Few things heighten campus vitality and school pride like athletics. Students love to rally around sports teams as they compete against rivals.
For this reason alone, one of your core focal points must be branding your school. Students, alums, faculty, and staff need to feel the intensity of your school's pride everywhere they go.
In a day and age where the money situation is ever tighter, school branding might be the last thing on your administration’s mind. You’ve already got a mascot and a color scheme that works for the football team—what more could new school branding ideas do for your district?
It turns out quite a lot; take it from SportsGraphics, your Clarion providers of branding services and the products to back it up, dives into just a few of the benefits of branding below.
4 Reasons School Branding Matters
The branding of your school matters for many reasons. Considering how branding impacts students, employees, parents, and the broader community is vital. Here are four reasons why school branding is so important.
Branding Helps Your School Stand Out
Your brand is more than a logo or a color scheme; it’s the collective presentation of such things that demonstrates your school’s unique values and personality. In a day and age where transportation is efficient and families have quite a bit of choice regarding where their kids are educated, standing out in this sense helps make your school a more appealing prospect.
In addition, when your school invests in a targeted image and a sleek, modernized vibe, you immediately draw the eye of anyone and everyone who interacts with your school—potential students, yes, but also potential employees, current students, and district officials. You make your school something worth paying attention to and associating with, which is quite a benefit in today’s competitive society.
Branding Builds School Pride
Pride in one’s institution encourages academic and athletic effort and attendance—all things students need to succeed during their formative years and down the road. A solid brand provides a unified image of your school and what it represents, inspiring attendees' collective sense of identity and pride.
Branding is more than simply updating your mascot images or buying new wall mats. It’s crafting your school’s reputation and using it to bolster unity and thus create the foundation for student success.
Branding Builds District Trust
Who would you rather trust with your student’s education: a fresh, modern, and vibrant school or one whose gym wall padding has color discrepancies? A consistent brand across all facets of your school makes you stand out and makes your institution seem more credible to parents.
This helps you attract new students, as we covered, but it also helps your district’s future decisions gain traction and support.
Branding Connects Your School & Community
School spirit does more than just connect district employees and students. It also helps connect the school to the broader community, including parents, extended family, sports fans, and more.
With innovative school branding, you can reflect the core values of the community in which you live. You can also reflect and share the values and mission statement of the school.
A mascot that speaks to the school’s location can make students and their families excited and willing to join in supporting sports and extracurriculars. A great logo or phrase can inspire people in the community to donate to local schools.
More Ways School Branding Connects Your School To Your Community & Location
Because branding can help you build connections in your community, and raise money, let’s look deeper into how and why to connect your school to your town.
Remind Your Community of Past Successes
An easy way to connect your community to your program is to tie in the past with the present. For instance, if your school or organization has a strong history in a particular sport or across several sports, you should proudly display that history.
An easy way to do this is by investing in products like custom banners or wall graphics. With these products, you can request those championship years, individual accomplishments, and more are printed onto the surface. Once that is done, you can display these banners or graphics throughout the facilities with blank spots left on them for future wins and awards.
By doing this, you will connect more with previous generations. When alums and community members return to your facilities, they will remember fond memories when they see the past accomplishments displayed. Additionally, when athletes see past achievements, they may be more determined to make their own mark on program history.
Fundraise With Your Community
Another way to enhance community engagement and brand awareness surrounding your program is to fundraise with the community to enhance your facilities. If your teams are playing in plain, bland arenas, it can be difficult to induce excitement and pride from both the athletes and fans at the events.
Even though our products at SportsGraphics are incredibly cost-effective, you may not have money in your program’s budget to invest in any upgrades. Therefore, you should set up athlete-run fundraisers to connect with the community.
Many alums would be interested in helping your program upgrade its facilities, and it would give them a chance to get involved with the program they once loved so much. Not only does branding connect the past with the present, but it also enhances awareness and the atmosphere within your facilities and events.
4 Ways for You to Build Your School’s Brand Right Now
Building your brand begins by incorporating as many visual components into your sports facility as possible. When fans walk into a gym or spread out across the bleachers, they must be blown away by sports logos, team colors, mascots, and slogans.
Here are four ways you can achieve this!
1. Custom Banners
Banners are a powerful brand booster because you can place them virtually anywhere in your school—hallways, fences, arenas, classrooms, and entryways. You can customize banners to fit in any area. If you’re creative, you can also use your fans, cheer squad, or even athletes to hold them up during games!
2. Wall Graphics
Like banners, wall graphics offer versatility because you can position them anywhere in your facility. The only difference is that wall banners provide a more permanent design. Wall graphics are great for creating historical benchmarks in your sports program, offer flexible configurations, and you can change them or update them as needed.
3. Window Graphics
One of the reasons why schools love window graphics is that they provide a unique aesthetic to any environment. Natural light penetrates the windows and highlights the graphic. The effect will instantly create energy in the area and draw the attention of everyone who walks by.
4. Gym Wall Padding
Like bleacher enclosures, gym wall padding offers athletes a safe, impact-resistant solution for wall protection. They are instrumental in basketball gyms to keep players from slamming into a concrete wall. But you can also plaster your wall padding with stunning graphics that fans can clearly view from the other side of the gym!
Powerful Branding Products From Sports Graphics
If you want a viable and affordable solution to creating more exposure for your school brand, contact Sports Graphics today. We offer a wide range of branding products, such as banners, floor mats, wall displays, and other highly visible decor for your facility.
To find out more about our products and services, call us at 1-800-257-6405, or message us on our contact page.