Brand Validation Study to Get Underway Soon

In 2023, SUNY Niagara completed a marketing research project that included a competitive communications analysis, a brand audit, and direct data collection from several stakeholder groups. This work led to development of the SUNY Niagara brand, which launched in 2024, and later supported NFCI’s repositioning as a sub-brand and informed a redesign of the college’s website.

The combined cost of these efforts totaled over $650,000. While the college has experienced consistent enrollment growth in the years since, the PR office seeks to understand precisely how well stakeholders have received the updated presentation of the college and NFCI, and the website that came online in 2024. The brand validation study will assess this—the health and effectiveness of the brand—and identify ideas to further differentiate SUNY Niagara from other institutions in western New York’s crowded higher education landscape.

With the college’s new brand, NFCI sub-brand and overhauled website solidified in the market, there is now an opportunity to revisit perceptions about:

• The degree to which the college is believed to be earnest, empowering, amenable, and pragmatic (the hallmarks of the brand’s verbal identity).
• The overall cache of NFCI.
• The design aesthetic, navigability, accessibility and searchability of www.sunyniagara.edu.

To perform this work, the college has contracted with Northern Commerce, the Ontario, Canada-based firm retained to help redesign and further develop the website. PR expects this project to get underway in March and continue for several weeks, perhaps into the early weeks of summer.

Once completed, we will summarize and share key points from the study just like we did during the brand and website research conducted in 2023. The findings’ ultimate use is in marketing: they will shape overall institutional and NFCI messaging, and the content, design and functionality of the college website.