the brandcenter

The new name for the Adcenter. I got thinking about whether or not this term exists in our culture and, if so, what does it mean? The first place I turned to conduct my research, of course, was Google. Here are a few of the finalists:

McDonald's
Ryder
Adobe
MetLife

As the Adobe website puts it, a Brand Center teaches a brand communicator about "best-in-practice communications." Many of the websites I turned to had different sections for different types of communicators, such as clients, internal practitioners and brand extensions. So basically, a brand center right now is a virtual place that teaches a bunch of different communicators about how to communicate the same message.

Although we'll not be the first users of this term at VCU, we do have an opportunity to influence its bricks-and-mortar definition and certainly raise the bar for branding best practice.

I wonder what our new icon will look like.

advice for first years

Keep your heads up.

The first week at the Adcenter flew by last year. I entered school having worked two professional jobs:

1) a civil engineer for a local firm

2) FEMA's youngest architectural historian in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina hit (that's me, in the back row, with my team at our JFO (joint field office) in western LA).

I hardly knew the first thing about advertising or marketing or branding or public relations. All I knew was there was a huge discrepancy between what I was seeing in Louisiana and what people back home in Richmond knew to be the truth. I wanted to make a difference in the world and the Adcenter was where I was going to start.

Things are much different now. Many failures and a couple of triumphs later, branding is my favorite topic and "what's the position" is as frequent of a phrase in my mind as "when should I eat."

It's a tough year, but at the end of it you will be glad you made the decision to be a student at the Adcenter.