What place branding taught me about universities

I did a PhD in place branding, which is a long way of saying I spent years studying why cities that describe themselves identically to every other city are surprised when nobody moves there.

The temptation in place marketing is to claim the universal goods: welcoming, innovative, connected, vibrant. Every campaign has them. They are all true, which is exactly the problem — a claim that no competitor would ever contest is not a position, it's a courtesy.

Universities do the same thing. Student-focused. Research-intensive. Globally minded. If you can swap the crest at the top and the sentence still works, it was never saying anything.

The brand truth is usually already there

Place branding has one useful discipline that transfers directly: you cannot invent the asset. You can only find it, name it accurately, and stop apologising for it.

A mid-sized institution in a cold city with a strong co-op program and a famously stubborn alumni network has a real position. It is not "world-class." It is something much more specific, much less flattering in the abstract, and far more persuasive to the eight thousand people who would genuinely thrive there.

Three questions that get you there

• What do people who love this place say when they're not being asked to promote it?
• What do we keep apologising for that our best students actually chose us for?
• Which competitor could truthfully make this exact claim? If the answer is "most of them," start over.

Finding the brand truth is the whole job. After that, the work is mostly getting out of its way — so students enrol, investments come in, and tourists show up.