Branding Day at UWM

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Brand Oversight Committee presented its second annual UWM branding day on Oct. 23 in the UWM student union. The event was open to all student and faculty members and was broken up into sessions that ran from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

“I thought the meeting went very well,” said UWM business major Reis Ennis. “I learned a lot of stuff about branding. Being a business major at UWM, I thought it was very helpful to teach me about branding and the specific things you can use like color schemes and stuff like that.”

The sessions were split up into topics ranging from branding tools to email marketing and branding social media and video.

The committee encouraged any UWM community member who prepares or supervises for UWM marketing or is involved with promotion of any sort to attend one or any of the sessions that were held as no registration was required for the event. Members of the committee took turns giving information on each topic as each session lasted around 40 minutes.

“These presentations were meant to inform and sharpen branding skills,” said font and color presenter, Andy Reis. “Branding is a nice tool to have and the more you know about it the better off you will be.”

Each session was focused on the UWM brand and how it is identified by the public. The presenters used the UWM brand as an example to kick-off each session to inform the audience about the combination of names, signs, symbols, and designs that have been used to identify UWM. They made sure to stress the importance of distinguishing your brand from competition and how it must be done at a consistent level in order to have success.

“The presenter also mentioned about the UWM logo,” Ennis said. “When you think black and yellow you think UWM. When you see these three letters you don’t think of the University of Wisconsin and some random “m.” You think of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.”

The audience was able to ask questions and get feedback after the session on the brand they were trying to either create or improve on. The transitions from event to event were smooth and improved from last year.

“This event was so much better than last year,” said UWM student Becca Giese. “Last year everything seemed to be crammed into only a couple of sessions but this year was much smoother. I recommend this event to anyone interested next year.”

“I was happy to learn that we were able to put out a good product for anyone who attended the sessions,” Reis said. “We put a lot of thought and work into this and to get that type of feedback means a lot.”

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Brand Oversight Committee plans to continue this event every year in the fall. Each year they hope to gain more and more interest from the UWM community to grow this into a “can’t miss” event.

Branding day seemed to be a hit based on the reactions from committee members and the audience. The committee plans to run it the same next year and is looking forward to hear next year’s feedback from the community.

If anybody from the UWM community missed out on this year’s event, they can find it on the UWM branding website at http://uwm.edu/branding/.