BrandED E-Book

Eric Sheninger

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 440

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Tell your school's story and grow your personal and school brand BrandED shows school leaders how to move beyond mascots and clever taglines to showcase their school's assets--and enhance communication with students, parents and all stakeholders. Through smart conversations about the genuine power of branding in education, this book shows how a "BrandED" mindset can improve schools by strengthening relationships, improving communication, telling your story, and increasing resources. Ideas borrowed from the world of business are adjusted for the unique needs of education. Practical tools, templates, and resources allow you to implement the strategies presented quickly and easily, while stories of real-world schools illustrate what BrandED thinking can do for your students, teachers, and community. Today's school leaders cannot remain in the ivory tower. This book will help you drive positive transformation as you craft and share the powerful story of your unique school brand. * Leverage digital tools to become the storyteller-in-chief and build better community relationships * Strengthen internal and external communications among students, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders * Increase resources by establishing strategic partnerships and strengthening ties to key stakeholders * Promote connectivity, transparency, and community to build a positive culture that extends beyond the schoolhouse door Authors Eric Sheninger and Trish Rubin, experts on school branding and change leadership, show you how BrandED thinking captures the focused spirit of the outstanding work taking place in schools every day; work that can be easily recognized, talked about, and valued. Get the word out, and invite the community in to build the positive relationships that benefit everyone.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

About the Authors

Introduction: Our BrandED Short Story

Eric's path

Trish's Path

“The Brandality Modality”

Welcome to the BrandED Conversation

Conversation 1: From Brand to BrandED

Part One: In Brand We Trust

Part Two: BrandED Matters to Today's School Leaders

Part Three: BrandED Unifies a School Improvement Plan

Conversation 1 Tips

Conversation 1 Reflections

Conversation 2: In the Zone for BrandED Innovation

Part One: The Psychology of BrandED Innovation

Part Two: Tools to Inspire BrandED Innovation

Part Three: BrandED Reputation Management

Conversation 2 Tips

Conversation 2 Reflections

Conversation 3: Developing a BrandED Leadership Presence

Part One: A “Personal Professional” BrandED You

Part Two: Be the BrandED Storyteller-in-Chief

Part Three: The BrandED Leader as “Edupreneur”

Conversation 3 Tips

Conversation 3 Reflections

Conversation 4: Developing Your BrandED Strategic Plan

Part One: The BrandED Drivers

Part Two: Your BrandED Strategic Plan

Part Three: BrandED Stakeholder Relationship Management

Conversation 4 Tips

Conversation 4 Reflections

Conversation 5: Sustaining BrandED Innovation

Part One: Invest in BrandED Leadership

Part Two: The Trend-Setting Stance of a BrandED leader

Part Three: The BrandED Competitive Advantage

Conversation 5 Tips

Conversation 5 Reflections

Conversation 6: Communicating With BrandED Leadership Tools

Part One: The BrandED Payoff of Distributed Leadership

Part Two: Press, Networking, Digital Presence, and Thought Leadership

Part Three: The Law of BrandED Attraction

Conversation 6 Tips

Conversation 6 Reflections

Conversation 7: Keeping Up With the Digital Joneses

Part One: Disruptive Digital Behavior That Innovates Schools

Part Two: BrandED Partners in a Digital World

Part Three: Connecting With Parents on the Digital Playground

Conversation 7 Tips

Conversation 7 Reflections

Conversation 8: Return on Investment in the BrandED School Community

Part One: Be the BrandED Relationship Steward

Part Two: Local to Global BrandED Investment

Part Three: Sustain a BrandED Community Through Return on Relationship

Conversation 8 Tips

Conversation 8 Reflections

Appendix A: Developing a Mission Statement

Appendix B: Crafting Positioning Statements

Appendix C: Stewardship Model of BrandED Development

Appendix D: Suggested BrandED Digital Tools

Appendix E: Media Advisory Template

Appendix F: A BrandED Leadership Timeline

Appendix G: Online Marketing and Brand Resources for Educator BrandED Adaptation

Glossary

References

Acknowledgments

Eric's

Trish's

Index

End User License Agreement

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Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

List of Illustrations

Conversation 1

Figure 1.1 Brand and BrandED Tenets Contrasted

Figure 1.2 Outside Pressures on Today's Schools

Figure 1.3 Results: Three Considerations for Becoming BrandED

Figure 1.4 Macroenvironment for BrandED

Figure 1.5 Microenvironment for BrandED

Conversation 2

Figure 2.1 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Figure 2.2 A Dashboard of Well-Being for Modeling and Leadership: PERMA

Figure 2.3 SWOT Analysis for BrandED Development

Conversation 3

Figure 3.1 Elevator Speech vs. BrandED Leader Mission Statement

Figure 3.2 Assets of the BrandED Collaborative Team

Conversation 4

Figure 4.1 Drivers of BrandED Value

Figure 4.2 The Elements of BrandED Stakeholder Relationship Management

Conversation 5

Figure 5.1 Supportive Leadership Behaviors for BrandED

Conversation 6

Figure 6.1 The Affiliative Model of BrandED Leadership

Conversation 8

Figure 8.1 Brand Business Model vs. BrandED Leadership Model

Advance Praise for BrandED

“Eric Sheninger and Trish Rubin provide a great read for all concerned with taking education to the next level in a competitive, digitized social media world. The time is now to learn how to brand yourself and your organization to unleash the power of your story. If not someone else will, and your school or district may suffer because of it! Thank you Eric and Trish for paving the way through the power of branding!”

—Dr. Darryl Adams, superintendent, Coachella Valley Unified School District

“If you think about how students discover, communicate and learn outside of school, it's remarkable that we still insist on compromising their scholastic experience with yesterday's approaches. Eric and Trish help us not only re-imagine how to make learning intuitive but also how to build an engaged community where we co-create the future together.”

—Brian Solis, digital analyst, anthropologist, futurist, and author of X: The Experience When Business Meets Design

“Eric Sheninger and Trish Rubin pave the way for educators across the globe to dive into the world of social media transparency in their new book BrandED. The authors take you on a journey as they walk through step by step on how to strategically enhance your school's branding power by engaging in ‘8 Conversations’ to support you in moving beyond the status quo, providing a rich and meaningful professional development experience that will leave you wanting to continue the conversation.”

—Jimmy Casas, leadership coach, author, speaker, 2012 Iowa Principal of the Year, and 2013 National Principal of the Year Finalist

“In our work as journalists and as the founders of ‘Stand up for Heroes,’ the power of storytelling is a foundational part of our brand and allows us to share the truth of our mission. School leaders can learn the lessons of building a unique brand that serves, honors and grows a community in the pages of Eric and Trish's book, BrandED, and can understand the need for communicating brand value that develops our next generation.”

—Bob Woodruff, ABC correspondent, and Lee Woodruff, author and journalist

“BrandED provides an innovative platform for educators to engage in meaningful discussions about the purpose of their work, program delivery, and expected outcomes. As the leader of a College of Education, I believe that BrandED serves as a powerful mechanism in assisting me to develop our niche in the preparation of education professionals and national discourse on public education. Eric and Trish have created a space for business and education to coexist and energize each other.”

—Monika Williams, PhD, dean and professor, College of Education, Rowan University

“BrandED opens the door to a creative, collaborative, brand-building process that results in connected school culture, performance and resource gains. As a former teacher, entrepreneur, marketing author, and most important, parent, I give this book two huge likeable thumbs up!”

—Dave Kerpen, NY Times bestselling author of The Art of People

“Every school has a brand, but it may not be what you hoped! Turn staff, students, parents, and your community into co-creators and co-owners of a trustworthy, relevant educational brand using Trish and Eric's ‘why,’ ‘what,’ and ‘how’ of brand relevance. The future of education is a connected and transparent, changing place of robotics and algorithms where a relevant, relational school brand can drive learning through intelligent listening, skillful adjusting and bold experimentation.”

—Annalie Killian, curator of Creative Intelligence Networks at sparks & honey, and founder, Amplify Festival

“As a Head of School for an international school in India, BrandED has been essential in helping me understand how to lead my school. The simple idea that transparency drives improvement has had a large impact. Being in a city with many international schools, the question of how I can help my school stand out was one I grappled with. This book has become a guide for helping my school do things well, but more importantly, ensuring that all stakeholders know what is happening.”

—Bruce W. Ferguson, head of school, Sreenidhi International School, Hyderabad, India

“Communication has experienced a revolution. Expectations, methods and opportunities have all grown and changed dramatically in recent years. BrandED lays out the why and the how to develop and use your own and your organization's brand through storytelling, relationship-building, and the use of cutting-edge technology and tools. The primary audience for BrandED—principals—will find it a groundbreaking, invaluable tool, and other educators—like superintendents—will find it extremely valuable as well.”

—Deborah A. Gist, superintendent, Tulsa Public Schools

“BrandED is a valuable practical guide for educational leaders. They will learn to enhance their impact through innovative communication strategies.”

—Dr. Nelson Lim, executive director, Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania

BrandED

Tell Your Story, Build Relationships, and Empower Learning

Eric Sheninger and Trish Rubin

Copyright © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by Jossey-Bass

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sheninger, Eric C., author. | Rubin, Trish, 1952- author.

Title: Branded : tell your story, build relationships, and empower learning / Eric Sheninger and Trish Rubin.

Description: San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016053479 (print) | LCCN 2017003564 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119244561 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119244585 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119244578 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Educational leadership—Marketing. | Branding (Marketing)

Classification: LCC LB2806 .S3544 2017 (print) | LCC LB2806 (ebook) | DDC 371.2—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016053479

Cover design: Wiley

FIRST EDITION

To my wife, Melissa, and children, Nicholas and Isabella. You motivate me each and every day to be my best. Your love and support are the ultimate currency. —Eric

For my kids, Alexandra and Zachary Rubin, and Jordan and Ryan Hughes, with thanks for allowing me to savor my brand, “MOM,” in my memories, in today's moments, and into the days to come. —Trish

About the Authors

Eric Sheninger is a senior fellow and thought leader on Digital Leadership with the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE). Prior to this role, he was an award-winning principal at New Milford High School, which became a globally recognized model for innovative practices under his leadership. Eric oversaw the successful implementation of several sustainable change initiatives that radically transformed the learning culture at New Milford while increasing achievement. He is the creator of the Pillars of Digital Leadership, a framework for transforming school cultures through sustainable change.

His work focuses on leading and learning in the digital age as a model for moving schools and districts forward. Eric has emerged as an innovative leader, best-selling author, and sought-after speaker. His main focus is purposeful integration of technology to facilitate student learning, improve communications with stakeholders, enhance public relations, create a positive brand presence, discover opportunity, transform learning spaces, and help educators grow professionally.

Eric has received numerous awards and acknowledgements for his work. He is a recipient of Center for Digital Education's (CDE) Top 30 award and PDK Emerging Leader Award and winner of the Bammy Award, National Association of Secondary School Principals' (NASSP) Digital Principal Award, and Learning Forward's Excellence in Professional Practice Award. He is also a Google Certified Innovator, an Adobe Education Leader, and an ASCD 2011 Conference Scholar. He has authored and coauthored five other books on leadership and technology.

Eric has also contributed to the Huffington Post and was named to the NSBA “20 to Watch” list in 2010 for technology leadership. Time Magazine also identified Eric as having one of the 140 best Twitter feeds in 2014. He now presents and speaks nationally to assist other school leaders in embracing and effectively utilizing technology. His blog, “A Principal's Reflections,” was selected by Edublogs as the Best School Administrator Blog in 2011 and 2013 and was also recognized by Smartbrief Education with an Editor's Choice Content Award in 2014. Connect with Eric on Twitter (@E_Sheninger) and at ericsheninger.com.

Trish Rubin is the founder of Trish Rubin Ltd., a communications consultancy based in New York City since 2005. From her first entrepreneurial business, The EDventures Group, a professional development training company, Trish has developed her unique consulting brand. In her journey from a classroom educator to a business consultant, she draws from over 25 years of communication success in local, state, national, and international educational settings. Change process and innovation of teaching and learning for children and adults power her work and thought leadership.

Trish's career began as a middle school language arts teacher at Mt. Pleasant Junior High School. She currently teaches Marketing and Brand Management to international business students at CUNY's Baruch College in the CAPS Division.

A self-described “educationalist” with a natural ability and a passion for strategically developing powerful networks and authentic relationships, she has worked as a K-16 teacher, reading specialist, literacy coach, program developer, and administrator and now as an advocate for schools. She combines her love of teaching with a passion for business development, opening the collaborative leadership conversation between business and education that can create engaged 21st century school communities. Connect with Trish through her energetic tagline “All Roads Lead to Trish” on Twitter (@trishrubin) and at trishrubin.com.

Introduction: Our BrandED Short Story

Someone give me a seatbelt, because the ride in public education is getting pretty interesting.

—Trish Rubin (2009)

ERIC'S PATH

Prior to 2009, I detested all social media, as I perceived it as a huge waste of time, let alone that it had no connection to my professional practice. As a result, I developed quite the fixed mindset and made the conscious decision not to let this fad enter into either my professional or my personal life. Unlike all my friends at the time, I wasn't on Friendster or MySpace, two social media sites that would eventually meet their demise. When Facebook became all the rage in 2005, I resisted all the requests from my friends and family to join. Not only did I see it as a huge time sap, but I was certain it would meet the same fate as the social media sites that came before. It would be a few more years before my opinion of social media would be changed forever by a little-known tool called Twitter.

When I first dipped my toe into the social media waters in March 2009, I did not know what to expect. My sole purpose for embarking into this uncharted territory was to improve my professional practice by becoming a better communicator. This was a natural connection to my work as a high school principal, as you will not find an effective leader who is not an effective communicator. Successful principals have always built highly functioning learning communities by clearly and consistently articulating a school's vision of—and commitment to—student success (Ferriter, Ramsden, & Sheninger, 2011). Twitter represented a great tool to accomplish this leadership goal. Sending short messages in no more than 140 characters was not only efficient but also an effective means of disseminating important information to my stakeholders. I finally saw value in social media as a means to improve professional practice, and thus my outlook on social media and technology in general changed.

So there I was churning out tweets about everything going on at New Milford High School. Little did I know that my tweeting would lead to a feature story on CBS Channel 2 NYC during November 2009 and in the process catch the eye of business maven Trish Rubin. It was at this time that I was exposed to the concept of branding in education (Rubin, 2009).

When Trish contacted me out of the blue, I was really caught off guard. She passionately explained that what I was doing was creating a brand presence for my school as well as for myself professionally. At first I wasn't buying it, but after I spent some more time speaking with Trish, her conversation began to make sense. I began to see brand more clearly and understand what it was about. Brand is about creating a unique identity that relates to a specific audience or stakeholder group. The value of a brand can be defined in many ways. For example, some brands promise durability, health, style, safety, taste, convenience, or savings. Brands are designed to stand out and ultimately influence the consumer in a fashion that builds trust in the product. Sustaining a sense of trust is an integral component of a brand's ability to promise value. The definition of brand I've given here provided clarity, but it was still missing some integral components in order to make the concepts of branding more applicable to the education world. Here is a synopsis that Trish and I developed back in 2009:

BrandED tenets are about trust, loyalty, promise, and creating better offerings and innovations that distinguish the education brand experience for every user, including kids, parents, teachers, and community. A brand isn't a short-term fix or a fad, but a way to strategically build a school's assets in a transparent digital world. No more ivory tower. BrandED is about a genuine personality that can impact school culture, achievement, and resources.

Schools are considered a brand. They promise value to residents of the district in terms of academic preparation to succeed in society. Many families will choose to reside in a specific district if the schools have a track record of academic success. By establishing a school's identity or brand, leaders and other stakeholders can develop a strategic awareness of how to continually improve pedagogical and management practices that promise, as well as deliver, a quality education to all students.

As a high school principal, I felt that it was my responsibility to continually develop and enhance my school's brand through innovation, risk-taking, building of relationships (with students, teachers, parents, community stakeholders, institutions of higher education, businesses and corporations, etc.), and a commitment to the community. In my opinion, this vision can assist all educators in establishing a brand for their respective schools that not only promises but also delivers value to residents of the district.

By developing and enhancing your professional and school brand, you move toward a credible perception of your work for stakeholders to embrace. Thus a brand in education has nothing to do with selling, but instead is all about showcasing the work of students, staff, and leaders in an effort to become more transparent. Educational leaders understand the importance of branding in their work, and by leaders I mean any and all educators who take action to improve learning opportunities for their students and themselves.

TRISH'S PATH

I didn't meet Eric Sheninger on a social media site, a Google Hangout, through a hashtag, using a PLN, or on a Twitter chat. I met Eric on an “old school” channel: TV. The man came right into my NYC apartment and stopped me in my professional tracks. I saw the connected future in a segment highlighting his encouragement of his teachers' use of Twitter in their high school lessons. Who was this innovative guy?

Since 2005, after a long career in education where I tested out my ability to deliver value in unique ways on a national education stage, I became entrepreneurial in the world of business. It was an easy transformation. I was educating my clients to communicate an image, create value, and sustain brands. I used my education heart. I also had a unique idea resulting from my work at the intersection of education and business. I'd been thinking about something I called brandED—something that could improve leadership by bringing innovation to schools through marketing and brand. As a former school administrator, I saw brandED as a professional development tool for school leadership. But I didn't have a leader in mind who would get it, until I serendipitously stumbled on Eric Sheninger's CBS TV segment. A few quick Twitter posts later, I presented my theory of brand to this educator. In Eric's New Milford High School office, I tested my pitch: Brand thinking is a necessary part of 21st-century professional leadership. An informed leader can adapt marketing and brand as I had been doing to improve schools in three areas: culture, performance, and resourcing.

After that meeting, Eric's brand quickly developed to include worldwide digital leadership, which is best defined as establishing direction, influencing others, initiating sustainable change through the access to information, and establishing relationships in order to anticipate changes pivotal to school success in the future (Sheninger, 2014). I watched his path and knew that my theory had moved into action. My own career path further deepened my ties to education, including teaching university seminars and college courses on branding and marketing. In 2014, we introduced a refined version of our brandED concept to leaders worldwide through Eric's book, Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times (Sheninger, 2014). Today, brandED is now ready for a wider, inclusive, and actionable school leadership conversation.

The first standard cited in the 2015 professional standards of the National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA, 2015) signals the need for attending to brandED leadership. It ushers in our worldwide discussion:

Effective educational leaders develop, advocate, and enact a shared mission, vision, and core values of high-quality education and academic success and well-being of each student. (NPBEA, 2015)

I like that signal. When mission, vision, core values, and well-being are advocated and enacted, you are experiencing brandED leadership, an educator's professional stance in this new age of communication.

We're pleased to help you write your own brilliant brand-building story. Technology has ushered in transparency, enabling a “mash-up” of possibilities that can be part of your focused professional development. BrandED thinking is one of those possibilities. We look forward to seeing your brand develop in real time and online—on Twitter and Facebook; in Google Hangouts; on live streaming platforms, webinars, and podcasts; and in blog posts—as you describe your journey to building school brand. Share your school's story that defines your engaging education brand. Develop a brandED mindset and gather a like-minded, passionate team to collectively launch an innovative brandED Strategic Plan. Invest in your own unique brandED value and professional learning plan to improve teaching, learning, and leadership in a new “business as unusual” way. No more ivory tower. Get ready to become brandED.

“THE BRANDALITY MODALITY”

No matter our level of digital proficiency, we educators grapple with the rough-and-tumble pace that professional connectivity demands in our new age. A change of leadership thinking is in order if we are to face a hyperlinked world of education. When the marvelous baseball pundit Yogi Berra paraphrased French philosopher Paul Valery's 1937 vision of the future, years before the Internet existed, he mused, “The future ain't what it used to be.” (See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/06/future-not-used/ for the provenance of this saying.) So true, Yogi. We lead schools today, preparing our digitally and socially savvy students for success as adults in a future where many of their jobs haven't been created yet.

In these changing times, opening the door to branding and the transparency it brings in a digital age may make you pause. But the old-school one-way messaging behavior for leading a school doesn't jibe with our engaged, digital communication environment. A paradigm shift is in play. Recognize it and lean into it: Our community of stakeholders wants us to engage with them—starting with our students and ending with the world beyond our school. In this new inbound world of digital communication, a world where information arrives at our digital doorstep without being invited, we have to reset leadership thinking. Our stakeholders' lives are now about exchange powered by inbound social and digital forces. A new educator leadership mindset is in order: one that calls for the clear, connective, engaging concept of brand. It's time for a “brandality modality.”

In today's engaging, digitally empowered school setting, stakeholders question whether schools really know best about educating their students (Rose, 2012). We have to do a better job of communicating what we do. We must be part of the exchange. It gives us the best chance at connecting with our audiences and winning support for schools. Ask Millennial parents whose trust in the education of their Gen Z kids, particularly in the area of technology, is seen as lacking (Shaffhauser, 2014). How can we share our vision and invite their exchange? How do we communicate trust and show value? Brand holds the answer.

Today's educators who embrace the brandality modality don't need to be humble. In the noisy digital world, educational leaders must proudly use stories of their schools to convey a consistent brand message about who they are and what they stand for. Because those messages can make or break us, we must be the observant stewards of the brand that our stories convey across social and digital platforms (Trish Rubin, 2016). Although our current educator demographic makeup is a mixed bag, representing Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers, we can see the role of brand as a unifying tool for the generations we lead, even as decisions around the communication choice to “snap, scope, or gram” test our patience for reaching the different demographics that make up our stakeholder community (D. Ford, personal communication, May 2016).

In the pages that follow, we present the concept of brandED, claiming it as the educator's unique adaptation of the business term brand. BrandED is a powerful concept that is part of a progressive view of new educational directions and trends. It represents a digital “edge-dweller” persona. It suggests a mindset of continuous innovation (Monroe, 2014). The brandED edge-dwelling educator is poised for communication change that benefits students. BrandED is about providing that benefit and telling the stories around our worth.

Emphasizing the “ED” in the word brandED humanizes the business concept of brand, a concept that grew from the discipline of marketing. BrandED is a knowing, feeling, walking, and talking connecting attitude that builds on your present leadership style and brings a 21st-century finish to your presence. It is delivered using new media tools to share your clear, consistent, targeted, and sustained school narratives. These are tools that are needed in our “always open for business” world. BrandED behavior showcases the core beliefs of your school, inviting you to synthesize: to combine a wealth of important educational content with inspired thinking from cross-industry practices, creating new, meaningful, and actionable leadership communication. Call it brandED leadership. A brief look around Twitter shows the images and content of educators who are adding the communication value of brand to their work in the digital world. One example is teacher Kent Dyer and his STEAM (STEM plus A for “art”) colleagues at Township High School 214 in Arlington Heights, IL. They are on a quest to create new experiences for their students. “Creativity is our future [and] the tools are digital,” is Kent's proud Twitter pronouncement (@Kent_Dyer), which shows the direction of his brand as an educator. To be authentic leaders in the 21st century, school leaders must have a more expansive, informed base of content and knowledge beyond the parameters of the monoculture of public education. This polycultural behavior of knowledge sharing is what Thomas L. Friedman (2005), Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The World Is Flat, welcomed in his writings as a “communication mash-up” reflective of the openness and accessibility of information.

Branding behavior creates positive influence for school leaders. To be seen as authentic in online exchanges advances one's influence in powerful ways. Today's schools exist in a digital town square where people meet daily. School value is one of the most discussed topics online. People both with and without children search the Internet and consult online real estate sites to find data about their prospective local school. Trulia.com reports that 46% of Millennials surveyed want their dream home to be near a quality school. Educational leaders must be powerfully present in the digital marketing of the narrative of school value, creating a brand that speaks in an authentic voice to an audience. Adopting a brandED strategy to benefit kids helps you attain a synthesizing view, preparing you to communicate with the varied segments of stakeholders who will research, observe, and engage with your institutional brand online on a daily basis.

Today's digital and social media world is a world driven by mobile content in short form and long form, in text and video. The business communication tool of brand can inform a school improvement strategy that harnesses the power of content, of story, in this new media age. Brand is a proven tool that has resulted in trusted connections in business since the 1950s (De Swann Arons, 2011). When adapted by schools, brand becomes the beacon—the touchstone of why we act the way we do as a school, why we teach and learn the way we do. Beyond the emotional connectivity, using a brandED strategy enables leaders to set measurable goals that ensure long-term trust. As a brandED leader, guide your community to three tangible outcomes: improved school culture, expanded school performance, and increased school resourcing.

WELCOME TO THE BRANDED CONVERSATION

We've moved our small brandED conversation from a serendipitous first meeting onto a big stage. Little did we know in 2009 that the concept of defining a school, and the need to show a school's relevance through an engaging brand, would become as strategically important to maintaining a student community as it is now. We are educators in an age when conveying the story of a school has moved beyond being an option. Our stakeholders have growing decision-making power. In a transparent world, we must present ourselves and connect with authenticity that engages our community in a brand loyalty to our schools.

In the chapters that follow, you are invited to join our compelling conversation, our call to action about building a brand that encompasses, with power and clarity, the mission, value, and vision of your school—a story to be shared on an open digital and social media stage for your engaged community. A series of eight compelling professional conversations guides you in the process of building not only your personal professional brand but also crafting a collaboratively built school brand, one that unifies a brandED community and promotes engagement and loyalty. Labeling the chapters as conversations suggests the deep thought that goes beyond simply “trying out brand” to a dedicated commitment to incorporating brandED as a professional development experience for leaders and their organizations, one that will change the status quo of educational communication in this new age. It suggests that leaders be in a continuous conversation through reflection and sharing, in real time and through digital and social media, in order to complete their brandED journey that genuinely defines the school.

The brandED innovation starts with you and grows quickly through your strong modeling of the power of brand in your school. It grows because of your ability to influence stakeholders to be part of the collaborative endeavor of building a school brand. Thanks to the buzz of innovative thinking about brand in our modern world and the fact that everyone and everything is branded, you have every chance of succeeding. Some of your stakeholders may even ask, “What were you waiting for?”

BrandED leaders immerse themselves in conversations. First, in self-reflection, then with trusted validators, before they move outward to lead and support a brandED distributed leadership team that designs and builds a brand. It is a rich, creative collaboration of various stakeholder publics. These open conversations are necessary to communicate new processes and frameworks that will share the stories of what makes a school unique as a brand and maintain its relevance. In closing each of the eight conversations, brandED leadership tips and brandED reflective questions will support leaders who adopt the innovative practice of brandED and become its valued brandED storytellers and stewards. Join the conversation on social media using #brandEDU. Connect with Eric (@E_Sheninger) and Trish (@trishrubin) on Twitter.

Conversation 1From Brand to BrandED

Conversation 1 launches the journey to brandED. Leaders learn why the tenets of business brand and marketing, standards in the commercial marketplace, can be comfortably adapted in the 21st century to an educational framework. We will touch on a short history of business branding and understand the marketing discipline that shapes leaders' educational work. Readers learn about the foundational difference between business brand and the educator's adaptation, brandED, which focuses on communicating through showcasing, celebrating, and building powerful relationships that benefit the school community. Businesses focus their brand communication efforts on sales goals; a few select elements that commercial brands employ in brand campaigns can inform educators about reaching their own brandED goals. As educators, we can appreciate brand history as a starting point for our journey, but we keep the foundational difference in mind: This leadership mindset isn't about a bottom-line return. The goal of brandED is the sharing of clear and consistent messages that define our mission to educate our children.

In this ever-changing society, the most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart. Their foundations are stronger because they are built with the strength of the human spirit, not an ad campaign.

—Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks

Part One: In Brand We Trust

The brand buzz is everywhere.

We live in a digital and social media world where everything and everyone is branded. What does brand mean? In order to move into brandED leadership, one must start at the beginning, with the word brand. Is there a “just right” definition of brand that can inform your own brandED professional leadership journey?

There are as many interpretations of the word brand as there are voices in the business community (Cohen, 2011a). A class of graduate marketing students can provide multiple versions of the meaning of brand. Those definitions might be pretty good ones because our Millennial generation gets the concept. One of the most interesting ideas about what brand is today comes from Marian Goodell, CEO of a distinctive nonprofit with a unique brand, the Burning Man Festival. Goodell claims that brand these days isn't just created, it's cocreated and celebrated by those who align with and promote its purpose and value (Solis, 2011ab). This description of a dedicated brand process is a rallying point for brandED educators, and a place to start our journey toward a collaborative, cocreated educational brand mission.

In the business world, the concept of brand is made up of three foundational business elements:

An

image

A

promise

A

result

These descriptors fit into the selling proposition for products and services that are offered to the marketplace. For example, in the case of the growth of the Burning Man Festival brand (Solis, 2011b), the image of an accepting society offers a promise of an engaged, fair “gifting economy” and delivers the result of a self-reliant, creative, and fulfilling city that appears and disappears each year during the waning days of summer in a remote desert area. The loyal followers of this distinctive brand savor their experience and, year after year, show repeated brand loyalty to the festival, which is the goal of any provider of a product or service.

Educators are not selling a product or service. But brand is a fit for us in a modern, digital view of professional learning and progressive school thinking. This brand is made up of three foundational school elements:

An

image

A

promise

A

result

The concepts of image, promise, and result can powerfully frame a school's brand-building communication effort, but with a distinct difference from the way these terms are used in the business world (see Figure 1.1). BrandED thinking around these terms is a frame for developing your own school story: The concepts of image, promise, and result create a frame on which to build a cohesive school brand communication presence, one that leads to stakeholder engagement that brings school improvement. In schools, brand is a personification of a community. A strategically marketed brand message about the valuable work of the school is now a necessity for effective school leadership in our digital world because educators now live in a world of increasing school choice options for parents. Offering a strong institutional persona across various channels through a clear brand presence is not an option in our age of visibility. “Define before being defined” is part of the leadership agenda of visibility in a digital and social age.

Figure 1.1 Brand and BrandED Tenets Contrasted

TODAY'S ICONS

Brand is about visibility. Companies spend millions of dollars to get the attention needed to secure the consumer buy. There is a science to achieving that moment of brand victory, the winning over of the audience, that is focused on the first seconds of recognizing a brand, known as the FMOT, the “first moment of truth” (originally coined by Proctor & Gamble). It's the traditional face-to-face decision buyers make that leads to a product purchase (Armstrong & Kotler, 2015). As many of us know from our own buying habits, brand is a powerful part of connecting us to the products and services we love to purchase. It's the repeated exchange that leads to loyalty. Brand use is part of our daily rituals.

As more and more decisions are made online, the FMOT has now morphed into the ZMOT, the zero moment of truth (a term coined by Google in 2011). This is human decision making on steroids. In spite of powerful data platforms and algorithms, it's often anybody's guess when, where, and why “we the people” will buy. In today's exchange, the consumer has the power. In a global competition for the heart, mind, and wallet of customers, there are big winners who know how to woo and win fans. The brand champions affect us in our day-to-day lives—and the communities we lead. Think about how image, promise, and result got these iconic brands to the top in 2016. Each brand lives a powerful, clear image; makes a relevant and genuine promise; and dedicates itself to continued tangible result that keeps an audience loyal (Interbrand, 2016):

Apple

Google

Coca-Cola

Microsoft

Toyota

IBM

Samsung

Amazon

Mercedes-Benz

GE

In the “always open for business” world of online content marketing, these powerhouses are never more than a connecting click or a pop-up away on our devices. We face the deluge of visual content around these and thousands of other brands in daily life. Simon Clift, former chief marketing officer of Unilever, a powerful, iconic global company, believes that brands, even billion-dollar brands at the highest level of success, know they aren't just about what we see. Clift believes brand to be a contract between a company and consumers (De Swaan Arons, 2011). Every brand on this top 10 list knows about turning an exchange into customer loyalty. Clift's thinking about a contract implies the feeling of trust that exists in any exchange with the consumer. This same feeling should resonate with educators because schools also work to make contracts with their stakeholders that are built on exchanges leading to trust and loyalty.

Now, equating business brand with trust is a relatively new concept. The traditional world of business sales evokes a classic negative image when it comes to trustworthiness. Schools today struggle with trust issues as well and need to adapt as business has done. How did things change for business? Today's world of sales is now different because of “positioning”: the perception of a brand as unique and set apart from the competition. Positioning a product on the basis of consumer trust didn't emerge in the marketplace until the middle of the last century. Suddenly, products needed to become more than things if they were to compete for the buy. Products needed personality. They needed to be unique and different. They needed to have a story.

Products that created stories and connected with their customers through those tales were on the way to becoming trusted “brands.” Digging into brand history is the first step in making brand a part of our own educational brand development.

A SHORT BRAND HISTORY FOR BRANDED EDUCATORS

Go back a hundred years or so when all that it took to sell was to make something of good quality, package it cleanly, and offer it to people with a folksy sales pitch. Saying that your product was “the best soap” or “the best salt” got it sold. But brand has been developing on the fast track since that time.

Long before the early 20th century, clever humans were branding. Product leaders like Morton Salt and Quaker Oats heralded the birth of mass brand presence, complete with simple but powerful icons that are still around today in the modern grocery aisle. These time-tested iconic brands share the stage today with the top 100 brands of 2016 (Interbrand, 2016), including both present-day heavy hitters like BMW, Disney, and the NFL, and newcomers like Uber. All these brands have their loyal followings, but the Pillsbury Doughboy and other time-tested brands are different. They still pack a historical and emotional punch for modern customers: We trust them.

In the 1960s, brand moved beyond simple packaging. Madison Avenue executives (think Mad Men) created product “personalities.” The Marlboro Man and Maytag Repairman began to build relationships with the consumer through the new “social media” driver of the day: the color television. Innovative communication and a new way of telling product stories gave birth to the science of brand building and the need for brand management. The golden era of TV and print advertising pushed the growth of brands that delivered new services and products to consumers, who “liked” them way before a social media thumbs-up appeared. Madison Avenue boldly tackled social issues and created campaigns to unify 1960s society, such as the Pepsi Generation campaign. Creatives successfully sold tiny Volkswagens in a time of big sedans (some with tail fins!), succeeding with a counterintuitive campaign that called the VW Beetle what most people thought it was: ugly (“History: 1960s,” 2003).

Today, brand experience—the powerful concept that advances lasting emotional connection with a consumer—shapes our personal buying habits, and in this world, customer engagement through brand experience is king. Creating an experience is a continuing challenge for any brand because of today's competition. How can brands continue to keep the attention of their audience? How can a brand position itself, offer an experience, and be noticed amid all the noise? The concept of “story” is a big part of brand experience. The successful brands of today are masters of storytelling. A brand's narrative power in the exchange with its loyal fans separates the winners from the losers. Once in possession of a unique, authentic story that distinguishes it from the competition, the successful brand grows through its consistent, targeted, deliberate messaging. This is as true for classic brands like Coca-Cola as it is for newer players like Google. Each has a story that explains its reason for existence, and each brand tells the story in compelling ways to attract and keep attention.

Connecting through a unique, emotional story is why Nordstrom's department store soars as JC Penney continues to underperform. The narrative of a successful company is consistent and continually refreshed in exchange with a new social community of fans who want their own distinct stories to be heard. Today's consumers want to belong to the community. Top brands are not shouting at the consumer as they were in the heyday of advertising. They are listening and acting on what they hear, making the story fresh and relevant across many communication landscapes. The McDonald's golden arches logo is known in 119 countries, and its successful “I'm Lovin' It” slogan is a differentiator in the fast-food world on a global scale. The success of the company's I'm Lovin' It campaign is based on the connection the brand makes across cultures as it reaches diverse audiences with a simple shared message. McDonald's integrates its brand message from Japan to Brazil to London through shared human stories, which become the key to satisfying fast-food “wants and behaviors” in any culture. (Kotler & Armstrong, 1996). This brand has ranked consistently on Interbrand's list of top global brands. Mc Donald's gets there by telling its story of the brand in traditional and new-age media messages to children and parents that promote McDonald's consistent, affordable, and reliable delivery of a fast-food product. The company now shows its connection to the changing tastes of its community by expanding its offer to a more health-minded consumer. Millennial parents who played in the McDonald's ball pits as children now bring their kids to enjoy the same experience because those parents are still “Lovin' It.” A customer in any part of the world knows the experience of the McDonald's brand because of the company's focused power to tell its story globally, and its ability to translate that experience into local cultures without losing brand recognition.

Brands must also be flexible to have impact (Kapferer, 2012). Apple may be the best example of a flexible brand by virtue of its being able to pivot yearly with a constant, consistent line of products. Apple appeals to its audience by telling the story of an always current, always plugged in, and always supported customer who continually embraces new ideas.

Another reason why the top brands succeed lies in the ways they quickly react to meet the changing needs of diverse niches—the segments and demographics—they serve. This is a prime lesson for school leaders in a rapidly diversifying age. Successful brand building comes from knowing audiences and focusing on what these customers want. Look at the brand behemoths. Microsoft's understanding of the community it serves, for example, recently led to its purchase of the online professional network, LinkedIn. Brand giants are tops at data collection and social listening and at using that information to drive flexible development of products, services, and relationships. In these times of big data and vast quantities of digital information, new software yields powerful metrics to inform brand managers about the needs and wants of the marketplace. Companies use information hoping to find that elusive ZMOT that will satisfy their communities. Brand winners like Toyota get their audience's attention on multiple digital platforms, using websites, social media, sales incentives, PR, and integrated marketing. Toyota devises ways to get its targets across niches to talk to the company about their needs and wants. The company connects with its engaged consumers on digital and social channels, encouraging them to share personal stories about their own Toyota buying journeys.

BrandED leaders take special note. Educators are joining the brand conversation at a unique, developmental point in brand history. Exchange today is based on a brand's clear narrative, consistent presentation, and ability to confidently engage in multiple ways with its diverse, segmented audiences. Big brands spend billions of dollars engaging with consumers, inviting us into the decision-making process. Like it or not, we are prodded and poked to be “customer engaged” (Hahn, 2014). Thanks to the Internet and social media, brands want to know us, their potentially loyal fans. They tailor stories to get our attention as potential customers. Many of our stakeholders are experienced in the online exchange that leads to satisfaction with a brand, and they seek the brand experience in all aspects of life. Transparent engagement is here to stay. And now it's at the schoolhouse door.

ENGAGEMENT EXPECTATION HAS COME TO SCHOOLS

The great news is that educators in the digital age don't need to spend millions as big business does to harness the power behind brand communication. It's a DIY (do-it-yourself) world, and that applies to the branding process. Consumer understanding of brand presence grows