Lifetime Achievement Award For Business School Branding: Jan Slater of Gies College of Business

‘THE BRAND WAS ALREADY HERE. I JUST DISCOVERED IT’

Perception research was put into the field to ask students to compare the college to key rivals, including Northwestern, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, the University of Texas in Austin, Michigan and Indiana. “We created a perception map to help us plot where the college of Business stood against those business schools. We landed exactly where we wanted to be which is between experience and students–not the institution and academics. People asked, ‘Why aren’t the academics important?’ I said because we all deliver the academics but in different ways. We had to ramp up how we talked about it. A brand is really about emotion. We obviously have to deliver the actual product, and we are delivering a great business education but there has to be more to it than not. Part of it is the experience.”

Slater later summarized the challenge this way: “The brand was already here—I just discovered it.” By 2018, the research and insights  converged into the defining idea of “Business on Purpose.” The phrase captured the school’s growing focus on intentional learning, values-based leadership, and meaningful careers. It became the organizing principle for communications, student engagement, and alumni outreach. For Slater, “Business on Purpose” represented more than a marketing message—it expressed a promise about how the college conducted its work and prepared its students.

The timing was fortuitous. In late 2017, alumnus Larry Gies and his wife, Beth, made a historic $150 million naming gift to the college. The new identity provided an integrated framework to present that transformation to the world, linking the Gies name to a clear and purposeful mission.

BUILDING AN IN-HOUSE AGENCY AT GIES

Slater knew of the gift months earlier in August when she put the perception research into the field. Dean Brown then had asked her what impact the naming gift would have on the brand. Her reply? “Nothing. Larry was young. He was an entrepreneur. He was an innovator and he loved this school and the students. We will build the identity with Larry’s name but the brand stay the same.”

The identity is definitely broader but our purpose has not changed,” she says. “People recognize us for who we are. Larry has been a true steward of this brand and has been very involved in its evolution. He epitomizes who we are. I told Jeff that whoever you get has to be able to relate to the students. You don’t hear from a lot of people who have named business schools. You don’t know about them. And they come back to campus maybe once a year to do a donor reception. That’s not Larry.”

After doing the research that led to the brand, step two for Slater was the structural decision to rebuild the college’s marketing operation into an in-house creative agency. What began as a four-person group expanded to more than 30 professionals within a few years, including a creative director, copywriters, designers, and videographers. The model allowed the school to move quickly, maintain message consistency, and develop campaigns that reflected its internal culture.

‘PEOPLE NEED TO SEE IT’

She also championed a unified visual identity centered on the block I, long recognized as the symbol of Illinois athletics. The mark was already ubiquitous through television and merchandise exposure, giving the business school instant visual connection to the larger university. The combination of a modern, purpose-driven narrative and a recognizable design system in orange and blue gave the college both distinctiveness and institutional coherence.

Slater believed a brand only succeeds if it is embraced internally. To that end, she organized a series of brand workshops with faculty, staff, and students to ensure that everyone understood and could articulate the school’s identity. This inclusive approach helped the brand move from communications to culture. No less important, Gies signage is so present that a student or faculty member only needs to walk a few steps before encountering it on a wall, a clock, or an elevator door.

“People need to see it,” Slater says. “The very first day we gave Gies College of Business t-shirts to everyone, and everyone wanted them. Students used to say they studied business at the University of Illinois. I wanted them to say I am at Gies Business and now they do.”

MORE THAN 250 BRANDED MERCHANDISE ITEMS

Students began proudly wearing Gies merchandise and taking photos beside the new signage. Faculty adopted the “Business on Purpose” language in classrooms and presentations. Parents responded positively to the idea of a business education built around intentionality and values. Over time, the Gies name became synonymous with accessibility, innovation, and mission-driven education.” And she borrowed some of the lessons learned in her dissertation on collectibles: In the first full year alone after the Gies naming, the school created more than 45 merchandise items with the college name on them

All told, Gies has produced more than 250 different merchandise items since the naming, from baby onesies and popsicle sticks to tissue paper and cowbells. The school has branded M&Ms, fidget spinners, umbrellas, stress balls, dog bandanas, stickers, stuffed animal keychains, pop sockets, ear buds, golf balls, playing cards, stackable Lego pieces, golf tees, sleep masks, and puzzles. Dean Brooke Elliott, who succeeded Brown a year ago, even has a pair of custom Nikes with “Gies” on the back.

By the time of Slater’s retirement this past summer, she had built what many peers in business education regard as a model for integrated, research-based branding. Three core steps led the way. “The research was critical to uncovering who this college really was,” she says. “Then it was building a staff. “We’ve recruited an amazing group of people who came without brand strategy in their backgrounds but in their hearts.” And finally the rollout and reinforcement of the brand with ubiquitous signage and merchandizing that led to its widespread acceptance.

‘IT’S VERY RARE THAT SOMEONE GETS THE CHANCE TO BUILD A BRAND FROM THE GROUND UP’

Her leadership expanded the marketing staff eightfold, redefined the college’s narrative, and helped anchor one of the most successful renaming transitions in higher education.

Reflecting on her experience, she has said that a brand should not be an aspiration but a standard to live up to every day. “It imprints what you are already doing,” she has noted. For her, the chance to define the Gies identity was the capstone of a career devoted to understanding how brands create meaning.

“It’s very rare that someone gets the chance to build a brand from the ground up,” she has said. “I got to do it with the most wonderful people, and I got to use every ounce of what I’ve learned in my career.”

That belief continues to shape the college she helped transform. Today, Gies College of Business does not simply teach business—it teaches Business on Purpose, a brand that endures because Jan Slater made it authentic.

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