‘Hottest brand, coolest pedagogy’: approaches to corporate branding in Singapore's higher education sector

ABSTRACT

This article examines the corporate branding efforts of Singapore's publicly funded higher education institutions within a context of neoliberal marketization. Adopting a discourse-analytic perspective, it examines the kind of branding approaches employed by Singapore's universities and polytechnics, and how these approaches are realized discursively in their brand artefacts. Three main approaches are identified and discussed. Referred to as (i) characterizing the brand; (ii) positioning the brand and (iii) personalizing the brand, they are constituted by a variety of language devices and discursive strategies such as positive evaluation, colloquial language and the use of particular metaphors, and represent a spread of approaches ranging from the more fact/reason-based to the experience/emotion-oriented. While the institutions employ a range of approaches, the findings of the analysis suggest that experience/emotion-oriented approaches are better elaborated in the artefacts, and gaining traction in the sector as a whole.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate branding
• rational persuasion
• emotional branding
• anthropomorphic organization
• neoliberal marketization
• Singapore higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It should be noted that many of the concepts and insights associated with corporate branding in the paper, such as how it can be carried out through a spread of approaches ranging from the more fact/reason-based to the experience/emotion-oriented, also apply more broadly to branding in general. However, in as far as the paper examines the branding of organizations (i.e. HEIs), both the more specific term ‘corporate branding’ as well as the more general term (i.e. just ‘branding’) will be used.

2. At the time of corporatization in 2006, Singapore's three publicly funded universities and five polytechnics, in order of sub-sector and establishment, were NUS, NTU, SMU, SP, NP, TP, NYP and RP. While the youngest polytechnic, RP, chose not to produce any prospectus in 2007, the document was subsequently brought back the following year, attesting to its continuing relevance.

3. As is the convention, conceptual metaphors and their Target and Source domains are given in small capitals. Hence, in this case, the Target organization is represented as a person which is the Source.