What makes us UCL? Discovering and developing our brand

This project is a critical enabler as we seek to grow our reputation through our diverse global community and audiences.

We will be looking to create a forward-looking brand that reflects our values, vision, past, present, and future direction, and provides a strong foundation for future campaigns, communications, philanthropy and engagement activity.

Find out more about the work so far, including a summary from our ‘discovery phase’ where we conducted insight into our audiences’ perceptions of us. Please also look out for updates on how you can get involved as well as ask the brand team questions about our brand and the wider project.

Why is our brand important?

A university’s capacity to attract talented staff and students, research and industry partners, funding, philanthropy, and so much more, depends upon its ability to develop and maintain a reputation for ‘global excellence’.

When we talk about branding, what we really mean is how all these audiences think and feel about us. How do they perceive us, how aware are they of us and how can we stand out compared to similar universities?

Having a strong brand helps us communicate who we are to the audiences that matter. An authentic brand message underpinned with brand themes and pillars will enable us to showcase our stories, a sense of our personality and the essence of who we are, what makes us UCL. As well as helping us to stand out and differentiate our unique offer, a strong brand identity enables us to express visually who we are in a coherent, recognisable way.

In 2022, UCL’s Strategic Plan consultation also identified a gap in how we see our brand internally versus with how others perceive us externally and a desire within UCL for us to be more distinctive and better recognised. We have an opportunity to introduce a more cohesive narrative and brand with a clearer structure of how it is used to ensure we are greater than the sum of our parts.

The importance of having a strong brand within higher education has been amplified more recently by the global competition and international dynamics influencing choices of our prospective students, movements in the global rankings and sentiment across the higher education sector.

A distinctive UCL brand and our approach to an overarching brand, engagement and philanthropic campaign and bicentenary will help drive global awareness, affinity, and engagement with our internal and external audiences.

Using insight to shape our brand

Working with UCL academics to develop our approach and methodology, we have spent the past months discovering how we are perceived by our many stakeholders, reviewing audience awareness, understanding, feelings and associations of UCL. Almost 6,000 stakeholders participated in the discovery research, including over 1,250 staff, current students and alumni through survey, interviews and focus group discussions.

The results have demonstrated that whilst people know UCL, there is a gap in understanding of ‘who we are’ and ‘what we stand for’ and that our existing narrative and visual expression requires refreshing. You can find a summary of some of these findings here.

What can you expect to see in the coming months?

We are looking to take forward this extensive insight to develop our forward-thinking brand with a refreshed proposition, brand pillars supported with authentic narrative, bold tone of voice and distinctive identity that reflects the essence and personality of UCL.

We will be working with a world leading brand creative agency to help develop this work. In the coming months, we will be providing more opportunities for you to engage around this next phase including through workshops, roadshows and drop-in sessions across the university.

These will give us the chance to provide updates with our community and audiences, test concepts and gain feedback as we develop our approach, our core brand narrative and identity, with supported UCL200 narrative and visuals as well as an overarching one brand, philanthropy and engagement campaign.

Whilst we develop our brand, we have been working with our digital and accessibility teams on the UCL Design System, which will provide a one-stop shop of tools, guidance, code and templates, to support the delivery of our brand.

Please do visit our project webpages and get in contact with us if you would like to find out more.