Columbia Business School (CBS) yesterday launched a branding campaign designed to showcase the things that make it one of the best business schools in the world, including its New York City location. Touting a new tagline – “At the Very Center of Business” – CBS kicked off its new brand with a print and digital advertising campaign and a new video intended to capture what the school stands for and what makes it unique.
The new two-minute video, entitled “The Center,” focuses on four key attributes the school has selected as pillars of its new brand: knowledge, access, community and impact. “These attributes have always been a part of our DNA—we simply have never communicated them in one story so clearly, completely and efficiently,” CBS Dean Glenn Hubbard said in a statement. “Our powerful combination of leading-edge academics and real-time exposure to business give our students the knowledge, experience and connections to be impactful in any endeavor they pursue,” he continued.
To distill the characteristics that set CBS apart, the school conducted conversations with hundreds of stakeholders both inside and outside of the school. “We sought to crystallize one powerful story that truly defines who we are, what we stand for and how we are unique in a competitive marketplace,” Iris Henries, CBS associate dean of marketing and communications, said in a statement.
The video, which is intended to serve as the centerpiece of the school’s new narrative, celebrates CBS’s New York City location, stressing the access and opportunities the location provides to its students. It also highlights the strength of CBS’s academics and faculty, as well as the diversity and entrepreneurial spirit of its students.
Several other leading business schools have also retooled their brand campaigns in recent years, including the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.
CBS’s new brand debuts as fundraising is in full swing for its new Manhattanville campus, which is scheduled to open in 2018. To date, the school has raised $500 million of the $600 million the new home for the business school is slated to cost. Major gifts in the past year – $100 million from alumnus Henry Kravitz and $40 million from alumni Arthur Samberg and Mario Gabelli – have helped propel the school toward its goal.
