A Bold Brand Transformation Sparks Award-Winning Momentum

A refreshed brand strategy and creative campaign helped Curry College articulate a clearer institutional identity and express it across a modern marketing ecosystem.

People’s Gold, Telly Awards

Award of Excellence, Communicator Award

Silver Award, Educational Advertising Awards

A new brand foundation supports Curry’s next chapter

Curry College recognized the opportunity to express its identity with greater clarity and confidence. By developing a cohesive brand strategy and a bold creative platform, the institution set out to tell a more compelling story about who it is and what makes its student experience distinctive.

Working closely with campus leadership and stakeholders, the initiative focused on uncovering Curry’s authentic personality and translating it into a unified brand presence. The result was a modern framework for communicating the College’s values, strengths, and ambitions in a way that resonates with prospective students and broader audiences.

The Challenge

Curry College faced enrollment pressure in the hyper-competitive New England higher education market. Like many small private institutions, the College was navigating the realities of the demographic cliff while competing with a dense concentration of regional colleges and universities for prospective students.

With new leadership in place, the institution recognized the need for a bold vision that could better differentiate Curry in the marketplace. While the College had a compelling story and strong student experience, its brand and messaging were not fully capturing what made Curry distinctive to prospective students and families.

Our Approach

Carnegie partnered with Curry College to develop a modern brand strategy that could clearly express the institution’s identity and differentiate it in a crowded higher education landscape. The work focused on uncovering Curry’s authentic personality and translating that identity into a cohesive platform for creative storytelling and marketing execution.

Through research, stakeholder workshops, and collaborative consensus-building, Carnegie worked closely with campus leadership to identify Curry’s unique position in the market. Using Carnegie’s proprietary archetype framework and psychographic student segmentation model, DARTS, the team developed a brand foundation designed to resonate with prospective students while aligning the campus around a shared vision for the College’s future.

From this foundation, Carnegie developed a comprehensive creative campaign and marketing roadmap designed to bring Curry’s refreshed identity to life across channels.

What Worked

Brand discovery and stakeholder workshops to define Curry’s institutional personality and messaging framework.
Psychographic student segmentation to better understand prospective student motivations and guide marketing strategy.
Visual identity development, including updates to the institutional logo and brand expression.
Creative campaign development designed to showcase Curry’s distinct story and student experience.
Multichannel creative assets, including photo, video, website updates, and print collateral supporting admissions and marketing initiatives.

The Results

Curry College’s bold brand transformation quickly gained recognition across the higher education and creative industries. The campaign commercial “Made for You” earned People’s Gold at the Telly Awards and a Communicator Award of Excellence, while the College’s digital retargeting ads received a Silver award at the Educational Advertising Awards. The rebranding effort also drew attention in a Boston Globe article highlighting Curry’s innovative approach to modernizing its institutional identity. Today, the College is equipped with a comprehensive brand standards guide, message platform, and creative campaign assets that enable Curry to tell its story in a focused and compelling way while expanding digital outreach to new markets.

Earned Media and Awards

A unified marketing platform, including brand strategy, campaign assets, and segmentation tools for future growth.

The boston globe

Highlights Curry’s rebranding and marketing efforts in response to concerns about the enrollment cliff

Read the Article

What I appreciate most about Carnegie is that they invested time and effort in really getting to know us. It’s unusual to get that level of engagement and integration from a vendor. The research was incredibly valuable, and the branding process galvanized our community around a common voice and challenged us to take a bold position in our very competitive market.