A good brand embodies an organisations core values, helps to engage more effectively with customers and in turn, drives a business forward. It is subtle, yet intrinsic to the reputation and growth of an organisation.

At IE, we love helping clients to shape a new brand or to develop an existing one, so we were excited to win the opportunity to rebrand the University of Birmingham’s (UoB) careers service.

In the current economic climate, today’s students face the reality of soaring university tuition fees and fewer jobs awaiting them on graduation.  With this in mind, universities need to offer potential students much more than their simply chosen course. They should demonstrate the value of studying at their institution over competitors. 

When IE met with The University of Birmingham, we learned that  has a successful careers service incorporating a large team of academic staff and advisors who support each of the Universities five academic colleges and offer a dedicated service to International, Post Graduate and Business School students.

The services provided by the specialist teams have a good degree of brand recognition and affiliation. However, despite an investment of additional funding of £3.5m, the perception of the umbrella brand of the 'Careers and Employability Centre (CEC)’ remained fragmented and had little recognition both on and off campus.

The CEC needed a reinvention in the form of a single, cohesive brand that would  engage staff, students and employers. The success measures were strict. The new branding should contribute towards the achievement of centre targets including student satisfaction, employer ranking, national awards and PR. The new brand should be both individually powerful but also compliant with University guidelines.

IE’s solution included changing the name of the careers service to ‘Careers Network’, which aligned to the scale of the services offered. IE’s team of creatives worked with UoB to define core values and messaging in order to ensure that the new brand reflects the internal culture.

And the result? A robust, consistent brand that underpins the activities of the careers service, adds value and positions Careers Network as a serious competitor within the marketplace.

IE has worked with the UoB before and it was great to work with them again on such an interesting project.  We’re not happy until we have a happy client, so it’s great that the UoB are delighted with the results. The branding has received a fantastic response from their stakeholders, including staff, students and employers.

Dan Corlett, Assistant Director, at Careers Network said: “Working with IE has been a pleasure from start to finish.  Ollie and Luther really took the time to listen to all our stakeholders and to understand what they were saying.  It was a difficult project, with a very tight deadline but IE not only delivered on time but they delivered above our expectations.  All the hard work was worth it when we saw the new brand and got such a fantastic response from staff and students alike."

Thanks Dan, it was a pleasure to work with you too!