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Invent the future?

Try inventing a tagline.

Virginia Tech's new tagline debuted a month ago after a series of brainstorming sessions, surveys, focus groups and consultations with marketing professionals.

"Invent the Future" is meant to sum up the school's desire to contribute to the community and the world through research and developing new technologies.

The phrase is at the forefront of a multimedia campaign to attract the best and brightest to Blacksburg. The three words, university officials believe, put a fine point on how Virginia Tech views itself and tells its story.

But a quick Internet search reveals that "Invent the Future" isn't unique to Tech.

It's not uncommon.

In a battle to distinguish themselves, colleges throughout the country are considering taglines to plead their case. Tech and Radford University have theirs, and Roanoke College is working on one.

A crowded field and similar goals make original phrases hard to come by, and other colleges, including the University of Virginia and James Madison University, have decided against them.

USC, UNLV, Tech similar

Tech's new tagline has been used for campaigns at other universities and in the business world.

That's not news to Larry Hincker. The Tech spokesman said the school was careful not to infringe on any trademarked phrases and chose a phrase that specifically fit.

The fact that it's being used for a fundraising campaign at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is indicative of the climate in higher education, he said.

"In a sense, there's nothing new under the sun," Hincker said. "There's 4,000 universities in this country. We're just going to try to provide language about who we are and what's special about us."

UNLV debuted "Invent the Future" as part of its 50th anniversary campaign in September. Like Tech, UNLV is a land-grant, research university of about 28,000 students. But it sits in the middle of a major city, about 2,000 miles away from Southwest Virginia.

Tech officials, who notified UNLV about the new tagline, have already trademarked the logo and are in the process of trademarking the phrase. UNLV didn't bother to do that and intends to retire it when the campaign ends in 2008.

"For us, we don't think there's a likelihood for confusion between the two universities," said UNLV spokeswoman Hilarie Grey.

The same is true at the University of Southern California, where spokesman James Grant said his school intends to retire its "Inventing the Future" when its 150th anniversary campaign ends this spring. Like UNLV, his university didn't bother with a trademark and he's not worried about it causing much confusion.

Several businesses also use different variations of Tech's new tagline.

Dow Corning Corp. has even trademarked, "We help you invent the future." But even if the company pursued a case and had trademarked just "Invent the Future," the vagaries of the law limit the trademark's scope.

Sally Wiant, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, explained that colors, style of letters, geography and industry are all variables that allow for the same phrases to be used by different organizations.

Taglines of all sizes

Fritz McDonald, creative director for Stamats, an Iowa-based college marketing firm, said colleges are bound to duplicate one another when marketing themselves.

His company has a feature on its Web site titled "The great Stamats tagline repository."

The repository contains 643 taglines. It includes various phrases from the brief -- Concordian University's "See You" -- to the lengthy -- Valparaiso University's School of Law is listed next to the following phrase: "Our students come to us seeking the freedom and ability to change their lives and the lives around them. And we deliver."

The site quotes taglines for colleges all over the country. Many are asking prospective students to come to their institutions to think, lead, learn, look ahead and, yes, invent.

"We do that to make people aware of how hard it is to come up with a good tagline," McDonald said. "It's to open them up to the reality that a lot of schools are saying the same thing about themselves."

Chris Clough, Tech's director of marketing, explained that the tagline is just part of a larger movement that began when Tech President Charles Steger took over in 2000. His goals included Tech becoming a top-30 research institution by the end of the decade.

Tech's Web site is undergoing a $90,000 overhaul and is using $150,000 in private funds to kick-start this campaign in print and television media. Consultants who helped brainstorm the campaign cost about $60,000.

Some colleges stay away

Tech is joining other large universities looking for new ways to market themselves.

Such well-known schools as the University of Florida and the University of Texas are in the midst of marketing themselves with new taglines.

UVa is in the process of reviewing how it wants to market itself.

"We're operating not in a state or national arena anymore. I think we're all operating in a global arena," said UVa spokeswoman Carol Wood. "We're trying to be a window on the world."

Wood isn't sure what UVa's next marketing move will be, but it won't involve taglines.

Appealing to such a diverse group in so few words can be difficult, she said. Andy Perrine, spokesman for James Madison University, agrees.

"If Nike were run by a university, rather than 'Just do it' it would be something more along the lines of, 'These high-performance shoes will make you feel as though you were an athlete.' "

Radford University's "Investing in Lifetimes" was used in the school's first capital campaign in 1997. It evolved into the official tagline because the university community embraced it.

"It resonated with people," said spokeswoman Debbie Brown. "They liked the sound of it. It sort of said what the university is about."

Roanoke College is in the process of choosing a tagline. "What matters to you?" is the college's theme, a question university officials ask prospective students before explaining what matters to them.

But when it came time to convey that in a short phrase two years ago, school officials were stumped.

The college is in the early stages of another attempt at a tagline and has run into problems finding an original phrase. At least three potential taglines have been ruled out because they're used elsewhere.

Hincker said Virginia Tech's previous tagline -- "Putting knowledge to work" -- developed from Tech's first formal institutional identity plan that came out in 1990. It was never officially adopted, but evolved into a tagline.

The new tagline is getting a much more prominent role, appearing on letterhead, under the Virginia Tech logo and as a sign-off whenever the university is mentioned in on-air advertising. But those words, if they work correctly, just serve as a trigger for what every individual associates with Virginia Tech.

"The brand doesn't come from the words you see," he said. "The brand comes from your experiences. Your notion of a brand is what you carry inside your cranium."