Brand Message Approval
October 2022 Announcement
President Kevin J Worthen has a message for you.
Within the next week, a letter from the president will be distributed across campus with an enclosed bookmark featuring BYU’s new brand messaging statement. (The brand message is also included below and featured in the video above.)
“I invite you to read the brand message,” President Worthen says in the letter, “and identify the words and phrases that speak to your heart and inspire your work. Those ideas and values can be helpful to you as we all work together to enlarge the influence of a BYU education.”
At University Conference in August, President Worthen highlighted the brand message as a key element of BYU’s strategic communications objective. The BYU Board of Trustees and the BYU President’s Council recently reviewed and approved the message.
The two-paragraph brand message will not often be used as a whole, and it does not replace the university’s mission statement, President Worthen said at University Conference. “Rather, it is designed to provide language to describe various aspects of the mission in a way that reinforces our central message—usually as snippets or phrases.”
A Concerted Effort
The brand messaging statement is a notable product of the university’s multiyear initiative to study perceptions of the university and develop communications strategies to influence those perceptions. The brand project also includes revised visual identity guidelines (which are currently being implemented across campus), a variety of campus branding projects (such as the new pedestrian bridge sign), and a new nationwide brand marketing campaign (which has had more than 45 million online views since it launched in March 2022).
President Worthen explained at University Conference that the university’s strategic communications objective (including the branding initiative), responds to President Spencer W. Kimball’s 1975 invitation to share BYU’s light with the world. “I read that as a charge to not hide our unique educational candle ‘under a bushel,’” President Worthen said, “and a charge to share our gospel-based insights and ideas with the world—not for the praise of the world but for the benefit of the world. That requires a more concerted and coordinated effort.”
The BYU Brand Message
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE WORLD
We believe a world yearning for hope and joy needs the graduates of Brigham Young University. As disciples of Jesus Christ, BYU graduates are motivated by love for God and His children. BYU graduates are directed by living prophets and prepared to serve, lift, and lead. This preparation demands a unique university model: at BYU, belief enhances inquiry, study amplifies faith, and revelation leads to deeper understanding.
At BYU, helping students to develop their full divine potential is central to both our teaching and our scholarship. As the flagship higher education institution of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, BYU strives to emit a unique light for the benefit of the world—a light that will enable BYU to be counted among the exceptional universities in the world and an essential example for the world.