ERIC'S PATH

Prior to 2009, I detested all social media, as I perceived it as a huge waste of time, let alone that it had no connection to my professional practice. As a result, I developed quite the fixed mindset and made the conscious decision not to let this fad enter into either my professional or my personal life. Unlike all my friends at the time, I wasn't on Friendster or MySpace, two social media sites that would eventually meet their demise. When Facebook became all the rage in 2005, I resisted all the requests from my friends and family to join. Not only did I see it as a huge time sap, but I was certain it would meet the same fate as the social media sites that came before. It would be a few more years before my opinion of social media would be changed forever by a little-known tool called Twitter.

When I first dipped my toe into the social media waters in March 2009, I did not know what to expect. My sole purpose for embarking into this uncharted territory was to improve my professional practice by becoming a better communicator. This was a natural connection to my work as a high school principal, as you will not find an effective leader who is not an effective communicator. Successful principals have always built highly functioning learning communities by clearly and consistently articulating a school's vision of—and commitment to—student success (Ferriter, Ramsden, & Sheninger, 2011). Twitter represented a great tool to accomplish this leadership goal. Sending short messages in no more than 140 characters was not only efficient but also an effective means of disseminating important information to my stakeholders. I finally saw value in social media as a means to improve professional practice, and thus my outlook on social media and technology in general changed.

So there I was churning out tweets about everything going on at New Milford High School. Little did I know that my tweeting would lead to a feature story on CBS Channel 2 NYC during November 2009 and in the process catch the eye of business maven Trish Rubin. It was at this time that I was exposed to the concept of branding in education (Rubin, 2009).

When Trish contacted me out of the blue, I was really caught off guard. She passionately explained that what I was doing was creating a brand presence for my school as well as for myself professionally. At first I wasn't buying it, but after I spent some more time speaking with Trish, her conversation began to make sense. I began to see brand more clearly and understand what it was about. Brand is about creating a unique identity that relates to a specific audience or stakeholder group. The value of a brand can be defined in many ways. For example, some brands promise durability, health, style, safety, taste, convenience, or savings. Brands are designed to stand out and ultimately influence the consumer in a fashion that builds trust in the product. Sustaining a sense of trust is an integral component of a brand's ability to promise value. The definition of brand I've given here provided clarity, but it was still missing some integral components in order to make the concepts of branding more applicable to the education world. Here is a synopsis that Trish and I developed back in 2009:

Schools are considered a brand. They promise value to residents of the district in terms of academic preparation to succeed in society. Many families will choose to reside in a specific district if the schools have a track record of academic success. By establishing a school's identity or brand, leaders and other stakeholders can develop a strategic awareness of how to continually improve pedagogical and management practices that promise, as well as deliver, a quality education to all students.

As a high school principal, I felt that it was my responsibility to continually develop and enhance my school's brand through innovation, risk-taking, building of relationships (with students, teachers, parents, community stakeholders, institutions of higher education, businesses and corporations, etc.), and a commitment to the community. In my opinion, this vision can assist all educators in establishing a brand for their respective schools that not only promises but also delivers value to residents of the district.

By developing and enhancing your professional and school brand, you move toward a credible perception of your work for stakeholders to embrace. Thus a brand in education has nothing to do with selling, but instead is all about showcasing the work of students, staff, and leaders in an effort to become more transparent. Educational leaders understand the importance of branding in their work, and by leaders I mean any and all educators who take action to improve learning opportunities for their students and themselves.

TRISH'S PATH

I didn't meet Eric Sheninger on a social media site, a Google Hangout, through a hashtag, using a PLN, or on a Twitter chat. I met Eric on an “old school” channel: TV. The man came right into my NYC apartment and stopped me in my professional tracks. I saw the connected future in a segment highlighting his encouragement of his teachers' use of Twitter in their high school lessons. Who was this innovative guy?

Since 2005, after a long career in education where I tested out my ability to deliver value in unique ways on a national education stage, I became entrepreneurial in the world of business. It was an easy transformation. I was educating my clients to communicate an image, create value, and sustain brands. I used my education heart. I also had a unique idea resulting from my work at the intersection of education and business. I'd been thinking about something I called brandED—something that could improve leadership by bringing innovation to schools through marketing and brand. As a former school administrator, I saw brandED as a professional development tool for school leadership. But I didn't have a leader in mind who would get it, until I serendipitously stumbled on Eric Sheninger's CBS TV segment. A few quick Twitter posts later, I presented my theory of brand to this educator. In Eric's New Milford High School office, I tested my pitch: Brand thinking is a necessary part of 21st-century professional leadership. An informed leader can adapt marketing and brand as I had been doing to improve schools in three areas: culture, performance, and resourcing.

After that meeting, Eric's brand quickly developed to include worldwide digital leadership, which is best defined as establishing direction, influencing others, initiating sustainable change through the access to information, and establishing relationships in order to anticipate changes pivotal to school success in the future (Sheninger, 2014). I watched his path and knew that my theory had moved into action. My own career path further deepened my ties to education, including teaching university seminars and college courses on branding and marketing. In 2014, we introduced a refined version of our brandED concept to leaders worldwide through Eric's book, Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times (Sheninger, 2014). Today, brandED is now ready for a wider, inclusive, and actionable school leadership conversation.

The first standard cited in the 2015 professional standards of the National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA, 2015) signals the need for attending to brandED leadership. It ushers in our worldwide discussion:

I like that signal. When mission, vision, core values, and well-being are advocated and enacted, you are experiencing brandED leadership, an educator's professional stance in this new age of communication.

We're pleased to help you write your own brilliant brand-building story. Technology has ushered in transparency, enabling a “mash-up” of possibilities that can be part of your focused professional development. BrandED thinking is one of those possibilities. We look forward to seeing your brand develop in real time and online—on Twitter and Facebook; in Google Hangouts; on live streaming platforms, webinars, and podcasts; and in blog posts—as you describe your journey to building school brand. Share your school's story that defines your engaging education brand. Develop a brandED mindset and gather a like-minded, passionate team to collectively launch an innovative brandED Strategic Plan. Invest in your own unique brandED value and professional learning plan to improve teaching, learning, and leadership in a new “business as unusual” way. No more ivory tower. Get ready to become brandED.

“THE BRANDALITY MODALITY”

No matter our level of digital proficiency, we educators grapple with the rough-and-tumble pace that professional connectivity demands in our new age. A change of leadership thinking is in order if we are to face a hyperlinked world of education. When the marvelous baseball pundit Yogi Berra paraphrased French philosopher Paul Valery's 1937 vision of the future, years before the Internet existed, he mused, “The future ain't what it used to be.” (See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/06/future-not-used/ for the provenance of this saying.) So true, Yogi. We lead schools today, preparing our digitally and socially savvy students for success as adults in a future where many of their jobs haven't been created yet.

In these changing times, opening the door to branding and the transparency it brings in a digital age may make you pause. But the old-school one-way messaging behavior for leading a school doesn't jibe with our engaged, digital communication environment. A paradigm shift is in play. Recognize it and lean into it: Our community of stakeholders wants us to engage with them—starting with our students and ending with the world beyond our school. In this new inbound world of digital communication, a world where information arrives at our digital doorstep without being invited, we have to reset leadership thinking. Our stakeholders' lives are now about exchange powered by inbound social and digital forces. A new educator leadership mindset is in order: one that calls for the clear, connective, engaging concept of brand. It's time for a “brandality modality.”

In today's engaging, digitally empowered school setting, stakeholders question whether schools really know best about educating their students (Rose, 2012). We have to do a better job of communicating what we do. We must be part of the exchange. It gives us the best chance at connecting with our audiences and winning support for schools. Ask Millennial parents whose trust in the education of their Gen Z kids, particularly in the area of technology, is seen as lacking (Shaffhauser, 2014). How can we share our vision and invite their exchange? How do we communicate trust and show value? Brand holds the answer.

Today's educators who embrace the brandality modality don't need to be humble. In the noisy digital world, educational leaders must proudly use stories of their schools to convey a consistent brand message about who they are and what they stand for. Because those messages can make or break us, we must be the observant stewards of the brand that our stories convey across social and digital platforms (Trish Rubin, 2016). Although our current educator demographic makeup is a mixed bag, representing Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers, we can see the role of brand as a unifying tool for the generations we lead, even as decisions around the communication choice to “snap, scope, or gram” test our patience for reaching the different demographics that make up our stakeholder community (D. Ford, personal communication, May 2016).

In the pages that follow, we present the concept of brandED, claiming it as the educator's unique adaptation of the business term brand. BrandED is a powerful concept that is part of a progressive view of new educational directions and trends. It represents a digital “edge-dweller” persona. It suggests a mindset of continuous innovation (Monroe, 2014). The brandED edge-dwelling educator is poised for communication change that benefits students. BrandED is about providing that benefit and telling the stories around our worth.

Emphasizing the “ED” in the word brandED humanizes the business concept of brand, a concept that grew from the discipline of marketing. BrandED is a knowing, feeling, walking, and talking connecting attitude that builds on your present leadership style and brings a 21st-century finish to your presence. It is delivered using new media tools to share your clear, consistent, targeted, and sustained school narratives. These are tools that are needed in our “always open for business” world. BrandED behavior showcases the core beliefs of your school, inviting you to synthesize: to combine a wealth of important educational content with inspired thinking from cross-industry practices, creating new, meaningful, and actionable leadership communication. Call it brandED leadership. A brief look around Twitter shows the images and content of educators who are adding the communication value of brand to their work in the digital world. One example is teacher Kent Dyer and his STEAM (STEM plus A for “art”) colleagues at Township High School 214 in Arlington Heights, IL. They are on a quest to create new experiences for their students. “Creativity is our future [and] the tools are digital,” is Kent's proud Twitter pronouncement (@Kent_Dyer), which shows the direction of his brand as an educator. To be authentic leaders in the 21st century, school leaders must have a more expansive, informed base of content and knowledge beyond the parameters of the monoculture of public education. This polycultural behavior of knowledge sharing is what Thomas L. Friedman (2005), Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The World Is Flat, welcomed in his writings as a “communication mash-up” reflective of the openness and accessibility of information.

Branding behavior creates positive influence for school leaders. To be seen as authentic in online exchanges advances one's influence in powerful ways. Today's schools exist in a digital town square where people meet daily. School value is one of the most discussed topics online. People both with and without children search the Internet and consult online real estate sites to find data about their prospective local school. Trulia.com reports that 46% of Millennials surveyed want their dream home to be near a quality school. Educational leaders must be powerfully present in the digital marketing of the narrative of school value, creating a brand that speaks in an authentic voice to an audience. Adopting a brandED strategy to benefit kids helps you attain a synthesizing view, preparing you to communicate with the varied segments of stakeholders who will research, observe, and engage with your institutional brand online on a daily basis.

Today's digital and social media world is a world driven by mobile content in short form and long form, in text and video. The business communication tool of brand can inform a school improvement strategy that harnesses the power of content, of story, in this new media age. Brand is a proven tool that has resulted in trusted connections in business since the 1950s (De Swann Arons, 2011). When adapted by schools, brand becomes the beacon—the touchstone of why we act the way we do as a school, why we teach and learn the way we do. Beyond the emotional connectivity, using a brandED strategy enables leaders to set measurable goals that ensure long-term trust. As a brandED leader, guide your community to three tangible outcomes: improved school culture, expanded school performance, and increased school resourcing.

WELCOME TO THE BRANDED CONVERSATION

We've moved our small brandED conversation from a serendipitous first meeting onto a big stage. Little did we know in 2009 that the concept of defining a school, and the need to show a school's relevance through an engaging brand, would become as strategically important to maintaining a student community as it is now. We are educators in an age when conveying the story of a school has moved beyond being an option. Our stakeholders have growing decision-making power. In a transparent world, we must present ourselves and connect with authenticity that engages our community in a brand loyalty to our schools.

In the chapters that follow, you are invited to join our compelling conversation, our call to action about building a brand that encompasses, with power and clarity, the mission, value, and vision of your school—a story to be shared on an open digital and social media stage for your engaged community. A series of eight compelling professional conversations guides you in the process of building not only your personal professional brand but also crafting a collaboratively built school brand, one that unifies a brandED community and promotes engagement and loyalty. Labeling the chapters as conversations suggests the deep thought that goes beyond simply “trying out brand” to a dedicated commitment to incorporating brandED as a professional development experience for leaders and their organizations, one that will change the status quo of educational communication in this new age. It suggests that leaders be in a continuous conversation through reflection and sharing, in real time and through digital and social media, in order to complete their brandED journey that genuinely defines the school.

The brandED innovation starts with you and grows quickly through your strong modeling of the power of brand in your school. It grows because of your ability to influence stakeholders to be part of the collaborative endeavor of building a school brand. Thanks to the buzz of innovative thinking about brand in our modern world and the fact that everyone and everything is branded, you have every chance of succeeding. Some of your stakeholders may even ask, “What were you waiting for?”

BrandED leaders immerse themselves in conversations. First, in self-reflection, then with trusted validators, before they move outward to lead and support a brandED distributed leadership team that designs and builds a brand. It is a rich, creative collaboration of various stakeholder publics. These open conversations are necessary to communicate new processes and frameworks that will share the stories of what makes a school unique as a brand and maintain its relevance. In closing each of the eight conversations, brandED leadership tips and brandED reflective questions will support leaders who adopt the innovative practice of brandED and become its valued brandED storytellers and stewards. Join the conversation on social media using #brandEDU. Connect with Eric (@E_Sheninger) and Trish (@trishrubin) on Twitter.

Conversation 1 launches the journey to brandED. Leaders learn why the tenets of business brand and marketing, standards in the commercial marketplace, can be comfortably adapted in the 21st century to an educational framework. We will touch on a short history of business branding and understand the marketing discipline that shapes leaders' educational work. Readers learn about the foundational difference between business brand and the educator's adaptation, brandED, which focuses on communicating through showcasing, celebrating, and building powerful relationships that benefit the school community. Businesses focus their brand communication efforts on sales goals; a few select elements that commercial brands employ in brand campaigns can inform educators about reaching their own brandED goals. As educators, we can appreciate brand history as a starting point for our journey, but we keep the foundational difference in mind: This leadership mindset isn't about a bottom-line return. The goal of brandED is the sharing of clear and consistent messages that define our mission to educate our children.

In this ever-changing society, the most powerful and enduring brands are built from the heart. Their foundations are stronger because they are built with the strength of the human spirit, not an ad campaign.

—Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks