What does pizza have to do with branding a major university? A lot, it turns out.
In this episode of Higher Voltage, Justin Bell, Vice President for Marketing and Communications at Fordham University, joins Kevin Tyler to pull back the curtain on one of the more talked-about activations at NACAC: the Fordham Pizza Shop.
Bell walks through the thinking behind the idea — not just to stand out on a crowded conference floor, but to create a tangible, memorable experience that reflects Fordham’s identity. The goal wasn’t impressions for the sake of impressions. It was connection.
Rather than relying solely on traditional tactics, Fordham leaned into something immersive — a space that invited conversation, curiosity, and, yes, a slice of pizza. It worked because it met people where they were, both physically and emotionally. And importantly, it gave the brand something most institutions struggle to achieve: recall. What mattered wasn’t just foot traffic, but what those interactions translated into — awareness, sentiment, and longer-term impact.
It also required risk. Higher ed, often cautious by nature, doesn’t always reward experimentation. But Bell makes the case that standing still carries its own risk. In a competitive, noisy landscape, institutions that are unwilling to try something different risk being overlooked entirely.
The Fordham Pizza Shop wasn’t just about being creative. It was about being intentional with creativity. The takeaway is straightforward: experiential marketing isn’t a novelty — it’s a signal of where higher ed branding is heading.
Read the full transcript here
Kevin Tyler
Hello and welcome to Higher Voltage, a podcast about higher education that explores what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to change in higher ed marketing and administration. I’m your host, Kevin Tyler.
Time for another episode of Higher Voltage. I am so pleased to have you join me today. Our guest today is Justin Bell of Fordham University. Justin joined Fordham in August of 23 as the university’s inaugural Vice President for Marketing and Communications. As Vice President he leads Fordham’s central marketing and communications division and strengthening Fordham’s brand awareness, increasing enrollment, and elevating Fordham’s unique story to enhance reputation across audiences. Prior to Fordham, Justin served as the inaugural AVP for Brand Marketing at The Ohio State University and is a 15 year marketing agency veteran. Justin, thank you for joining me on Higher Voltage.
Justin Bell
Kevin, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kevin Tyler
Absolutely. So, a couple of things I should start off with. I am originally from Columbus Ohio, so I am very familiar with The Ohio State University. And I previously was employed at Ologie. So I’m really excited to have this conversation with you. I have a lot of friends that still are that are still at Ologie about this really cool project that you launched during NACAC. The experiential marketing piece is one that I ran across in an article in Chief Marketer that talked about this installation you did in Columbus at last year’s NACAC conference. And well I want to start our conversation there about the genesis of the project and its components of the Fordham Pizza Shop and then we can get into the details of some of that as you go along.
Justin Bell
Yeah, sure. Yeah, so, you know, I’ve been at Fordham for about two and a half years. And so the first six months of that process was a lot of listening. And so during that listening time, I listened to stories from folks as to why Fordham, kind of asking folks so why why should someone choose Fordham. And what was apparent is the stories were incredible. But it took five to ten minutes for everyone to tell them to tell their why Fordham story. And that story varied so greatly. There wasn’t one uniform reason or way or elevator pitch for people to sit there and say, this is what makes Fordham distinctive. So that kind of triggered the need for us to say okay, let’s take a step back, what research have we done in the past, and we had never done audience research ever. We do pockets of research here and there, but never comprehensive audience research to understand perceptions of the audience. And so we went through that process, we actually tapped Ologie who you referenced earlier as our agency of record to to work through this rebrand with us. And we went into this for six months just doing research. We had 8600 intercepts from different audience members to really inform a comprehensive view as to well, what’s Fordham known for, what do we get credit for doing, maybe what do we do well but we don’t get credit for doing because we’re not telling the story correctly. And quite honestly we didn’t know if we needed a rebrand, if we needed a a refresh, how deep and wide did we need to go with this work. And so the data from that research really informed that. And what it told us was we needed to rebrand. We needed to really think about how do we evolve the brand to ensure that we take the heritage of who Fordham is and not change that story but to really refine it into a distinctive story that is truly Fordham. So we went through that work after about a year and a half, came up for a a breath of fresh air and actually tested that work. And so we tested the new expression, both visual identity and verbal identity. And thankfully we worked testing into that process because when we tested the first expression, it didn’t test nearly as strong as we wanted. It tested okay. But we said okay we have a choice here, either we can sharpen that and augment it and try to polish it or we can go back to the drawing board. And thanks to our great partners at Ologie we actually went back to the drawing board and started from scratch. Going back to the data and kind of reassessing what’s working, what’s not working, and came up with an entirely new expression that we came back out and tested that again and it tested really well. So, you know, fast forward a year and a half later, almost two years later, to this past summer, we did a formal brand launch. We had an entirely new brand, new visual identity, new verbal identity. We will we will always be the Jesuit University of New York, but we came out with a new expression for what matters. And that launched at the end of the summer right before we came back to campus, right in time for a new recruitment cycle. And so thinking about how does this really come to life in the market, we’re thinking about who influences that decision of prospective students and their families. And of course, one of the big audiences that influences these decisions is high school guidance counselors and admissions counselors. So that’s why we looked at the NACAC conference in Columbus and said well, how do we break through the a sea of sameness and bring something unique to the conference that hasn’t been done before. And so that was kind of the reason why we did this. It was because of the new brand and we really wanted to stick out in that sea of sameness. And so that’s what kind of kicked off the idea of well do we want to sponsor the conference and just have our logo showing up in the conference or for the same amount of investment do we want to do something really unique that stands out in the market and we’re glad we went that direction because it was memorable and kind of the talk of the conference.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah I imagine that it was the talk of the conference. I watched the kind of the renovation of the pizza shop and for those who may not have attended NACAC last year in Columbus Ohio, across the street from the Columbus Convention Center is a little pizza shop called Mikey’s Late Night Slice and it’s a really popular shop in the city of Columbus. And it’s proximity to the conference provided Fordham a really interesting opportunity to just kind of reimagine what it looks like to introduce, you know, flavors of New York to a bunch of admissions professionals who were attending the conference. And so we just walk across the street and it was the Fordham Pizza Shop that um Ologie kind of renovated. And I’m curious how you came up with that idea um and and obviously there are lots of things that you can pull out of New York to introduce the the idea of moving to the city and you picked pizza which you know who doesn’t love a pizza. But how did you come up with this idea and how did it function and perform?
Justin Bell
We wanted something unique that was New York. So we wanted to bring New York to Ohio because a lot of these high school counselors, admissions counselors, they don’t have the opportunity to maybe travel to New York which can be an expensive trip. They might not be able to come to campus. So what can we bring to them to be authentically New York? And so we started thinking about well let’s just do maybe a pop-up food truck, right? And so we started looking into that and and then we started thinking well that’s a lot of permitting and we might not be able to do exactly what we wanted there. So we worked with Ologie to think about well what else is there that we could say okay this is authentically New York and we found Mikey’s which is New York style Brooklyn style pizza. Um and so we started talking to them and exploring could we do a takeover. And ironically the first day of the conference there’s a food break and in that food break for one hour they really don’t have vendors at the convention center, they’re not serving food. And so we saw it as an opportunity where we’re like well where are these people going to go, you have 7,000 people at a conference, let’s fill that gap. And so we actually filled that gap by partnering with Mikey’s, renting out the entire facility for the day, rebranding it, and being really detail oriented. I mean we got down to the signage on the outside. When you walked in the menus were completely overhauled. We had slices named after certain things at Fordham, right? Down to you sit at the table and there’s a menu that talks about who Fordham is. And so the attention to detail was really intentional because we wanted it to be special. And that worked into our favor because as soon as people came in they started going back to the conference and talking about it. And so by mid lunch break, you know, we were open from basically 11:00 to 8:00 PM. By 11:30 we had a line around the block. Um and it didn’t let up throughout the day. And so we had out of those 7,000 people at NACAC, about 1,000 came through the activation which was just, you know, we were thrilled with that. Um and I come from the experiential space. So before I got into higher ed, before I worked at Ohio State, I worked for a phenomenal experiential agency out of Miami. Um and so I got to learn kind of how experiential breaks through the sound or that the sea of sameness and creates this emotional component for folks. You know, I mean there’s there’s some metric out there that 91% of consumers feel more positive about brands they can physically engage with, right? It creates a bond. And so that’s exactly what we’re going for is to create that bond. And at the end of the day, you know, unintended, we brought a slice of New York to Columbus for these attendees to really get a feel for who we were. And so as they’re waiting in line, you know we had Ramses there, we had ambassadors there talking to folks learning where are you from, what type of students do you have at your school or are you supporting and we built that connection so that following the event we could follow up with those counselors and build a relationship.
Kevin Tyler
You should be arrested for that pun. I’m just kidding. I’m really glad that you brought up the point early on in that response about for the same amount of money that you could sponsor that conference you could do something that would get you way more exposure and more kind of stickiness. And I think that I’m assuming that you’ve been to a ton of conferences, I’ve been to a ton of higher education conferences and it just kind of seems like the approaches are all very similar. You have the sponsorship, you have the booth, you have the pamphlets, you have the whatever. But there’s always this other thing that could be done that is extremely immersive, engaging, and I think that that’s what is so great about what you did here, especially of course with the details that you included. Like if you’re going to do something that’s experiential you have to do all of it. It’s not, there’s no like half-assing that kind of experience. And so I would love for you to talk about the decision making around what with the I mean you have this new brand, right? Of course, and you have all the messaging that’s attached to that. How did you come up with forming the store essentially from a practical nuts and bolts perspective?
Justin Bell
I mean, one, it came down to the audience, right? We knew that we wanted to tackle this audience. We wanted to tap into high school guidance counselors, admissions counselors. Because, you know, we’d engage with them over the years but with the rebrand we also completely overhauled our enrollment marketing strategy. And so part of that strategy is thinking about the influencers on the outside of the process that really help drive and inform the decision. So that was step number one. And of course we came up with well there’s no better conference to get in front of that audience than this conference. And being from Columbus working at Ohio State for a number of years I also knew the city. And so I felt comfortable saying well here’s some ideas that we could break through. And so aside from just the pop-up, we also took over the city with media. And so when people landed at the airport the kiosks in the baggage claim were all taken over by Fordham ads. When you were in downtown Columbus, whether you’re in downtown, the arena district, short north which is kind of where the bars, restaurants, and the hotels are that these attendees are going to and staying at, there were boards up and down High Street that we took over. Again, paid media, not advertising the pop-up, but basically just building the brand narrative about who Fordham is so that then when they come to the pop-up they’re like, oh, I just saw this ad about Fordham being a New York City, for what matters, and it all starts to connect for them. So it was a comprehensive approach and, you know, we did take a look at sponsorship. You know, we could walk in and I don’t know the levels but if it’s a gold or a silver sponsorship, whatever that amount is, you know, great, you get to name an event or you put your name on a tchotchke or you get this certain signage. And that goes so far, but you’re also amongst 30 other schools that are buying some sponsorships. And so at the end of the day, um we took a look at well, we could do this over here for this cost, or we could invest the same amount of money and do something really out of the box. Um and so we’re glad we did the latter because it stood out in a sea of sameness. People were talking about it, we’ve built relationships with folks after the fact and there’s proof in the pudding. We’re seeing great numbers coming out of that at this stage in the recruitment cycle already.
Kevin Tyler
Can you talk a little bit about those results? I would love to hear some of that.
Justin Bell
Yeah, sure. So again when we think about kind of activation flow through, we had about 1,000 folks from the 7,000 folks at NACAC. We as far as new relationships that were established with high school counselors, actually now have 70 new personal relationships with guidance counselors. That’s awesome. And you know, of that 1,000 for 70 of them to be now new personal relationships where we’re talking to them by email, we’re sending them pennants for them to hang in their office. There’s a full campaign to follow up with them for that. And so it’s still, I mean we’re through the application season right now and now we’re kind of releasing decisions, but I can say that this will be a record-breaking year for us for applications. When we look at the applications tied to this activation, those 70 schools where we have new relationships, applications are up 47% in those schools. And we’re not talking like we had five applications and now we have X number. We had hundreds of applications already in those schools and the number of apps has gone up 47%. And that’s pretty congruent with what we’re seeing in Ohio as well. Our goal really wasn’t to go and increase apps in Ohio. It just happened to be the conference was in Ohio, but a byproduct of that because so many of these counselors were from Ohio, plus we had the ads running in market for a couple weeks for all that out of home, Ohio applications are also up 49%.
Kevin Tyler
That’s insane.
Justin Bell
And so and again, it’s not like, you know, the end is a small number. We’re talking hundreds of applications. And we’re up almost 50% in the state alone. The great thing that we’re seeing I can go back to, you know, those 70 schools where we’re seeing an increase of 47%, the number of admits is also about 41%. So what that’s telling us is the quality of the student that we’re getting is high quality. So we’ll see, you know, later in the cycle how many enrolls and how many actually show up in the fall, but we’re tracking the ROI really closely and so far I would have spent that money three times over to get the results we’re getting right now.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah. Yeah. Just a personal curiosity of mine, while the Fordham pizza shop was open did you get any foot traffic, random foot traffic, and that afforded an opportunity to deliver the Fordham brand? Did you get any just like random general public people to kind of stumble in and experience this activation on their own that was not affiliated with the conference?
Justin Bell
Of course. It actually happened a lot later in the day. So as kind of that line disappeared around four o’clock, you know, we stayed open because then after the conference we got another big wave. But we had, you know, we had DJs in there creating a vibe. And people would come in and be like, what’s this all about? And we were talking to folks and a lot of them were corporate visitors on business in Columbus for other reasons. And those could have been employers, they could have been prospective parents, you know, so it did have a kind of this gravitas where people were intrigued. Or they were just kind of confused because maybe they were Googling Mikey’s and they show up and they’re like well this is now the Fordham Pizza Shop. What in the hell happened, right? And so it was fun and it created a really welcoming vibe and we had people at the bar that were there just from Columbus chilling and learning about Fordham. And so who knows what those unique conversations that weren’t even conference attendees led to.
Kevin Tyler
Right.
Trusted Voices ad read
Kevin Tyler
I can’t help but think about all the conferences that I’ve been to in the past where you have the dinners and the receptions and all these things and what you are now presenting is a relatively new space. It’s an experiential activation. And for people who might be interested in this kind of approach, I’m curious if you could just talk about some of the timeline of it. Like how far in advance of NACAC were you talking with Mikey’s and what that looked like without getting into like the proprietary stuff.
Justin Bell
Oh there’s nothing proprietary about it. I kind of chuckle because we didn’t come up with this crazy idea until way late in the process, right? So, kind of putting on my experiential marketer hat from my agency days, typically you’d want to start this process six months in advance, right? You’d want to start thinking about okay I have a conference, here’s the audience I’m trying to hit, and then whether it’s working with your creative team or thinking alongside an agency, think about what are you trying to achieve and what are some out of the box ideas that might allow you to achieve that. Ideally be talking to the venue three months in advance, working with your creative team to get those ideas out the door. We did all this within 60 days. Which is crazy. I think Ologie probably wanted to shoot me when I brought the idea to them, but you know this was such a fun out of the box activation that they were all in. They just wanted to figure out how to do this. They were great partners. Even my own team, it took a lot of energy from Fordham. But at the end of the day it also took an element of risk taking. And it was calculated risk taking, right? And I think in higher ed, that’s not always the first feeling that people are willing to lean in and say, yeah, I want to take a calculated risk. And that starts with leadership. You know, I was brought in as the inaugural VP here over this team by my president Tania Tetlow, who is so innovative in the space, she’s willing to take the risk. She’s pushing cabinet, she’s pushing leaders, she’s pushing everyone to think okay, don’t just say we’ve always done it this way. Think about well, how can we do it differently to do it better. How can we stand out in the market? So it’s a little cultural that you have to be willing to take the risk to do something experiential, especially in higher ed, a space that is not really well known for doing experiential except for maybe athletics pop ups. We do really good with athletics pop ups. We can pop up an athletics event, we can do merch giveaways, we can do all this fan activation.
Kevin Tyler
Alumni houses.
Justin Bell
Exactly, alumni houses. But we have to take that sentiment and bring it over to other audiences and it really does wonders for you.
Kevin Tyler
I am so thrilled that you brought up the idea of risk because I think that we find higher education at a time when it’s up against the ropes and risk is going to be required. Obviously calculated risk not just kind of random risk. And could you speak through how you sold this into your leadership? I mean it sounds like there’s already a culture of risk taking, calculated risk taking that you’ve already shared with your president, but not everyone has a leadership team like that. So can you talk about how you kind of made this real from an internal perspective?
Justin Bell
You have to, I mean one, it’s calculated risk, right? So you have to have an activation where you feel like based on the work that you’ve done, the research you’ve done, the audience you’re trying to target, that you can really achieve some goals that are measurable. And I think if it can’t be measured, there’s no use in doing it, right? Especially if this is the first time have you kind of dipping your toe into the experiential realm. But to come to a leader with a plan to say hey, I want to do this, this is the investment, I could spend this money over here in the sponsorship or I could spend this money over here that’s going to give us long term gains. That’s really important. And so you know the one thing that we think about every single day, we’re tuition dependent just like many other institutions. So every single dollar that we spend on an experiential activation, those are tuition dollars that we’re spending. So we’re very frugal. We try to do less with more. And it has consequences. We have to trade things off. To do this activation we couldn’t do other things over here. And so we have to make that calculated risk, where’s the larger ROI. Um and when you think about brand activation, when you think about experiential, what you have to also sell is the fact that this is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re looking for quick gains really quick, you’re not going to get it, right? Now I’m thrilled that we’re seeing these gains with applications, but I think that’s just the beginning of the awareness that’s being built and the perceptions being shaped amongst this audience of counselors about Fordham. We will see this pay off for years to come. But a lot of times people are looking for what can I do right now to impact, you know, those application numbers for the next 60 days. It’s not about that. You know, it’s the long game. And so I think making sure that your leadership understands I am making calculated risk, here’s the goal that we’re trying to achieve, here’s how we’re going to measure success, but don’t expect an ROI immediately, I need a few years to prove that ROI. That’s where you have kind of that magic happen and that buy in happen.
Kevin Tyler
I’m so happy that you said that. I think we find ourselves in positions where we need immediate gratification or immediate results. And that’s just not how our cycles work. Our funnels work. It’s just not, it just will not ever work that way. And so I’m really grateful that you shared that. Obviously Fordham, its location offers lots of things to pull from, right? You could have, you’ve could have picked any number of things from New York city. I’m curious if you could talk about like, what does next look like for this kind of approach? Like, are you looking to Denver for AMA for, I don’t know, bagels or something? I don’t know.
Justin Bell
I think we’re getting questions all the time. I mean, no matter where we are, whether it is members of my team, members of the admissions team, from other higher ed folks that are out there, counselors, enrollment officers, they’re all asking, so what’s next? What are you going to do at NACAC in Minneapolis next year, right? And so we are leading into planning for more experiential, know, whether that’s NACAC in Minneapolis next year.
We’re looking at other festivals, you know, South by Southwest, place for us to show up and be culturally relevant in a space where we’re meeting tech innovators and entrepreneurs and business leaders. You know, are we also potentially we’re looking at, we do a lot of spend here in the metro area on out of home. know, every year we do a campaign, a big campaign in the fall, and we do a little bit of a follow up in the spring. And typically we take over different metro areas, the subways, different stations. And so, is there an opportunity to come in and do an activation alongside that campaign in Grand Central Station as an example? And if we do that, how can we take that activation and then scale it in a way that we can pick it up and move it again? So if we do something in the fall at Grand Central, can we pick that up and take that activation to homecoming and engage a totally different audience, but we’re investing one time and the ideation and the development and the production of building whatever that thing is. You know, we have a pizza shop activation now. So if we want to take this to another city, find another pizza parlor and just pop it up for another event, we have that scalability. And so to be honest, we weren’t thinking about that initially when we were talking about the Ford and pizza shop in Columbus, but now that we see how this has come together, it is transferable. It’s scalable. So now, every time that we’re thinking about new activations, we are thinking how do we scale and how do we use the idea over and over so we can maximize that investment, especially around the creative, the production and all those things.
Kevin Tyler
I love it. I love that so much. think about almost immediately how alumni might react if there is like a pizza shop in a really heavily populated alumni village or whatever. I think that there are so many ways to make this, extend the experience here because I mean, obviously people listening to this will know that like experiential activations are hyper local. You have to be there, right? You have to go there. And the way that you’re extending this across and thinking about ways to either replicate, reuse, reproduce, whatever else.
Justin Bell
Yep.
Kevin Tyler
That experience, a way that is compelling and connective for the audiences in that area, is super, super dope.
Justin Bell
Yeah. But it has to be authentic to who you are, right? It is hyper local, but it was such an extension of who we are as Fordham as far as the pizza shop. It was so funny. We had either New Yorkers or alumni coming into the activation that were there at the conference. like, okay, we get this, but is this really New York style pizza? How good is the pizza? And they weren’t judging us for any other reason but the pizza. But we were really intentional about that. We selected Mikey’s not because of the location, but it’s New York style pizza that people actually really love in Columbus. It’s well known as one of the one of the best shops in Columbus. It’s why they’re pain and they have multiple locations. And so it was funny because you have these New Yorkers that they know a good slice and they would walk in and they’d ask this question kind of being like a snarky New Yorker like well I’ll be the judge of this you know and then they left saying you know what you have you hit it out of the ballpark it really was a good slice might not have been the best slice.
Kevin Tyler
It is.
Justin Bell
But to them it was New York slice. so I think making sure that you’re truly authentic, if you’re gonna spend this money and invest this, it has to be authentic to who you are. And that’s why it landed so well because people, especially that know Fordham or know New York, they’re like, this is the New York vibe. This is really what it’s about.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah, yeah. I think it’s also important, at least for me, to think about, like, while you had a very stated goal of this activation for that conference in that location, is that people who are not affiliated with any of the things that you were doing, like conference, whatever else, and they had this experience, that is now brand awareness for Fordham for those people. Like you said, it could have been employers or whoever else. And so I think that, like, the value is multiplied just by virtue of having something so new and so new feeling innovative on the ground there. I think it was so cool.
Justin Bell
Even the out of home that we were doing, right? I mean, you can’t buy out of home for one day. We had to buy out of home or in the airport for a couple of weeks and you have business travelers coming through there. You have other students that are going to colleges in central Ohio, whether they’re going to Ohio State or other campuses that might be prospective graduate students that were seeing that ad, right? So yeah, you have this core focus and the core goal, but there’s all these ancillary benefits that come from this type of activation. That’s hard to measure those ancillary pieces. But if you have the ROI of that central goal, can prove that the investment’s worth it in order to keep building in the budget for future activations later.
Kevin Tyler
I want to just revisit just super briefly this conversation around risk, right? We’ve seen these other institutions across the country. We’ve seen the Featherstone University campaign and the type of risk that they are taking and their messaging. We have the Fordham Pizza Shop and it feels like people are waking up to this idea of like doing new things. I’m curious if you could just kind of share your take as general or as specific as you want about the importance of risk from a more like institutional benefit perspective that folks might take something from.
Justin Bell
Well, kind of going back to every risk that we take as calculated, we don’t take risk blindly or wishing that something or hoping that something will work. so, I mean, even going back to our rebrand, I’ve been in branding for years before higher ed. And I’ll tell you, the hardest brands to rebrand are professional sports teams in higher ed, because people are emotionally attached to that brand.
Kevin Tyler
Amen. Yes.
Justin Bell
They went there, they are fans, their parents went there, legacy. I mean, and you know, with our rebrand, with any other high rebrand out of the gate, people were upset. You moved their cheese. It is change for folks and people don’t like change and they might not get it and they might not want to even read the narrative as to why we made this change. They just opt to, well, you got rid of this or you change that. But then when they start to see it in practice and they start to see the benefits of that change. Then they say, I get it. And that’s where you get the real reward of taking a risk. Doing a rebrand is a risk. Doing these events is a risk. But when you can track that risk and tell the story of the benefit on the back end, people have these aha moments. Whether it is your colleagues, whether it is your team, whether it’s other industry leaders that are watching you from afar.
Once you have that ROI, the risk reward starts to pay off and it does come down to risk reward. The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward, right? And so there’s a balance you have to figure out what’s the right balance for your institution. And I’ll tell you as a Jesuit institution, we’re not always the biggest risk takers, especially right now. I don’t know tons of universities that are taking huge risk, but we’re taking calculated risk because we have to.
Kevin Tyler
Yeah. Yeah.
Justin Bell
The market’s competitive, we have to regain or rebuild trust, not just in our institution, but as a sector, right? And I think we’re starting to see that dip back up in some of the data that we’re seeing. Yes, there’s a lot of talk out there, but I think people are seeing through the negative speak about higher ed and the work that we’re all doing correctly, whether it’s about building the narrative of trust or the importance of research, getting that narrative. And so we have to keep filling that cup. We have to still keep investing in that collectively, not only as an institution, but as an industry, because we have to keep changing that perspective that higher ed’s worth it, right? Going and investing in education will have an ROI. And that we are here as a sector for the greater good. I mean, that goes back to for what matters, which is our new slogan, right?
Kevin Tyler
Yeah.
Justin Bell
We are about attracting students who want to matter to the world. So institutions want to matter to the world. And so I think that fuels our risk taking even more because we know that if we can make an impact there, we’re making an impact not only for our brand, but also for higher ed as a sector.
Kevin Tyler
I could not agree with you more. I think about while you were talking about some of the best project branding projects I’ve ever been a part of. And I think about some good friends who I’ve worked with, um, who got to a point in the project where it felt very uncomfortable, right? It was a new idea for it’s a new brand, new, whatever felt new. And, you know, she was like, this is uncomfortable for me, but I think it’s right. And it paid off in spades, right. And so I think that there is this notion that, yes, we have done this all the same way all these years. We are now at a time when that’s just not going to work anymore. And so if you feel slight discomfort, it might be the right thing. If you’ve done all the work, if you’ve done all the research, if you have all the data, and you know it’s the right direction, it just feels scary, do it. You have to do it.
Justin Bell
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, and I think if you’re grounding everything in your values, right, you have to be values driven. Like values are your North Star. And so if you’re deviating away from those values and you’re feeling discomfort, you might want to recheck yourself and be like, okay, so let me come back to the center and focus on what are we trying to achieve? Who are we? What are our values? But if your values focus and you’re trying to deliver upon that value, and then you start to feel some discomfort with the risk. That’s good. Because if you’re not feeling discomfort, you’re not pushing hard enough. In a competitive market, you know, it was very uncomfortable to think about completely evolving a brand that has been around for 184 years. We knew we were not going to make everyone happy. But at the end of the day, proof is in the pudding that we did the right thing. You know, all these numbers that we’re getting back from sentiment, we just did a measurement after our latest out of home in New York, and we’ve seen the perception of prestige increase 9 % amongst New Yorkers in the last year since our rebrand. And so, you know, but looking at before the rebrand, I was super uncomfortable about this change because I knew it was going to be disruptive. And so as long as you’re grounded in the right values and with the right goals in mind, if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not pushing hard enough and you’re not gonna push through that sea of sameness at the end of the day.
Kevin Tyler
I could not agree with you more. What do you think higher ed is going to look like in five or ten years?
Justin Bell
Wow. I mean, I try to think about what is higher ed going to look like in a year. One of the things where higher ed is not always the fastest moving industry, but right now we have to be moving fast. We have to be proactive, not just reactive. And so I think in five to 10 years, I think the trust and the perception of value in higher ed is going to rebound.
And I think you’re gonna see, yes, maybe a consolidation, maybe not so many institutions nationwide, but you’re going to see the trust rebound and the value of a higher education rebound as well. And it might look a little different. It might be more stacking credentials and whatnot. It might not be this traditional four year degree is the go-to. I think that’s what everyone’s trying to figure out is what is the role of higher ed to prepare the future workforce, and that’s gonna come in different flavors. But whether that’s what it’s gonna look like, that’s my hope. I really hope that we can rebuild trust amongst society and regain that perception of there is value here, not just to get a degree, but there’s value in how institutions bring good to the communities in which they are.
Kevin Tyler
Amen to that. I cannot think of a better way to end this episode. Justin, thank you so much for joining me on Higher Voltage. This was great. Congratulations on this.
Justin Bell
Kevin, I appreciate the opportunity. It’s great to see you and thanks for the conversation.
Kevin Tyler
Of course, anytime.
That’s it for this week’s episode of Higher Voltage. We’ll be back soon with a new episode and until then you can find us on Twitter @VoltHigherEd and you can find me Kevin Tyler on Twitter @KevinCTyler 2.
