As shared previously, we have been building a stronger relationship with our college and university marketing and communications colleagues on behalf of all of our Extension professionals.
One of the first parts of our Minding the Brand work was to identify someone as a dedicated Extension Communications liaison between Extension, the college marketing team, and the Ohio State brand center.
Moving forward, Marissa Mullett will be your primary point of contact within Extension for all brand-related design questions (including print pieces and merchandise). The CFAES Brand Approval Team is an additional resource and may be used much as it was in the past. However, a main focus for Marissa will be making sure that branding for Extension and its program areas, teams, and related units is accurate and on-target for the purpose intended. This will help streamline university review and approval of all documents and materials that we create as an organization.
One goal with this process is to build consistency across the organization and ensure positive impressions from the many materials everyone is creating. As some of you have likely noticed – we have a number of somewhat complementary pieces, but our look is not as coordinated across the state as it can and should be. Many items are created with a “good faith effort,” but they are technically not on brand. That said, we don’t expect everyone to be experts in applying the brand; and this initiative really is designed to help support everyone in applying the Ohio State brand. As we work through this initiative, we’ll revisit often how best to continue helping everyone apply the brand guidelines appropriately.
We will begin sharing guidelines and best practice reminders for specific topics in future Minding the Brand messages. We also are tweaking the contact information on our merchandise and apparel guidelines, as well as a few other documents. In the meantime, you can contact Marissa at any time (mullett.50@osu.edu) for brand insight, design input, and access to resources. The more complete information you can send to Marissa up front (e.g. anticipated deadline, general content, audience, partners involved), the more helpful even your first conversation can be. Note: this is a change in process at our end too, so please allow at least a couple of working days for Marissa to review and respond to your message.
As we all know, Extension marketing and communications have a lot of unique scenarios and there can be lots of variables to consider. We also are dedicated to clarifying the elements of this initiative through conversations – either one-on-one or in small groups. We will be reaching out directly to some existing teams, and we welcome a chance to connect with other groups upon request. More info on that in future messages.
This is a work in progress, so we appreciate your grace as we all move forward together. If you have questions about the Minding the Brand initiative overall, contact Cheryl at buck.19@osu.edu.