Wartburg College, a private liberal arts college in Iowa, was at an inflection point in 2022. Its leadership needed to make big decisions that would affect its future direction in one of the most challenging markets in the country for traditional undergraduate students.
A new value proposition, including a potential price reset, was being considered at the same time branding research was needed. The College knew it needed to evaluate its current branding and ensure messages reflected the value of the Wartburg experience in an authentic way, but also connected well with a change to their pricing structure.
In partnership with Wallace360, Wartburg embarked on a comprehensive journey to a strategic rebrand while simultaneously supporting strategy and communications around the new pricing.
Wallace360 led Wartburg through an extensive effort to identify a new brand promise — a tagline and narrative. We needed to know: What would appeal to prospective students? Stand out from other schools? Be embraced by students, faculty, staff, and alumni? Be authentic to the entrenched character of the school? To find out, we extensively studied the market and dove deep into the school, looking at every possible angle and spending hours talking to those who know it best.
We then conducted quantitative survey research among a nationwide and Midwest-based population of 500+ junior and senior high school students and parents that looked at motivating factors in the college selection process. We also conducted extensive survey research among 700+ members of the Wartburg community – faculty/staff, students, and alumni – to identify where Wartburg’s strengths and the community’s values intersected with prospective students’ interests and priorities.
This work identified key criteria for an impactful brand that we used in the rigorous process of developing potential taglines and narratives. This gave rise to a range of potential options. Rather than pick the one they thought would work best, Wartburg wanted to provide its leadership and Board with confidence that the change would pay off and the new tagline would attract students. Wallace360 once again turned to research.
Extensive message testing evaluated how different options performed among 200+ junior and senior high school students in the Midwest. These results provided quantitative data on how each message supported various attributes of the school across numerous audience segments. Targeted focus groups were also conducted among subsets of the Wartburg community.
The message testing revealed a clear front-runner that was reinforced by feedback from focus groups and confidently accepted by Wartburg’s President and Board. In September 2023, Wartburg College confidently rolled out its new tagline Experience More, which was integrated into all branded touchpoints from campus signage to digital to Admissions collateral. A semester later, campus has wholeheartedly embraced the tagline and associated messaging, even more fully than the marketing team had hoped and it’s been supporting an increase in Admissions inquiries.
