Re-Re-Branding?
Four months ago, Juniata College revealed their new logo, motto, and seal as part of a branding initiative. This new brand was to take Juniata back to its roots, and rediscover some of the pride Juniatians should feel in their school. While the word “Re-branding” has been strongly discouraged as the term for what occurred (as “it is not a re-brand, but a rediscovering of ourselves from what has always been here), I will be using it for simplicity’s sake. So with a brand new logo, motto, and a slightly changed seal, Juniata has sparked some very opinionated conversations about these changes.
Though passing and a few in-depth discussions, I have heard many opinions on the new brand of Juniata. I have heard good things about the new brand. But for every good thing, I hear about three bad things. Many people are fine with the new logo and adjusted seal. I see nothing wrong with these changes as the seal was barely modified, and the new logo does have a nice story of how it reflects the community around Juniata. It is the new motto in which most of the negativity revolves. Think about who you are just did not agree with many people’s opinions about what a motto should be, especially the motto of their school. So in order to hear more about people’ opinion on the subject, I decided to post some Fake News about the new brand.
In order to learn more about people’s opinions, I decided to create a survey that asked several questions about opinions on the new brand. From opinions on the logo and motto to things you wish had been done differently. Instead of posting this survey as me looking for opinions I decided to post it on Facebook with a caption saying that Juniata is considering to change the brand again, a Re-Re-Branding if you will. Since I had heard such strong opinions earlier about his topic, I decided that this would be the best way to go about getting the most and truer opinions
I received quite a nice response considering I only posted the survey on my Facebook and Twitter once each. While I cannot be sure of the effectiveness of tweeting the survey, the Facebook post was shared 3 times over 4 days. When I closed the survey to responses, I had 141 people fill out the survey over the short time it was open. I was not expecting this many people to respond to something that did not seem to be 100% real. While I am fully aware that several people filled this out as a joke (I recognized inside jokes in sections with fill-in answers), a majority of people had honest (and pretty good) suggestions for new mottos, and several people left their emails to be more involved with the branding program.
Aside from the few “fake answers,” I only had 1 person call me out on social media. She is in a few of my classes and apparently figured out that my post was Fake News. I was not distressed by this because it occurred after I had already acquired over 100 responses, and she did it in a way that was not completely obvious about what she was posting about. So overall, I believe that I was successful in putting some Fake News into the world with (hopefully) few repercussions. I am still figuring out what to do with this information because I do not think it is appropriate to just ignore all of these opinions. I will see what I can do with this survey results, though I doubt anything of significance will occur.
Link to post & closed survey: https://www.facebook.com/zach.guiciardi/posts/10211580798617494
