Recently, there has been a lot of talk about what exactly it is to be “RIT” and what exactly the RIT brand is. In light of this, it has been decided that RIT needs to figure out its image, hone it, and learn to sell it. And although I agree with this fact, I’m not necessarily sold on what the powers that be have got in store for us.
RIT hired 160over90 to identify the Institute’s true essence and provide a sound campaign to sell it. On Dec. 6 and Dec. 7, the branding agency presented their findings and what they’ve got in the works (see “Strike Up the Brand” on page 6). Starting with a number of brand pillars — a few examples are technology, imagination, quirky, inquisitive and driven — they came up with four driving concepts: the “beautiful solutions” that we come up with, the curiosity and work ethic that drives us as “problem seekers,” the “fertile ecosystem” that the university provides in order to facilitate creative thinking and creation, and the “intersections” where our different talents meet. And even though they seemed to miss “innovation,” a favorite RIT buzzword, everything looked pretty good so far. Then, with a warning that the examples were still unfinished, they presented their potential plan of execution.
At first glance and face value, the image campaign made up of banners, magazine ads and brochure excerpts was visually appealing; but as I continued to study it, something felt a little off. It just didn’t feel like it screamed RIT to me, and it wasn’t because the pages weren’t drowning in orange and brown. Our Art Director Jena Buckwell put it into words better than I could ever have; “it’s too hip to be RIT.”
I know that 160over90 was merely presenting their process work, and after sitting through the handful of design classes required for my major and co-oping at three different marketing agencies, I understand they were probably using stock imagery. Nevertheless, if you really took a look at the people, facilities and housing options at this Institute, you might be hard-pressed to find images that fit perfectly into the scene they’re trying to create. With the exception of the images of Global Village taken from the Finance & Administration’s website, those aren’t our people, places or products.
Placed under further scrutiny, I began to see other issues. Their typos had me thinking “WTF is going on with 89.7 WITF?” Their excessive use of “lorem ipsum” text had me wondering how much detail they were planning on going into with their spreads. Their affection with the all caps button on their keyboard made me curious about which points they really wanted to highlight. And while we’re on the topic of emphasis, is this really how you want promote the one thing our student body has a splash of school spirit for? “The one goal that was seven too short that ended the impossible dream that brought six long months of waiting and made 18 young men skate faster and hit harder and punish the opposition and finish the job and show the world that we are one team, one tiger nation, one goal.” It’s kind of negative.
I took my investigation a step further and decided to check out 160over90’s previous client work. After trudging through every single example on their website — from American Eagle Outfitters to Woodmere Art Museum — I didn’t know whether to be impressed or disappointed. Their work on brands like Nike and Michigan State University was exemplary. Unfortunately, their examples for Loyola University Maryland and University of Dayton felt oddly familiar to RIT’s brand. I had sneaking suspicion that what they wanted to sell wasn’t RIT, but rather, it was RIT dressed up in the same generic 160over90 hipster clothing — bright colored venn diagrams, affection for yelling text and all.
Overall, I feel as if 160over90 spread themselves a little too thin. They have so many options, but none of them seem polished. I believe that one or two well though-out and complete examples would have been better than several showcasing dummy text. However, it might not have been 160over90’s fault. I’m not entirely sure what process RIT employed to select a branding agency; maybe we already had ties to the company. But from my co-op observations, several firms would pitch to the client then the client would select the company based on a combination of things like their proposals and cost. It almost seemed as if 160over90 was pitching against itself.
Again, I understand that this is still all a work in progress; but I’m worried about how much the campaign is going to change if they want to roll it out by the first and second quarters of 2011.
