Since the start of the new school year, RWU and its marketing team have been undergoing a branding initiative spearheaded by Chief of Staff Brian Williams and Associate Vice President of Marketing Lynne Mello among several others.
In the next step of the branding initiative which is still in the first phase of discovery and research, a survey was distributed to students, staff, faculty, alumni, prospective students, board members and donors on Thursday, Nov. 3.
The foundation of the survey was developed by Steve Raabe who comes from a separate company called OpinionWorks along with RWU’s marketing partner Creative Communication Associates (CCA). CCA is a higher education marketing agency operating out of New York that was working with RWU in earlier parts of discovery and research such as discovery sessions held two days on campus in September according to Mello. Mello said they talked with over 100 people on how they feel about Roger Williams University.
Mello said she could not reveal the specific questions being asked in the survey, but did say the ultimate goal is to hear from as many people in the RWU community as possible to capture their voices and “hear from a large segment of our audiences to really help us determine the future in our messaging and in what will be highlighted most.”
Questions on the survey will be based on the input from the earlier CCA discovery sessions and seeing how a potentially larger number of people respond to this survey.
“I think [RWU community members] will find it enjoyable, it won’t be a tedious survey,” said Mello. “It’s really their thoughts about Roger Williams University, its strengths and what really is distinctive about the university and what factored into why they chose Roger.”
OpinionWorks will then analyze the data and break it down into different categories and sections such as responses from active undergraduate students.
The branding initiative overall will have a fresh feel Mello said she thinks people will like.
“I think what’s really important is this project will feel fresh and be engaging for the community at Roger Williams, but it’s going to highlight a strength and talk about something that Roger already does really well.”
Looking ahead to what is next for the branding initiative this school year, Mello said, “We’re hoping by Commencement, we will definitely have more of the brand foundation and the massaging. It takes a while, and to do it right, you really have to go through each of these steps and depending on what you find out you may want to probe more and do more research.”