FAQs for Branding the Campus as Illinois
Q: Why is the campus moving away from UIUC?
A: The Urbana-Champaign campus has been branded as Illinois for most of the school's history. For example, "Illinois Loyalty" was first performed in 1906, "Oskee Wow Wow" (which refers to the campus as Illinois) in 1911, "Alma Mater Illinois" in 1912, "Illinois Forever" and "For Good Old Illinois" in 1914, "The Good Old Songs They Sing at Illinois" in 1915, "Illinois Seniors Greetings" in 1918 and "The Homecoming Song: Loyal Songs of Illinois" in 1921. It was not until the late 1980s that the term UIUC began to appear with any frequency on institutional documents.
School song lyrics
Q: But now, doesn't everyone know us as 'UIUC?'
A: No. We know ourselves as UIUC. The research data shows that our external audiences know the campus as University of Illinois and Illinois.
Q: Isn't the Urbana campus being elitist at the expense of the other two campuses?
A: Illinois was chosen out of respect for the other campuses, market research data, and tradition. The University Administration worked with an agency to conduct market research which showed that UIS and UIC are well-established, though vastly newer, brands. Returning to the traditional Illinois brand avoids confusion with the University of Illinois system administration and the acronyms UIC and UIS.
Q: We've always been known as uiuc on the Web. Won't we lose brand recognition among that audience?
A: While uiuc has been the URL, the brand name Illinois has been emphasized on the home page since the first professionally designed page was released. Examples of previous iterations include 1997, 1999, 2002 and on the new home page redesign.
Q: UCLA and USC both use acronyms, and they have great brand recognition. What's wrong with being known as an acronym?
A: Research shows that Illinois is the strongest brand we have. With Illinois, no one has to wonder for what the acronym stands. The top-ranked universities in the world, including Illinois, refer to themselves with the name of their state or with a single word. Key examples: Berkeley, Stanford, Northwestern, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia and even Harvard.
The Illinois brand has a much deeper tradition and is already being used by major initiatives, including: Illinois Alumni magazine, Illinois Research Information Services, my.illinois student portal, Illinois (varsity athletic teams), Illinois International (international programs), Illinois Harvest (library project), Illinois Master Gardeners, Engineering at Illinois, Business at Illinois, Illinois MBA (and many other academic programs/units). These are just some examples of the breadth of the Illinois brand approach.
Q: But illinois.edu is longer than uiuc.edu.
A: That's not a problem; it takes only thousandths of a second to type four more letters, but the clarity and image it conveys adds value to every unit and initiative on campus.
Q: Won't we just go from being confused with UIC to being confused with the state of Illinois?
A: Context makes the difference very clear. No one seeing a red and white sticker that says Indiana on the back of the car thinks the person inside is a Hoosier state employee. The URL illinois.edu indicates that this is an educational site.
Q: Why do you keep talking about the Illinois brand? We aren't a brand; we're a university.
A: A brand is a collection of perceptions in the hearts and minds of your audience and the consistent expression of your organizations promise to stakeholders. The strength of our brand is closely tied to our reputation. We have to market ourselves to attract the best students, the best faculty and the best staff, as well as to secure funding to fulfill our mission.
Q: Why didn't you involve the other campuses in this decision?
A: The push to return to our historic roots was the result of a system-level effort to identify the strongest brands for each of the institutions in the University of Illinois System. It was approved by President Joe White.
Q: But if Urbana is allowed to be Illinois doesn't that give it a competitive edge over UIC and UIS?
A: The three distinct campuses in the University of Illinois system are not in competition with each other. Allowing Urbana to strive toward greater national and international recognition will benefit all campuses within the University of Illinois system.
Q: My reputation will suffer as a result of this change. I'm known through my uiuc.edu e-mail address in published material.
A: The institution with which you're affiliated is a large part of your reputation. The stronger our university's image is, the better your reputation.
Q: Isn't this an unfunded mandate for the IT community?
A: This is part of your everyday duties. The chancellor has put a high priority on this effort which should, in turn, prioritize your other work.
Q: Our e-mail address might be more meaningful if our NetIDs were more meaningful. Can't you fix that?
A: While it is true that NetIDs are limited by character length, changing the NetID system is actually much more complicated than one might think. Each of the three campuses uses NetIDs, which are not unique among the three campuses.
Q: The uiuc.edu domain name carries a lot of prestige among the original Internet community because it signifies that our campus was an Internet pioneer.
A: The number of people who recognize the historical significance of the UIUC address is very small. Research proves that the outside world recognizes us as "Illinois" while "UIUC" has very little meaning for them.
Q: 'UIUC' gets more Google hits than 'Illinois.'
A: A quick Google of "illinois" shows that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the fourth entry returned. However, research has proven that the majority of users find us by Googling "University of Illinois." And while UIUC appears to have more hits according to Google analytics, the reality is that the numbers are inflated because of our own community of users hitting our Web pages. Students, faculty, and staff are checking their e-mail, searching from the home page, bookmarking pages visited frequently, and the like. All these hits falsely inflate the hit numbers.
Q: What about the other universities and colleges in Illinois? Is the Urbana campus being elitist at their expense by using illinois.edu?
A: No. The Urbana campus is one of the original 37 public land-grant institutions created after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862. The Act called for land-grant bill to pay for a system of colleges, one in each state.
