Behind the Logo: Branding at Tufts

February 29, 2008

by William Ramsdell and Mike Snyder

What costs $24.99, keeps you warm and trendy, and makes you a corporate sellout?

Most of the clothes you wear everyday is the answer: the faux vintage sweater with a brand logo for Hollister or Diesel is a marketing tool to be held up as a paragon of capitalist genius.

You pay more for it, buy new merchandise as the trends change, and maybe even become a walking advertisement.

You also feel good about yourself, (see Maslow’s infamous pyramid of needs), as one of life’s most basic commodities gets transformed into a tool of self-identity and self-actualization.

For decades, Tufts has been doing roughly the same thing, capitalizing on the proud feelings (and large wallets) of students, parents, and alumni towards their alma mater and its hefty mascot. But in the last several years, the Tufts brand has undergone a series of changes, including a costly visual renovation, a core-value reanalysis, and campaigns to get Jumbo merchandise off of Walnut Hill and into the furthest reaches of the country. In a capitalistic world full of brand apparel and innovative entrepreneurship, how is Tufts attempting to break into this market? Will the school’s core values continue to be represented—or should they? And what does it all mean for the student body here at home?



The man who would remake Tufts

In 2006, a certain man was hired to come to Tufts and walk its sidewalks, sit on its benches, and eat in its Dewick. He was paid a significant sum of money for these seemingly banal activities. This man, Mark Neustadt, also did more to change the face of Tufts more radically than any other person in decades. Under the initiative of President Bacow and Mary Jaka of University Relations, Neustadt purchased a house near campus, and, for nine months, immersed himself in every aspect of the university. In addition to observing and speaking with students, professors and alumni, he conducted surveys and focus groups aimed at finding an accurate definition of the “Tufts Personality.” At the end of that period, he returned with a list of what he had discovered Tufts to be. Among others, he concluded that Tufts is “pioneering and entrepreneurial,” “global in perspective,” “focused on the challenges of a new century,” “educating the next generation of leaders,” “dedicated to active citizenship,” and “built on a tradition of innovation and progressive thinking that dates back to its founding in 1852.”

Reading those statements, it is hard to believe that they did not originate in the mind of an eager administrator or ambitious PR person. The fact that those ideals were at the core of everything that an outsider looking in saw speaks both to the organic and authentic nature of the observations, and to the kind of people at Tufts who exude such an aura.


After those and other observations (such as, “Tufts is not verbose or pedantic”) were made, the task of tempering those freshly defined elements into the face of Tufts as a university and brand was underway. The questions of “why?” may still linger, and the reason is that Tufts, and every other university, is a product; one that needs to be able to market itself with a logo and icon that people will remember and like, but which is also true to form.


Gail Bambrick, director of publications for the university, put this idea of Tufts as a product in perspective in an interview with The Observer. “As a product…it sounds crass, but I don’t think it is at all because in the media driven environment that we live in, people associate…symbols with values,” she said. “So a university, just like anything else, needs a strong sense of itself and a way to portray that to people who are used to logo types, brands and other things. So the actual logo [grew]… we didn’t make it up.”


Although it can be easy to forget this, Tufts is also a company and a business and is in competition with all the other elite universities that are vying for intelligent students, active professors, and sizable grants. Up until Mark Neustadt spent his nine months on the hill, however, many people failed to realize that there was no one, single Tufts logo. There was Jumbo, who had been more of an athletics icon than anything else, and who had also gone through many changes over the years.

Without a uniform logo to represent the school, the old dove-adorned seal had to function as Tufts’ only consistent visual representation system. This reliance was the reason behind the choice to re-brand Tufts. The old “logo”, which was actually nothing more than the name of the university in whatever font seemed appropriate at the time and with whatever spacing, was made into the one seen everywhere today. In the new logo, the upper case “T” and lower case “u t f s” has even spacing between each of the closest points on each character to affect fluidity and grace.

According to Bambrick, the change to lower case letters, in contrast to the all-caps college sweatshirt norm, is indicative of Tufts as a school that is not showy or imposing. By opting not to conform to wide spacing and spindly letters, Tufts is also looking towards the future that it is working to create.

Additionally, the university seal was reconsidered. The dove symbol, after years of being on the side of trash trucks and on cocktail napkins, was, according to Bambrick, finally restored to its rightful place of prestige and honor on our diplomas and cufflinks. Although the seal can still be found on select items, the Latin inscription “Pax et Lux, Sigillum Universitatis Tuftensis” is reserved for more official business. This is the second incarnation of what some fondly call the “Dive Bomber Dove,” the first of which involved water crashing onto ocean rocks propping open a bible into which the dove, and streams of sunlight, are descending. This seal, which had become less appropriate as the Unitarian Universalist religious influence of the school waned, was simplified in 1966 to one the one seen today.

But let’s cut to the good stuff here: Jumbo. We have all heard the story of our epic elephant taking a speeding train in the chest for his friend Tom Thumb, how he was made a very real presence on campus thereafter, and how his accidentally cremated remains were saved in the nick of time with the inventive use of the only tools available: a Peter Pan Peanut butter jar.

Now let it never be said that Tufts is “defensive or apologetic” (something we are stated as not being), but a few other universities come to mind with something less than a self-sacrificing anthropomorphic pachyderm to call their own. In case it has gone unnoted, not only do elephants never forget, but they also bury their dead in graveyards with funerals and happen to be inarguably the coolest mascot ever. This is undisputed.

In truth, the existence of only a hand full of Jumbo images in circulation and for sale is perfectly baffling when one broaches the expanse of possibilities for visual hallowing of such a stately being. Far be it from The Observer to comment on aesthetic improvements around campus, but it has always seemed that Jumbo outside of Barnum would look rather more dignified cast in bronze or copper, or else simply painted gold. Plain, white plaster seems a lowly way of capturing Jumbo in his single, Jumbo-sized manifestation on campus.

At the very least, the availability of more than two and a half versions of Jumbo in the campus store, in contrast to the old logo that so needed unity, benefit from more variety to fully encompass the breadth of Jumbo love that this campus has. Perhaps it is also worth noting that the love of an icon or the existence of “school spirit” cannot be gauged by silly American standards like how many people opt to watch two teams tilling our fields with their spiky shoes. School spirit is evident in the amount of Tufts apparel worn by the student body and how willing we all are to don our Tuftonian regalia are brand ourselves Blue and Brown.



Packaging the Pachyderm

With Tufts’ identity and word mark finally set into stone, how is the university disseminating its brand to the widest possible audience? Not surprisingly, online purchases from the Tufts bookstore website constitute an increasingly sizable chunk of merchandise. International students and alumni tend to readily make use of the online services, and no doubt some wannabe parents own more brown and blue than their kids.

“When the early acceptance letters go out, the web sales are huge,” said Jenna Scinicarello, an employee and product designer at the Tufts Campus Bookstore. “This December we got over 200 web orders the day the letters were received. That is when we find out the [stylistic] preference of the student body that is going to be around for the next 4 years.”

It’s at the store itself that the higher-end items get bought up, including Tufts-embossed gold and silver memorabilia, such as money clips, time pieces, and pens. The big market here is Tufts faculty and departments, who make generous purchases from the bookstore “if they have a keynote speaker or an event for someone in the department,” according to Scinicarello.

Another thing: if you have a favorite shirt you’ve been eyeing but have neglected to grab it up, you might want to hurry. Items get phased in and out pretty regularly; select merchandise rises and falls in proportion to a fairly stiff supply and demand curve. For example, one of the most popular items, according to Scinicarello, is a vintage brown crew-neck sweater with a shield-like crest —frankly, it’s more Dead Poets Society than “pioneering and entrepreneurial.” Old-school designs like these cater to a more veteran Tufts population, as well as Jumbos with a more romantic vision of the intellectual, coffee-drinking, revolution-conspiring, small New England liberal arts college. However, this popular design is already being phased out, which means it will probably make a timely return a few years down the road.

But when a vintage crew-neck shirt is selling better than more modern, softer items with the new word mark, it raises troubling questions about the success of the new Tufts brand from a financial standpoint. “I do know that there has definitely been a mixed response. People would say that they liked the old word mark,” said Scinicarello. “But I think, as time has gone on, people have grown more attached to the new word mark because there is a set ‘Tufts’ now, something to become attached to.”

In the end, the most important thing, as far as the bookstore is concerned, is that a variety of representations exist to appeal to all members of the extended Tufts family. One monolithic style is bad business practice, and before the introduction of the new word mark, Tufts clothing designers experimented with a variety of different designs, fonts, and patterns. “In truth, there never really was an old word mark, it was just whatever we put out there in whatever font we thought looked good,” Scinicarello said.

While the Tufts bookstore capitalizes on faraway online purchases, the TCU Senate is looking to set-up shop literally down the street, in places like Boston and Cambridge. TCU Historian Alex Pryor first came up with the idea last year. Walking through Logan Airport, the Prudential Center, and other Boston destinations, Pryor, a senior, saw that street vendors sold Harvard, MIT, Boston College, and Boston University paraphernalia but wondered why Tufts was completely unrepresented. “It just seems kind of strange,” she said. “We have the sweatshirts, we have the school, and we should advertise like the other universities.”

Pryor, a member of the TCU Student Outreach Committee responsible for the implementation of the project, is finally getting the chance to pursue the campaign after a series of Senate projects that took precedent earlier in the year. “It seems like such a tiny project,” she said, “but it’s hard to figure out who to talk to, because you go to these stands, and the people who are there sometimes don’t speak English, and sometimes they’re not the owners of the stands.”

But Pryor doesn’t directly see this as an essential part of the Tufts brand. It’s not about promoting active citizenship or a global perspective, Pryor said, but about old-fashioned school-pride and awareness. “This is a project we thought would be a nice service for the students, an off-campus service. It could be about identity…that’s a part of it… And it can attract prospective students.”

For that reason, she expects that the sweatshirts and paraphernalia introduced into Boston will probably display the new word mark and reflect Tufts’ new image — standing in stark contrast to a school like Harvard’s more archaic lettering. But with their first glimpse of Tufts being on a sidewalk bargain t-shirt, will prospective students meandering through Boston really buy into it?

Pryor, and many others, sure didn’t at first sight: “My first reaction was that it looked kind of like the TOYS-R-US logo. It’s so juvenile, I like hated it. Then I kept looking at it and I started liking it.”

The logic is: why attempt to alter what Mark Neustadt so diligently set into motion so long ago? “We have some very capable people working on the university, so even if some students don’t get it, I trust the people who they choose to figure it out,” said Pryor. Ultimately, the marketing genius that is the Tufts brand, while not conflicting with Tufts values, may not be so important in the grand scheme of university public relations — especially in an area of shifting marketing strategies, overwhelming band apparel, and endless focus groups.

“You can’t say to the world and Boston what Tufts stands for with a sweatshirt, and I don’t think a particular font is like, ‘This is what Tufts is all about.’ I don’t know how much more you can ask for with a word mark.”

Some Jumbos, simply, are asking for a lot more.