"Branding" the Virgin Mary Gail Heriot

I seem to be out of step with modern sensibilities again.  I've received a number of earnest e-mails lately from various authorities here on campus about the school's "brand."  Not its reputation, mind you, its brand.  This unhappy choice of words conjures up visions of the University of San Diego as a toothpaste tube.  Or a box of cereal.

Evidently, USD has a new logo.  That's no big deal ... or so I thought.  But it turns out some regard it as a very big deal.  As our University President put it a few months ago:

"I am pleased to report that ... the Board of Trustees unanimously adopted a new logo for our university. After more than a year of research, analysis and hard work by countless constituents across campus, we are now better prepared to promote the university and enhance its reputation through a consistent visual and graphic identity. ... This is just the first of several campus-wide e-mails that you will receive regarding the steps that will be taken as we debut our new visual and graphic identity."

The announcement seemed a bit too excited for my taste.  It's hard not to wince when University leaders spend their time fussing over a logo. It's like living inside a Dilbert cartoon. Did "countless constituents across campus" really put in more than a year's worth of "research, analysis and hard work" into a logo?  I certainly hope not.  It's a task better left to one (preferably talented) graphic artist.  And there are more substantial matters for a University's leaders to be concerned with.  But I was happy to concede that a University has to have stationery.  And if it has to have stationery, it has to have a logo.  So I was willing to cut them a little slack so long as they promised to leave me out of the process.  And mercifully they did.

But now the first three chapters of the University's "Official Visual Identity and Communications Style Manual" have been released, and my tolerance for vapid corporate talk is beginning to wear thin.  So far, it's more than 70 pages, and ten more chapters are due out by summer.  At the rate they are going, the manual will eventually be several hundred pages long.  And then there are the faculty and staff workshops.  The new logo is evidently a major undertaking.  (Alas, I hope the school didn't pay a lot for this....)

In the University President's Introduction, we are told that "consistency is the key to a powerful brand."  (I can't help wondering if they talk that way at Harvard.)  Chapter One, entitled "Brand Personality" talks about USD's "Brand Characteristics," "Brand Promise" and "Brand Attributes."  The whole thing is non-stop marketing jargon.  It's embarrassing.  We're supposed to be a university.  There's even a section on "Brand Colors," which states that our colors--Immaculata Blue, Torero Blue, Founders Blue and Alcala White--"were chosen because of their association with the Virgin Mary and everything she represents." 

Yikes.  Is the Virgin a "brand" now?  I have a hard time believing that I am the only one who thinks of fingernails against a chalkboard when I read something like that.