Penn State Smeal
Style Guidelines

An extension of the Penn State Brand Book

Brand Essence

Brand Essence

Belief

Effective leaders adapt and grow throughout their careers, ensuring prosperity for themselves, their organizations, and their communities.

Purpose

Develop lifelong partnerships by inspiring learning and fostering connections that will help people adapt, develop, and grow as effective leaders.

Target Stakeholders

Learners 

Alumni 

Faculty & Staff 

Recruiters & Hiring Managers 

Business Decision-makers 

Brand Attributes

Lifelong Learning 

Student Success First 

Driven Community 

Preparedness 

Socially Conscious 

Brand Benefits

See the ‘Brand Benefits’ page for the functional and emotional benefits for each stakeholder group. 

Brand Personality

Confident 

Collaboratively Competitive 

Successful 

Target Stakeholders

Individuals who share a common need or motivation to continually improve themselves and their performance.

Learners

Recruiters & Hiring Managers

Alumni

Business Decision-makers

Faculty & Staff

Brand Benefits

Learners

Functional: Career opportunities, skills, and credentials

Emotional: I feel prepared and confident that I will thrive.

Faculty & Staff

Functional: Career opportunities, skills and credentials

Emotional: I feel my contributions are valued.

Alumni

Functional: Network that connects skilled people & creates opportunities

Emotional: I feel proud to be in the family.

Recruiters & Hiring Managers

Functional: Pool of candidates with leadership, strategic thinking, and analytical skills

Emotional: I feel confident that my hires will succeed.

Business Decision-makers

Functional: Skill development & academic research that improves performance

Emotional: I feel confident as a leader and
in my decision-making.

Brand Attributes

Lifelong Learning

Committed to helping business leaders learn, adapt, and grow throughout their careers.

Student Success First

A business college that cares about the well-being and long-term success of its students and truly puts them first.

Driven Community

A collaborative community of hard-working learners, alumni, faculty and business professionals driven to succeed. Ethos that demands talent, desire, and grit in equal measure, represented in the story of Frank Smeal.

Preparedness

Moves at the pace of and is grounded in the real-world to ensure students are prepared to make an immediate impact.

Socially Conscious

A culture and commitment to advancing research and competencies focused on integrity, diversity, and sustainability.

Brand Personality

Confident

We’re confident, but never boastful. We’re prepared and know we can tackle any problem because we have seen it and done it before. We speak our truths.

Collaboratively Competitive

We believe a rising tide lifts all boats and that a team that works together succeeds.

Successful

We’re hungry and embrace the hard work it takes to be successful.