The following is Module 1, Section B of a series called Coherence, introducing key strategies that will enable you to market your institution more coherently.

Overview and Objective

As we have suggested, the starting point for your path to coherence is your mission statement. Your declared mission is the singularly most significant statement in determining your current and future success. By the end of this lesson, you will be even more laser-focused on the power of the language within your mission statement.

Key Points

Higher ed is over-taglined. Taglines are interesting, but they all fall short of identifying your mission. Taglines might offer memorable snippets of what your institution does, or how you specialize or to what you aspire, but they generally don’t answer the question of why you exist in the first place. Taglines serve a purpose, but they’re not anything on which to build your future.

The best mission statements clarify your existence, declare your purpose and give an account of why anyone should care an iota that you are on the planet. And if they can do that succinctly, all the better. Taglines can help to position. Campaign themes compel audiences toward a particular action.

Activity with Worksheet 1B: Why in the world are you here?

In the first worksheet in this module, we wanted you to really know your mission. Here’s a second installment on the topic of your mission that will help you and your team focus on the strengths of your mission. This exercise might be more challenging in some ways, but we think it will serve campus marketers (and the entire college community, for that matter) to better understand how your mission shapes your decisions today and for the future.

1. Review the words you selected on the Mission Analysis Worksheet as the top six in terms of their importance to the meaning of your mission statement. Of these, now determine the top three words and write them in the spaces provided.
2. Looking carefully at these three words, what is the big idea that this trio of words conveys? How do they express your purpose?
3. Using these three words, identify your greatest intention as an institution. What do you most hope to achieve by continuing to exist in a highly competitive and increasingly scrutinized climate?
4. Now try rewriting your mission statement in ten words or less. Focusing on the big idea, articulate your raison d’etre in as few words as you can. Can you use fewer than ten words?

Question for Further Discussion

Finally, the great marketing guru Peter Drucker once said you should be able to fit your mission statement on a t-shirt. How would yours read—and look?

Next, continue to Module 1, Section C of the Coherence Series: Core Values.