Wofford adopts new slogan and marketing package

Annie Mitchell, Vice President for Marketing and Communications, came to Wofford in 2014 and in her new position, she was a part of establishing Wofford’s first official tagline: “It’s your world.” Five years later, the college is transitioning to its next marketing package: “Where thought leads.”    

The launch of the new tagline coincides with new admissions materials, the new website (launched last semester) and a new brand book. When Brand Stille, Vice President of Enrollment in the Office of Admissions, President Samhat and Mitchell originally conferred to implement the college’s first tagline, they anticipated it would operate as a rotational marketing material to be “refreshed every 4 years or so,” Mitchell said.    

Among “the constellation of liberal arts colleges,” Mitchell added, a tagline serves a “confirmation and reiteration of what a Wofford education can do for our students.” Some colleges, like Belmont University, maintain a tagline over a longer period of time, whereas others, like Wofford, choose to reevaluate the campus identity when necessary.   

Wofford’s decision to rebrand is concurrent with recent academic renovation and construction, as with the library and pending Environmental Studies building, as well as changes to the function of Interim and general education requirements.    

Mitchell identified some of the challenges with the previous tagline, citing that it sometimes “got tiring. The second half [i.e. “Explore it” or “Research it”] felt forced.” Mitchell added that “we hope any tagline will have legs within student experiences. The transition into ‘Where thought leads’ was based on the fact that we feel we create thought leaders; we create students that learn how to think. And the ability to discern information and make decisions is really a pivotal part of a liberal arts experience.”   

This new tagline is intended to be applicable to lots of experiences. “Thought can still lead you to a place,” as “It’s your world” used to suggest, “and [thought] can lead to a job, another idea, research. It’s flexible in interpretation,” Mitchell said. It was also selected for its brevity.    

“Think” was also considered among hundreds of other ideas for the college’s new tagline. The process included the initial list of brainstormed concepts, 4-5 months of discussion and focus test groups. In the end, the new tagline was selected for how it “represents the college and the college experience appropriately and gave us a lot of flexibility for its visual execution,” Mitchell states.    

Mitchell said she feels a “tremendous responsibility to our students. You want to make sure that when people hear that you went to Wofford, that that brand impression is what Wofford is–which is a distinct liberal arts college. So in terms of marketing, I think that our primary goal is to make sure that we promote, safeguard and protect the Wofford brand.”  

“Change is different, but change is also an opportunity for growth,” Mitchell said. The Office of Marketing and Communications encourages student feedback on the material they produce.