by Rachel Waggie, agricultural education and communication master’s student
Spring 2019 master’s graduate Anissa Zagonel recently had a paper published in the Journal of Applied Communications. The article is titled “Printing and Mailing for the Brand: An Exploratory Qualitative Study Seeking to Understand Internal Branding and Marketing Within University and Extension Communication Services Units.”
Zagonel’s research investigated whether the investment of employees in a brand can lead to greater public understanding and positive impressions of a brand by external stakeholders. Her study sought discover how well employees in a university and extension printing and mail entity understood the extension brand and their investment in the brand. Research questions included: 1) What perceptions and investment do communication services employees have in the extension brand? And 2) what are employees’ perceptions of the organization’s branding and marketing efforts?
Results of this study indicate these employees are not invested in the brand with the majority having little to no understanding of the mission of extension. This contradicts previous research with employees in other brand segments of extension. Implications of this work include a need for training on the extension mission for communication services employees, a shift in culture to encourage investment in the brand, and inclusion of all extension employees in the mission of extension.
For the full abstract and article, visit https://doi.org/10.4148/1051-0834.2236.
