After a year in the making, Quinnipiac University announced its new national brand campaign, “Ambition Unleashed,” on Jan. 28. 

“This is more than a tag line, it embodies who we are,” Vice President for Marketing and Communications Daryl Richard said. 

The campaign was created to develop a contemporary, authentic and unique university brand embodying those in the Quinnipiac community, Richard said. While geared for Quinnipiac, Richard said the idea sparked from the brands of other higher institutional universities’ campaigns, such as Texas Tech University, Tulane University and The University of California, Los Angeles. 

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Daniel Passapera

“There’s a lot to be proud of,” Richard said. “Now we have to let the whole world know why to be proud of it and why they should be focused on Quinnipiac.” 

The Quinnipiac community was first introduced to the campaign at the Student Welcome Back Event on Jan. 27, with a promotional video portraying the Quinnipiac experience, including shots of students around campus. Richard said the video will hold a spot on digital streaming services such as SNY, ESPN-3 and Hulu.

To come up with “Ambition Unleashed,” Richard said the university extensively researched 1,747 online survey participants, 72 focus groups and 23 qualitative interviews. The pool of research participants included current and prospective students, alumni, trustees, faculty and staff. 

One focus of the campaign is to spotlight the people behind the Quinnipiac brand to help bring the university to life in a more personal way, Richard said. 

“You are gonna see this campaign is gonna lean heavily on what we call a human-centered storytelling model,” Richard said. “The idea is to hold up individuals and tell their stories.” 

Through different advertisements of students’ stories, Associate Vice President for Marketing and Communications James Ryan said the word “ambition” will appear in different handwritings representing the different ambitions that the Quinnipiac community brings to the table. 

“We’re doing that intentionally because you’re going to see a lot of executions of how we bring this to life and we want the word ‘ambition’ to appear as almost as if it was penned by the person you’re seeing in that printout or in the documentary video,” Ryan said. “It’s the idea of making it feel very personal because we are telling true stories of our people.”  

Ryan said the university chose the word “ambition” to highlight how it is both a shared and personal experience that members of the Quinnipiac community endure, as well as it “allows us to tell very interesting stories.”

“As an institution, we all have a shared ambition of becoming the university of the future,” Ryan said. “But, we also have our own personal ambitions.” 

The word “unleashed” was used because of the university’s mascot, Boomer the Bobcat. Ryan said he believes the word is very true to “who we’ve always been as an institution and where we are today.” 

“The idea of a mascot who punches above its weight class, that is a bit scrappy and has a stick-to-itiveness,” Ryan said. “We love that combination of ‘Ambition Unleashed’ and how Quinnipiac can help unlock those opportunities and ambition in our people to go out and make the world better.” 

As of publication, the university currently has live billboards across the tri-state area, banners of the campaign around campus, mini documentaries of Quinnipiac members, reserved television spots on digital platforms and 10 poster boards, including various students’ stories. Additionally, Richard and Ryan said the university plans to embed the brand into other aspects of Quinnipiac. 

Students, faculty and staff are encouraged to stop by the Piazza from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., or the North Haven cafeteria between 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 28, to receive free merchandise, read the stories on the poster boards and view the different documentaries regarding the new campaign.

“To have it come to life, I am really proud of the work and proud of the results,” Richard said. “There’s a ton of people across our entire department, and everyone’s touched it in some way to bring it to life.”