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Last September, President Steven Murphy encouraged the campus community to explore the possibility of using a new moniker to help promote our socially-conscious, technology-focused university. Since introducing the potential new short moniker ‘ONTechU,’ we have benefited from significant feedback through various consultations during the fall, as well as discussions President Murphy had with many people and groups across the campus and externally.

The feedback has been consistent. We all understand the importance of improving the clarity and presence of our brand name, and that saying ‘the ÃÈÃÃÉçÇø’ can be difficult and awkward. The abbreviation ‘UOIT’ is equally awkward and lacks distinctiveness. These issues have challenged the university since its inception. While not everyone on our campus agrees on how we should address the challenge, most concur on the importance of building our brand and differentiating ourselves in the marketplace.

What we’ve accomplished so far:

Following feedback received during our fall consultations, the university’s Communications and Marketing team has led the process to develop and introduce a new brand, and has worked with a leading external agency to develop various brand identities. A cross-university Brand Advisory Group has also provided input.

The following four criteria have been used to guide our new branding:

• Simple, unique and identifiable: Must stand out in a crowded academic landscape.
• Tech-focused: Must be consistent with our mandate, and communicate our positioning as an innovative and leading-edge technology-focused institution.
• Modern and relevant: Should be approachable, untraditional and confident.
• Flexible: Must work across multiple applications that range in scale and functionality.

Based on these criteria and feedback from the consultations, the brand names currently under consideration are ‘ONTech,’ ‘Ontario Tech’ and ‘Ontario Institute of Technology.’ While many suggested ‘University of Ontario’, it was not considered because it does not differentiate us from the rest of the pack.

Note: As previously communicated, the university’s official name will remain ‘ÃÈÃÃÉçÇø.’ We would adopt a similar approach to that of some other universities, such as Western (official name: University of Western Ontario) and Virginia Tech (official name: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University).

Next steps:

Over the next few weeks, we will narrow down our final brand name and proposed new visual identity design. During a special New Brand Preview Week, Tuesday, February 26 through Friday, March 1, we invite you to attend a presentation about our new brand (in person or online) as well as one of our showcase sessions, where you can see our new visual identity and share your thoughts with President Murphy, our Communications and Marketing team, and various Brand Advisory Group members.

After reviewing your feedback, we will launch our brand to the internal campus community later in March. As we plan to introduce our new branding in phases over the spring and summer, please hold off developing new marketing material at this time. We will update you in the coming weeks regarding an internal and external rollout plan; our Communications and Marketing team will support you through the changes.

You can find more details about the New Brand Preview Week, our process, members of the Brand Advisory Group, and our rollout plans on the Brand update section of our Brand Central website. We will continue to update this site as we move through the rebranding process.

We have a great university. We need to help people learn about the amazing things happening here and make it easy for them to understand who we are. While our new branding represents a change for us, it’s a good one: it will help us advance the university, tell our story and build a brand we can all be proud of.