Next Era of Cottey College Announced

On Thursday morning, March 1, 2018, Cottey College, a private women’s liberal arts and sciences college, will introduce a new brand that will guide communications and marketing efforts for the coming years. The brand announcement includes a new visual identity for the College and athletic programs and a new tagline: Creators of Incredible Futures.

Dr. Jann Weitzel, president of Cottey College stated, “The announcement of Cottey’s new brand heralds the next era of women’s education, the next era of global good, and the next era of Cottey College.”

The brand is built around five brand attributes – commitment to our students, academic excellence, close-knit community, empowering, and globally minded. These brand attributes represent Cottey’s strongest characteristics.

“The goal of the branding is to provide a framework that allows the campus community to communicate with a common voice to prospective students and other constituents,” said Carla Farmer, Vice President for Marketing and Strategic Communication. “The new brand touches all parts of the campus but will be especially important to Enrollment Management, which will base all of its communication pieces around this framework.”

The new brand marks the culmination of more than 12 months of research and input from faculty and staff, including current and prospective students. During the research phase, Cottey took a long, hard look at itself. The end result is a brand that will serve as a guidepost for how the world will view Cottey and how the institution will operate on a daily basis.

“Through an inclusive process where every faculty and staff member had an opportunity to have their voice heard, a brand emerged that is authentic and real,” added Dr. Weitzel. “In the noisy marketplace of higher education, Cottey’s new brand will distinguish the college as an institution that provides a transformational experience that is truly profound.”

Assistant Professor of Astronomy Peter Hyland, who served on the Brand Advisory Council, said the most impressive part of the process was seeing the work that went into gathering everyone’s points of view and finding the commonalities. “Through this process, I saw other people’s voices incorporated into the final product. I think you will find a consistent message in diverse documents and ideas, and that’s appropriate as we are a diverse group of people who make up Cottey.”

Cottey collaborated with Geile/Leon, a St. Louis marketing and communications company, to create the new imagery, messaging, and logos. In addition to the brand style guidelines and communication plan, a new palette of colors will be added to the Cottey yellow and Cottey blue that fits the overall brand theme. The new colors include Bold Red, Vibrant Green, Dynamic Navy, and Vivid Cyan.

In the coming months, Cottey will roll out the new brand. Some changes will be immediately visible such as new logos on the website, stationery, and electronic signatures, while other changes will be introduced over time such as new athletic uniforms and campus signage.