowering the drinking age."

Still other residents, however, form their opinions of the College based on their interactions with students and faculty who frequent their businesses in town.

"I love them," said Middlebury Discount Beverage Company owner Joe Cotroneo of Middlebury students. "This town's my favorite place in the world. I mean, my business is selling beer."

Both Abernethy and Cotroneo said that they and their neighbors have a largely favorable impression of the College and its students.

"I think people around here really do have a good attitude towards the College," said Abernethy. "There's lots of bright, dedicated people who go here. People my age usually complain about 'kids these days,' but I just don't see the problem here at Middlebury."

Cotroneo added that, particularly in his business, he was grateful that Middlebury is a college town.

"Without the College, we'd just be another regular town," he said. "The economic impact is huge."