Ted Rogers School of Management

After 10 years on the scene, the Ted Rogers School of Management was facing a reality where their excellence in education and student success was consistently demonstrated, yet not aligned with the university’s core values. With the goal to build their reputation, as well as to acquire the highest quality of students and faculty, TRSM had tasked Jacknife with assessing, reinvigorating and re-imagining their brand.

Jacknife crafted a flexible and scalable platform that included a re-calibrated brand narrative, messaging map for key stakeholders, tone and voice guidelines, and core values, all of which aligned with the overarching Ryerson University brand platform. With the theme of “bucking convention”—looking at business education in a different light, and pivoting to become known as less traditional—the platform informed all TRSM communications and touchpoints including a variety of recruitment and marketing collateral, a brand essence video and branded interiors on Ryerson’s campus.

The new brand platform offered consistency, provided messaging that was genuine and ownable to TRSM (yet still within the Ryerson University context), and helped TRSM play within the highly competitive business school category. The following year, for the first time, the Ted Rogers MBA program was ranked among the top ten Canadian MBA programs for reputation by Canadian Business.