The University may not have to set up an appointment with a urologist at Weill Cornell just yet, but there does appear to a problem trickling out of the Johnson School's attempt to re-brand itself as simply JOHNSON:
"We really wanted to emphasize 'Johnson' and begin to strengthen the name as its own individual brand," said Randy Allen, associate dean of Marketing and Corporate Relations at Johnson. "This move is not in any way to sever ties with Cornell, of which we are a proud part, but to begin to give the school a stronger individual identity and pop."Johnson, Cornell University's MBA school, officially remains the Samuel Curtis (or S.C.) Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University or it can be called by the abbreviated "Johnson at Cornell" or "Johnson."
Aside from the unfortunate use of the phrase 'stronger pop' with the word 'Johnson' and the fact that the new, capitalized logo is simply ugly, there's the larger problem that the the new branding initiative, by subjugating the University under the business school, goes against Skorton's vision of 'One Cornell'. Oh, and then there's those pesky style guidelines for Cornell's visual identity, which explicitly state 'do not use all caps' and always require 'Cornell University' to be above the smaller unit name.
What might have aroused interest in such a change? The School might have wanted to impose itself more strongly within the University community in response to the naming of the similarly business-minded Dyson School earlier this year. And then there's the fact that the Johnson School's applications shrunk by 12 percent last year. So if WHARTON, KELLOGG, and STERN are all doing it, JOHNSON presumably needed to do it too in order to grow.
Word on the street is that many of the Johnson School's students have reacted to the the re-branding initiative with a pretty flaccid response. And for good reason: I don't think the Johnson School's brand is likely to become firmer in people's minds than the University's anytime soon.
