Background
The Center for Retail Leadership is a program working within Portland State's school of business to prepare students for work in the retail sector. The center does this via networking opportunities with industry leaders, scholarships, and through two certification programs. These programs are the Athletic and Outdoor Industry certificate and Food Industry Leadership certificate. Students enrolling in the programs have a much higher chance of post graduation success with a 100% job placement rate in the industry for Food Industry certificate holders. While the Athletic and Outdoor program has been a success, the Food Industry certificate faced a major problem. The program had less 10 people in enrollment. The center came to FIR Northwest to find out why the number of students was so low and how to increase enrollment.
Our Findings
Our planners found that the center had multiple problems which contributed to low enrollment. The primarily one was that there was a lack of awareness among advisers and students about the program's existence. We also found that the name of both the center and food industry certificate were dissuading students. Retail has negative connotations such as working as a sales representative at a department store. Food had similar problems with fast food restaurants being the first thought that popped into students heads. These negative associations were further compounded by confusion as the names of the center and certificate were often shortened to just "Retail Center" and "Food Certificate" respectively.
Renaming
Working with another copywriter, our task was to rename the center and food industry certificate. This was due to rebranding initiatives being impossible without having new names to display. Due to the imminent launch of a new website, we decided to focus on the center first. Our initial drafts consisted of writing 100 names in less than a week. Our creative director, Doug Lowell then culled the lists till about 20 from each copywriter remained. We were then given about a week to get the lists back up to 100, keeping the feedback we received in mind. After another review with Doug we were left with about ten names each which we expanded upon over the next few days till we ended up with about 100 total. Doug then narrowed down the list to seven names to initially present to the client.
We decided to go with two different formats: A single imagery invoking name followed by a more descriptive sub-name, and a more traditional strong descriptive name. For the imagery invoking names, I wanted the invoked thoughts to be reflective of both the center and the industry leaders it would create. After showing the names to the head of the program, I was tasked with presenting the names to industry representatives, and then to the center's branding team. Finally, I gave a presentation to the Dean of the School of Business, Cliff Allen. Under his recommendation we narrowed the names down to:
Forge - Center for Industry Leadership,
Industry Leadership Center,
and Ascent - Center for Industry Leadership.
After presenting these names to all of the employees of the Center for Retail Leadership, we were met with some reluctance. Many felt that industry was too broad of a term to cover the athletic & outdoor, and food, beverage, and consumer packed goods industries. This ran counter to our own thoughts that industry was perfect as production was a common thread linking the businesses. Wanting to do good for the work, we asked them to gather feedback from the business representatives about what words they would use to describe their companies. The information got back indicated that there was a strong push towards the words innovation, consumer, and local. With this in mind, we set about writing more names. We initially had to draft 40 names each, which were winnowed down to about ten by Doug. I wrote back up to 30 names following feed back. Seven names were chosen for the final presentation.
With the centers naming being deliberated upon, we decided to work on the Food Industry Leadership Certificate renaming.
The process remained mostly the same but with slightly fewer iterative cycles. Never the less we each wrote over 100 names for the certificate. Doug narrowed it down to seven names which also followed the same two formats we used for the center.
The term ended before names could be decided. When the next term started everyone was transferred onto a different accounts.