Sloan Industry Centers, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Over the last 12 years, the Sloan Foundation, one of the nation’s leading foundations working in science and technology, has established 26 Industry Centers, with additional Centers on the horizon. Each Sloan Industry Center specializes in industry-specific research for corporations and related trade organizations. Based in 10 of America’s most prestigious academic institutions including Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pennsylvania, and many others, Center faculty address such diverse industries as finance, powder metallurgy, pharmaceuticals, trucking, retail food, semiconductors, and managed care.

LGI has worked with the Sloan Foundation for more than seven years and continues to do so currently. In the beginning, to facilitate expansion and diversify the funding support of the Sloan Foundation’s Industry Centers, LGI was engaged to retroactively create a brand "halo" for the Centers, positioning them as an integrated network for the very first time. The cornerstone of this communications effort was a high-impact network brochure – strategically defined, designed, written and printed for presentation to the Sloan Board of Trustees within a very short turnaround period of six weeks.

To meet this challenge, the LGI team combed existing secondary research data, conducted competitive analyses, conducted one-on-one interviews with key Center personnel and developed a brand strategy that united the Centers through their strengths, yet provided a credible springboard for maintaining their individuality. Further, LGI assisted Sloan Foundation executives with facilitating buy-in of the directors, researchers, authors and professors at the Centers themselves. The LGI team then developed and implemented a national dissemination plan for the finished brochures that was consistent with the brand strategy. As part of its ongoing relationship with LGI, the Foundation subsequently approached the agency to create a new version of the piece to reflect its current expansion of five additional Industry Centers. In addition, the firm developed and keeps current a Web site based on the recommended brand strategy and brochure content to ensure broad electronic availability.

The Foundation has achieved its goal of solidifying the Network of Centers as well as broadening the field of industry-specific research. The LGI team has been engaged to expand the Web site over time resulting in significant increases in the number of unique users (up 69% from the initial launch) and downloads (up 42% from the initial launch). Recent convenings of the academic Network members and individuals in the field have also been well attended by senior-level researchers and other participants with the net result being the creation of significant momentum for the industry studies research field.

Other LGI initiative branding stories include the Ford Foundation Corporate Involvement Initiative, the Ford Foundation Affinity Group in Development Finance, and many others.