Building a Brand Strategy

+40%

growth in first-year enrollment

+$1M

increase in net tuition revenue

Luther College partnered with Carnegie to grow enrollment, increase net tuition revenue, and strengthen its academic profile year after year.

A cohesive brand strategy unifies Luther’s story and strengthens student connection.

Though consistently ranked among the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, Luther College lacked a unified brand strategy to clearly communicate its distinct value. The College partnered with Carnegie to align brand expression, creative, and web strategy around a cohesive, student-focused narrative built for long-term impact.

Student Type

Undergraduate

Solution

Branding

The Challenge 

Although Luther College is ranked among the nation’s best liberal arts colleges, senior leadership recognized they lacked a cohesive brand strategy. Luther College sought, and found, a partner in Carnegie who would help them to connect better with best-fit students.

Our Approach

Using Luther’s existing brand strategy and applying Carnegie’s proprietary archetype system, Carnegie’s concept work with Luther began with in-depth discovery among campus stakeholders and the creation of two campaign concepts. The chosen campaign concept, “Shaped By You”, was implemented widely across campus, including the college’s admissions packet, financial aid packet, alumni magazine, on-campus signage, and Luther’s brand standards.

Concurrently, Luther began a partnership with Carnegie’s web team to translate the brand strategy across its web presence. The website redesign project focused on audience alignment, web governance, and a shift from a web-as-project to a web-as-process mentality with a focus on continuous improvement.

What Worked

  • In-depth discovery using Carnegie’s proprietary archetype system resulted in two campaign concepts deeply rooted in Luther’s brand personality.
  • Brand implementation and expression brought the chosen concept (“Shaped by You”) to life across communications channels.
  • A complete website redesign translated the brand strategy across its web presence and aligned Luther’s messaging with its audience.
  • A long-term web governance plan gave Luther’s internal teams the tools they needed to continuously enhance and extend the new site.

Carnegie provided the added capacity we needed to design a new look and feel for Luther College. It was so helpful for us to have an outside perspective from their creatives to think differently about how we communicate about Luther. We are very strongly still leaning on the look and language of Carnegie’s campaign to lend consistency and a new approach to how we’re portraying and talking about Luther.

Executive Director of Strategic Marketing and Communications

Luther College

Services That Drive Success

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