UCL – are we a global brand?

I got back yesterday from the World of Learning 2014 conference held at the NEC Birmingham.  Whilst there, I managed to meet with the UK Trade and Investment Officers for both India and Russia and also to meet with a Global Head of Training for the Portuguese equivalent of Tesco.  One thing they all had in common?  None of them had heard of UCL.  Now, for a University that is clearly top 20 worldwide (or top 5, depending on which rankings you believe), this is clearly a bit of a problem.  I’ve long suspected that the word “College” in the Institution’s title confuses the issue further and have heard that there is a drive towards the brand being simply “UCL”, itself not to be confused with the UEFA Champions League!

So the first 10 minutes of each meeting was spent explaining to my meeting partners just how brilliant and amazing UCL is and bringing them up-to-speed on developments to get our knowledge out there into the world through all sorts of Life Learning activities.  One of the key ways we can achieve some consistency regarding the kinds of offerings that the UCL Life Learning team is trying to promote, is to ensure that all of them are badged under our “brand”, UCL Life Learning, regardless of the faculty, department, Institute or format of the activity.   So for example we have been working closely with UCLC to ensure that all bespoke training provided by UCL and supported by them will be badged as UCL Life Learning.  In this way, we can ensure that employees who engage with training where the activity might be a tailored provision through UCLC will recognise the UCL Life Learning brand, if they decide to enrol on a course for their own personal development.

There is still some way to go before we manage to join up all the dots and some “dots” may resist – what I do know is that UCL has so much great stuff to offer in the world of lifelong learning and professional development.  We just need to get better at promoting ourselves.