The Education UK brand was developed in 1999 to create a powerful and coherent way of encouraging students who are considering overseas study to choose the UK.  It is a success story, generating increased demand for UK education by reinforcing and developing perceptions – and challenging negative perceptions.  The Education UK brand is now used by British Council in over 85 countries. Whilst 370 universities, colleges and schools in the UK have a licence to use the EducationUK logo.

The international education world has moved on since 1999.  The uniqueness of the UK’s education offer is being eaten away at the edges by other countries also claiming a high quality education, a diverse cultural experience or value for money.  There are new competitors, emergent markets, and different modes of study.  With an increase in numbers of students seeking an international education, the Education UK brand needs to position the UK more competitively

To do this, we need to know how to recapture what is unique about UK education, in a way that is informed by the global context in which the global Education UK brand now operates.  When a brand is associated with a country and a culture – as is the case with Education UK – the personality of that brand is largely influenced by the perceptions of the country and culture from which it emanates.

We commissioned an in-depth communications analysis to help us identify what is really unique about Education UK and how it needs to speak to different audiences.  The semiotic study used communications analysts in a number of different markets to analyse how the British Council, Education UK, UK institutions and the media ‘speak’ about education.  It was all about trying to inform how the Education UK brand can develop by knowing more about people’s expectations of education – and more specifically UK education – and their positive perceptions and characteristics of the UK.  By looking at these two areas, we would be able to pick out the ‘UK-ness’ of our education ‘personality’ as uniquely understood by our global audience and uniquely informed by global popular culture.  We would also be able to re-imagine ways of communicating some of the major strengths that exist within perceptions of UK education, as well as unpicking some of the negative attributes.

By way of an example, ‘high quality education’ is something that the UK has always been recognised for.  This can be evidenced and is infinitely valuable.  But it is a double-edged sword.  ‘High quality’ can carry with it a sense of remoteness and inaccessibility.  It can suggest an education system that resists change, is slightly abstract or even austere, and is perhaps not sufficiently connected to modern life, career success or business needs.  ‘High quality’ has a ‘sales ring’ to it, and could make our education offer seem expensive or even daunting.  Does ‘high quality’ activate some of the negative brand personality characteristics that the world is ready to believe about the UK education system?  And by implication, does it therefore reinforce some of the positive stereotypes of what the dynamic USA or the accessible, easy-going Australia offer?  Is that the personality we really want to communicate?

The problem lies in that the cry of ‘high quality’ has become predictable and has in itself begun to limit rather than expand our positive reputation.  So what we need to do is drill deeper than that.  What if we were to describe UK education in terms of those brand personality characteristics that make it ‘high quality’ – characteristics such as poised, confident, open, innovative, smart, clever and individual – and then provide tangible evidence?  Through communicating UK education in this way, it would better suggest to our audience that our qualifications are relevant to a future career , and that those equipped with a UK qualification are able to stand on their own two feet and think out of the box.  The reassurance of ‘high quality’ would remain, but this time with more relevance.  It would have been re-energised by being re-imagined.  This is what the essence of brand personality is about – but the brand personality has to be rooted in truth, other wise all we have is a set of meaningless buzzwords that have no power to change anything.

Semiotic analysis has helped to identify the broad elements of global popular culture that need to inform Education UK communications.  It has looked at how the style of our communications needs to be tweaked to ensure that Education UK might provide a much stronger generic platform.  Additional input from a strategic brand and creative agency has started to produce a new model for the Education UK brand that will do this. It will also provide countries with a messaging framework enabling greater local flexibility.

This framework and concept visuals were extensively tested with British Council education and marketing colleagues around the globe, with international students in the UK and prospective students in-country, with UK institutions and education agents.  Focus groups were held in Russia, Japan and Dubai and tele-consultation was conducted with over education teams in over 25 countries.

The result is a refreshed and comprehensive brand messaging and identity framework (including a developed logo, tone of voice guidelines and new visual elements – www.educationuk.org/brand ) which can be applied to products, activities, events and marketing campaigns.  It can be used to help us communicate the values of UK education beyond the prospective student audience to their influencers, sponsors and potential employers. It can also reinforce the value of UK educational expertise in collaborative projects and joint initiatives.  In addition, we have a brand that can generically support the marketing activity of UK institutions with greater flexibility, and which can add value to their own branding initiatives.