American College of Education (ACE) is an accredited online college with advanced degrees in education, healthcare, nursing, and more. Their mission is to deliver high-quality, affordable, and accessible online programs, offering flexibility and freedom to their students.

ACE is ranked number four in the nation for most master's degrees awarded in education, and they’re also a B Corp that balances purpose and profit. They’re big on making an impact by donating time, money, and resources to various organizations and nonprofits.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
ACE had a major brand opportunity—and a daunting task ahead. 

Prior to bringing me on board, they’d hired an agency to develop a logo and core brand elements, but they hadn’t yet developed their brand story or messaging, and their website was still quite the hodgepodge design-wise. They also needed major help with the launch and rollout throughout the organization and to the public.

One of the most crucial elements of our work was differentiating ACE from other online schools. Some of their competitors are notorious for being “diploma mills,” but that’s not what ACE stands for. 

Aside from being a B Corp, ACE’s biggest differentiators were the quality and value of their programs, the transparent and predictable pricing and course structure, and ACE’s commitment to their students’ success. (They even have student success coaches!) We needed to drive those home in our messaging, because their target audience wasn’t necessarily aware of these important distinctions.

Our goal was to further develop the brand, build a messaging framework, create a robust style guide, and roll everything out to the entire organization. No problem!

THE PROCESS
We kicked off our plan with an unveiling of the college’s new look and feel at a staff retreat. Our goal was to create awareness of the branding, build up a little hype with a splashy reveal, and set expectations for the new standards moving forward. 

We then systematically met with every business owner in each department of the college to take stock of all the internal and external marketing pieces where the brand identity would need to be updated. (There was no small amount of portals, documents, presentations, and even email signatures that needed to be updated. We inventoried it all.) We also identified new opportunities for additional deliverables and developed a plan for redesigning every last element.

Because rolling out a new brand is such a massive project, we first focused on the external, student-facing branding, since that’s where it’s most important to show up consistently.

That included existing mediums like the website, paid media campaigns, and social media channels, as well as new mediums like the freshly launched podcast, student experience videos, and more. We developed and designed new creative (a challenge due to COVID restrictions!) and compiled it all to add to our creative library. As we worked, we documented standards for what would become our brand style guide.

THE RESULTS
Over the course of the year, we did a full branding rollout throughout the organization’s infrastructure, impacting the entire timeline of the student experience from “What is ACE?” to “Got my degree!”

We developed cohesive branding beyond the original color and logo to tell ACE’s story and position them as a school where students not only earn their diploma, but also make an impact.

We created clear standards throughout the school by building a robust style guide for the entire organization, detailing everything from ACE’s brand personality and attributes to brand elements like logos and images, their editorial style, branded templates, and social media guidelines.

Today, ACE’s presence both online and in the “wild” has a consistent, modern look that tells the right story about what they do and who they’re for. Where before there was no brand awareness—even among students and faculty—now, there’s strong recognition that reverberates across channels.

ACE’s 2020 year-over-year growth rate for new students was 25.4%.