Messaging
A unified message matters. It defines what UND stands for, strengthens our reputation and supports our brand promise.
Build a unified message by sharing distinct stories from across our schools, colleges, departments, and programs that connect our aspirational goals, rooted in a liberal arts education, with tangible outcomes. Tangible outcomes include statistics (e.g., scholarships, average salaries, notable rankings), opportunities of interest for the audience (e.g., student life, study abroad, research, state impact, professional outcomes) or student and alumni success stories.
To know what tangible outcomes to share, start by understanding UND’s brand pillars, brand promise, brand voice and audiences. From there, shape your message around using the right personality traits and tone to make your story resonate.
Download and print the Brand Book for statements and proof points you can use to convey the UND brand to a variety of audiences.
Brand Pillars
Our brand pillars are the building blocks that define who we are. Representing the values and attributes that make UND special, they support our brand promise and tell our story.
North Dakota
As the flagship university that gave North Dakota its name, we take great pride in our history, community, work ethic and resiliency. These are the values we share with North Dakota. Once a part of UND, always a part of UND.
Doers
We meet adversity head-on, roll up our sleeves and get the job done. We lead not by telling, but by doing.
Ready
We equip our students with a skill set to lead in life. Our hands-on, education is strengthened by the liberal arts to develop socially responsible, collaborative and dynamic leaders.
Impact
We believe in action and tangible outcomes. Our groundbreaking research, meaningful engagement, economic impact and the great successes of our alumni are a testament to our belief that results matter.
Brand Position and Promise
Our brand position embodies the essence of who we are and what we represent and what makes us different from competitors. Built from our brand pillars, it is the foundation from where we present our story.
Our brand promise, also known as our tagline, is how we express the brand position to our audiences.
UND’s Brand Position
We equip students with the insights to lead and the tools to make tangible impacts. We are dedicated to empowering leaders that do and doers that lead. WE ARE PROUD TO BE FOREVER UND.
UND’s Brand Promise: Leaders in Action
Our brand promise pairs LEADERS — which represents a UND student’s aspirational journey to become a well-rounded contributor to the world around us — and IN ACTION — which represents tangible aspects of a UND student’s commitment to hard work, achievement and making a positive impact.
Brand Voice
- Always proud, open and honest.
- Empowering to our students, faculty and staff.
- Intentional and direct, using an active tone and unpretentious language.
- Positive to communicate our impact and convey opportunity and confidence.
- Straightforward, using proof points and statistics to prove our commitment to hard work, positive impacts and the future.
- Packed with action verbs and powerful language to reflect our determined culture.
- Concise, featuring digestible content, particularly for online and social media posts.
Do
- Be descriptive yet concise.
- Be conversational, personal and relatable to the audience.
- Use personal stories about students, alumni, faculty and staff to communicate the UND experience.
- Demonstrate that we understand and care about each group’s different wants and needs.
- Be inclusive and celebrate diverse perspectives, peoples and ideas.
- Complicated, confusing or featuring overly technical language.
- Forced, feigned or overly excited.
- Trying to be something we are not. We avoid passive phrases such as “we will” or “we’re going to.”
- Packed with clichés or “fluffy” language.
- Clouded with sales-speak, long-winded passages of text or verbose content.
Don't
- Let our pride for UND come across as arrogance by using too many superlatives.
- Use UND lingo and insider references when communicating with audiences who are not deeply connected with the community.
- Use long words or phrases when shorter ones will work just as well.
- Speak down to an audience.