The Milwaukee Brand

[illwauk]

Feb 14, 2012 16:29:37 GMT -6 Rawls said:

I like those, ilwauk! Maybe play around with other effects, but I like that better than the woodmark M or your previous logo. Just my opinion. Also, I still think UMil adds to our brand confusion rather than helps it. At least unless/until we become the University of Milwaukee. I agree the block M looks more collegiate, that's why Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Marshall, etc use it. This one would be uniquely Milwaukee - a strength in my book.

Thanks for the compliments. The UMil stuff is on there because I saved the entire thing as one piece, but I see your point and will admit one of the reasons I'm pushing UMil/UMilwaukee so hard as a secondary brand is because I think we should be the University of Milwaukee. This isn't California where multiple universities share a collective identity and color schemes (they may vary in shade and hue, but all UC's use some form of blue & gold). There's only one University of Wisconsin... it's not us and not only should we not have to feel ashamed about it, we also shouldn't have to explain the naming conventions of the UW system to non-Wisconsinites who intuitively assume we're Badgers.

As far as your other point about the block M (I think you're thinking of Mississippi State, btw, not Mississippi), part of the reason I like it is because I think the block M is engrained into the sports culture of Milwaukee as much as anyones.







That said, I know not everyone sees it that way and that's fine. Honestly, I'd be honored if anything I came up with got popular enough for the athletic department to adopt it (which I'm not holding my breath on, seeing as how no one in our athletic department seems to have heard of this "interweb" thing).

[Rawls]

I was thinking of this logo for Ole Miss.

I see your point about the block M, but I still think we'd get lost in the mix.

[skrapheap]

Feb 15, 2012 10:52:44 GMT -6 illwauk said:

The UMil stuff is on there because I saved the entire thing as one piece, but I see your point and will admit one of the reasons I'm pushing UMil/UMilwaukee so hard as a secondary brand is because I think we should be the University of Milwaukee. This isn't California where multiple universities share a collective identity and color schemes (they may vary in shade and hue, but all UC's use some form of blue & gold). There's only one University of Wisconsin... it's not us and not only should we not have to feel ashamed about it, we also shouldn't have to explain the naming conventions of the UW system to non-Wisconsinites who intuitively assume we're Badgers.

The "naming conventions" to which you are referring are actually an issue with the various media outlets which cover the sports programs.

Nearly everyone is familiar with UW-Madison as "Wisconsin." That has a long tradition behind it. (There were no other universities in the UW System from Madison's founding until 1956, when UW-Milwaukee was created. Parkside and Green Bay were created in 1968. and the former Wisconsin State University schools became UW- schools in 1972.)

The issue is with how various media outlets label the athletic programs of the other universities in the system. If, say, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel decided to be consistent and call the programs at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay by the names which the programs themselves prefer, JS writers would always refer to the Milwaukee Panthers and the Green Bay Phoenix, and they would be correct.

Efforts to lobby other media outlets to do this have met with varying levels of success. Some of them refer to the Milwaukee Panthers and the Green Bay Phoenix, others do not. Perhaps if it was mentioned, whenever anyone was lobbying for the programs being called what they call themselves, it would help to mention that the NCAA refers to the programs as Milwaukee and Green Bay, respectively, when they publish statistics.

I imagine the requests for this which have to most weight come from the athletic departments in Milwaukee and Green Bay. i also suspect that those departments, while desiring that media outlets would use the proper names, feel that they have more important issues on which to focus their attention.

[illwauk]

Wow, I can honestly say I've never seen that Ole Miss logo anywhere before. It's always been the Ole Miss script or the Colonel. Anyway, I made this graphic with all the other Block M logos I could find from D1 schools. I'm not gonna give my thoughts, I'll just let everyone decide for themselves.

[illwauk]

Feb 15, 2012 16:38:48 GMT -6 skrapheap said:

Feb 15, 2012 10:52:44 GMT -6 illwauk said:

The UMil stuff is on there because I saved the entire thing as one piece, but I see your point and will admit one of the reasons I'm pushing UMil/UMilwaukee so hard as a secondary brand is because I think we should be the University of Milwaukee. This isn't California where multiple universities share a collective identity and color schemes (they may vary in shade and hue, but all UC's use some form of blue & gold). There's only one University of Wisconsin... it's not us and not only should we not have to feel ashamed about it, we also shouldn't have to explain the naming conventions of the UW system to non-Wisconsinites who intuitively assume we're Badgers.

The "naming conventions" to which you are referring are actually an issue with the various media outlets which cover the sports programs.

Nearly everyone is familiar with UW-Madison as "Wisconsin." That has a long tradition behind it. (There were no other universities in the UW System from Madison's founding until 1956, when UW-Milwaukee was created. Parkside and Green Bay were created in 1968. and the former Wisconsin State University schools became UW- schools in 1972.)

The issue is with how various media outlets label the athletic programs of the other universities in the system. If, say, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel decided to be consistent and call the programs at UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay by the names which the programs themselves prefer, JS writers would always refer to the Milwaukee Panthers and the Green Bay Phoenix, and they would be correct.

Efforts to lobby other media outlets to do this have met with varying levels of success. Some of them refer to the Milwaukee Panthers and the Green Bay Phoenix, others do not. Perhaps if it was mentioned, whenever anyone was lobbying for the programs being called what they call themselves, it would help to mention that the NCAA refers to the programs as Milwaukee and Green Bay, respectively, when they publish statistics.

I imagine the requests for this which have to most weight come from the athletic departments in Milwaukee and Green Bay. i also suspect that those departments, while desiring that media outlets would use the proper names, feel that they have more important issues on which to focus their attention.

I don't think it's that so much as it's just easier for local sources to refer to us as UW-Milwaukee (and Green Bay as UW-Green Bay). Milwaukee has caught on as our brand nationally (for the most part) because we'll never show up on a national source without the pretext of college sports where referring to us only as Milwaukee isn't a problem. That's not the case locally where multiple teams use the Milwaukee name. Having a nickname like Panthers doesn't exactly help because no matter what town the source is based out of, there's likely to be a high school or two that shares our mascot. Therefore, the easiest way for them to distinguish us is to use a name like UW-Milwaukee or Wisconsin-Milwaukee. This is why a secondary brand is so crucial if we are to sell ourselves as "Milwaukee" locally as well as nationally.

[illwauk]

On board with "University of Milwaukee" yet?

[PantherU]

Feb 19, 2012 9:45:18 GMT -6 illwauk said:

On board with "University of Milwaukee" yet?

For anyone responding to Illwauk's post, please don't talk about the content of the status - this is not a political discussion and shouldn't be one. Only talk about the reference this guy made about "UW Marquette" and its effects on our branding.

I'm not interested in a political discussion.

[illwauk]

I agree... in fact I probably should've made that disclaimer myself.

Sadly, this isn't the first time I've heard someone refer to "UW-Marquette"... not even close.

[dutchpthr]

[quote author=illwauk board=Dope thread=5277 post=105871 time=1329759342Sadly, this isn't the first time I've heard someone refer to "UW-Marquette"... not even close.[/quote]

I have heard that too but it was not that people were confusing UWM with Marquette it was that they didn't know Marquette was a private school and figured it was part of the UW system, so not sure how much i would use that as an example, but i see the point your trying for.

[illwauk]

I'd say it's still a problem, seeing as how UW-Marquette lends itself to people logically and intuitively thinking Marquette is "UWM." Especially when, as it is, we have a hard enough time explaining why UWM shouldn't refer to UW-Madison.

[illwauk]

truevaluecompany.com/work-true-value/UWM_recruiting_schedule.asp

Note the URL, then click the link.

[illwauk]

Yeah...

[illwauk]

Somone posted this on another forum I frequent. Apparently the University of Western Ontario has officially branded itself as "Western University" due to having many of the same problems we have. One paragraph in their official statement ( communications.uwo.ca/western_news/stories/2012/January/western_rolls_out_new_branding.html ) stood out to me:

Chief among the changes will be the adoption of Western University as the institution’s widely used moniker. The university’s official name remains The University of Western Ontario, and will continue to appear as such on diplomas and official documents. But for communication, marketing and web purposes, Western University – or, at times, simply Western – will be the name.

This is exactly what I've been talking about as far as branding ourselves as the University of Milwaukee, but remaining UW-Milwaukee legally. Virginia Tech, as I've pointed out many times before, has done this quite successfully... NO ONE calls them Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (their official legal name).

Here's a short video explaining the branding problems and what Western did to solve them... some awesome graphic work went into this as well: communications.uwo.ca/brandnew/



One last thing unrelated to this... I found this quote at the Butler board (regarding the A-10) to be rather interesting.

You mean getting out of a league with the like of academic dunces like Cleveland State, Youngstown State and Wright State isn't major upside? Or branch campuses like UIC, UW-Green Bay and UW-Milwaukee? All 6 of these can ride off into the sunset together and merge themselves into the Summit.

We (and Green Bay) stopped being branch campuses over four decades ago and UIC hasn't been a true branch of the U of I for a few decades now too. Why are we sticking with a name that is obviously hurting our academic profile (let alone our athletic profile)?

[Rawls]

at least we're not Green Bay

[skrapheap]

Mar 12, 2012 23:22:03 GMT -6 illwauk said:

One last thing unrelated to this... I found this quote at the Butler board (regarding the A-10) to be rather interesting.

You mean getting out of a league with the like of academic dunces like Cleveland State, Youngstown State and Wright State isn't major upside? Or branch campuses like UIC, UW-Green Bay and UW-Milwaukee? All 6 of these can ride off into the sunset together and merge themselves into the Summit.

We (and Green Bay) stopped being branch campuses over four decades ago and UIC hasn't been a true branch of the U of I for a few decades now too. Why are we sticking with a name that is obviously hurting our academic profile (let alone our athletic profile)?

How often are such opinions really created by institution names?

We're talking about a BU fan on a fan board, who is most probably willing to accept any excuse to support his opinion. If you point out to him that UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay are not (and have not been for many years) "branch campuses" of UW-Madison, and that UIC is not a branch campus of the UIUC (and has not been for many years), he'll just trot out three more equally lame excuses.

Some of the other examples on this thread, the Facebook ones, to me are far more likely to be typing errors than real confusions of UWM with other institutions. The immediacy of social media does not lend itself to proper editing or even spell-checking.

i don't believe the name of our university seriously affects the perception of its quality, at least not of the basis of the evidence produced so far. The companies who hire UWM graduates, and the funding agencies who are awarding research grant money, etc, are very aware of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They know the quality of the graduates and the research and the scholarship that is happening at UWM.

i'm on board with the athletics programs branding themselves as the Milwaukee Panthers. i believe the brand will catch on as the Department of Athletics, and, to a lesser degree, the fans, insist on the brand being used. i have to wonder how insistent the department has been. As i said before, i get the impression that the branding has a lower priority with the department than it does with the more passionate fans, especially as evidenced by the people on this board. Perhaps we who are fans need to be making a case to the department that it would help the programs if the department insisted a bit more firmly that media outlets identify those programs as the Milwaukee Panthers.

In some cases, such as the JS, we may have to wait for leadership changes before silly policies are changed, but that is not to say that fans and the department should not remind the JS, as frequently as necessary, that their policies are silly.