Brand & Creative Strategy

Communicate Your Institution’s Unique Story

VitalEDU develops brand and creative strategies for institutions, schools, and programs — grounded in competitive research and audience insights, designed to establish empathy, and built to give prospective students a real reason to act.

Talk Brand Strategy

When enrollment is at stake, your story matters

With confidence in higher education at historic lows, it’s time to take a new approach to brand storytelling and creative strategy.

At VitalEDU, we developed Story First, our unique, structured process for uncovering and activating the authentic stories that are already being lived at your institution, buried under years of committee-speak, competitive sameness, and outdated assumptions about what your audience wants to hear.

Go all in, learn everything you can about your company, and trust VitalEDU to help you find what those things are.
NYU

#1

Quality creative is the #1 driver of ad performance

#2

UPCEA Excellence in Marketing Silver Medal Award winner

+615%

Increase in branded search attributed to campaign strategy

+195%

Conversions using refreshed storytelling in paid ads

VitalEDU’s Approach to Brand & Creative Strategy

We see it all the time. Chances are, you’ve lived it.

The big rebrand accomplished nothing in the market.

The campaign used the same tagline as a dozen other schools.

The brand book did nothing but standardize your fonts.

Why does so much higher ed brand and creative work fail?

The problem usually isn’t your brand at all. It’s that no one has found a way to uncover your story yet.

We developed Story First to do exactly that.

#1. Story First.

We uncover your institution’s story through structured discovery and stakeholder workshops. We get the words right before we design a thing. Always. Because new fonts can’t tell a story that doesn’t exist yet.

#2. Rebrand Last.

We’ll tell you if you don’t need a full rebrand. Most institutions don’t. What you need is a more compelling story, told more consistently, to the right people, in the right places.

#3. Distinctive Always.

Every higher education institution is unique, but most sound the same — because most higher ed agencies don’t do the work to understand your ownable competitive position. We do.

What’s Included in a Comprehensive Brand & Creative Strategy Package?

VitalEDU offers brand strategy services a la carte, or as a comprehensive package that gives you everything you need to refresh, reposition, overhaul, or launch your brand.

Kickoff and Discovery Meetings
Brand Positioning
Message Mapping
Audience Personas
Logo and Visual Identity
Campaign Strategy

Competitor Research
Messaging and Positioning Workshops
Program Positioning
Audience Personas
Brand Storytelling and Messaging Guidelines
Ad Concepts, Copywriting, & Design

Brand Strategy Services We Offer

Research & Discovery

Our comprehensive research and discovery package digs deep into the competitive landscape to uncover trends and identify opportunities to define and differentiate your brand.

Audience Personas

We pair market research with stakeholder insights in order to create detailed profiles of the attitudes, goals, emotions, and behaviors that shape your ideal customers’ brand perceptions and preferences.

Brand Naming

Our brand naming process begins by identifying the characteristics of your brand that your audience cares most about, and ends by presenting name options that meet our stringent best practices for relevance, memorability, ownability, and more.

Logo Design & Visual Identity

Our designers and brand identity specialists work with you to refine your existing look and feel, execute a full rebrand, or build a new brand from scratch.

Brand Architecture

Our brand strategists take a holistic view of your business to recommend a brand architecture that will maximize impact and minimize inefficiencies.

Brand Positioning

We help you define a brand positioning strategy that sets you apart and protects you from commodification and would-be copycats.

Brand Messaging

We create comprehensive messaging guidelines that increase your brand’s impact through simple, relevant, and repeatable stories that communicate your brand’s differentiating value.

Employer Branding

We apply our storytelling and messaging principles to your internal brand so you can reduce labor costs and turnover while improving your business’ reputation in the marketplace.

What Is Story First Higher Ed Brand & Creative Strategy

Our unique approach centers your audience as the heroes of their own stories, with your institution as the guide that enables them to live their best lives, land their dream jobs, and thrive today and tomorrow.