The great comedian, Mitch Hedberg, used to joke about how Ritz crackers would come in boxes with suggestions about what people could put on their crackers: ‘Try it with turkey and cheese. Try it with peanut butter’. Hedberg quipped, ‘but I like crackers man, that's why I bought it. You've got no faith in the product itself.’
Branding event
In this current climate of restraining budget cuts, the UM decided to hire Vandejong, a marketing company specializing in creative communication, to spruce up our branding and to come up with a new slogan. During the branding event they hosted last week, they workshopped ‘Echte antwoorden vinden we samen’ as our new motto. (It roughly translates into ‘We find real answers together’, but they are still mulling over the proper translation for it). Vandejong also presented various color schemes and design templates – with the idea of using rocks/pebbles of all shapes and sizes – for our communication materials. Before I start expressing my various concerns, let me first caveat that: 1) people from Vandejong were very lovely folks; and 2) I don’t necessarily have issues with updating our visuals every now and then. I think if done right, it can be a wonderful thing.
Having said that, here is the question I posed to Vandejong and our Marketing & Communications team present during the event: “Is there a more substantive strategy behind this new marketing strategy?” In other words, what is our vision for the future (more substantively) and what steps are we taking to get there?
Turn fifty
According to our latest strategic program, our current aspiration is to be ‘the European university of the Netherlands’ and we definitely have the potential to be an extraordinary university. From possibly hosting the Einstein Telescope to animal-component free meat production or our interdisciplinary Global Studies Bachelor’s Program, some of our researchers and educators are doing truly amazing things.
The uncomfortable truth, however, is that we are about to turn fifty years old (in 2026). While there is much to celebrate, there are reasons for concern as well, which comes with some sense of urgency to reassess who we are and how we want to comport ourselves in the future. For starters, Maastricht was ranked 10th in the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings in 2024. This is a ranking of the world’s best universities that are fifty years old or younger. Once we shed the qualifier of being ‘young’, we drop down to 138th.
For whatever it’s worth, I believe that so long as we are continuously growing and have a sense of purpose (that we are doing something good) that is more important than any ranking. We don’t have to be Oxford or Harvard, but rather, we want to be uniquely Maastricht.
Dog turd
However, here in lies my concern: Many of us feel that the answer to what makes Maastricht special can’t just be our PBL system anymore. The proposed slogan of ‘We find real answers together’ can also easily be replaced with that of any other Dutch University’s slogan like ‘Understanding Society’ (Tilburg) or ‘Master Your Future’ (Utrecht). In other words, slogans and color schemes won’t really matter, if what’s inside the box isn’t up to snuff. As another brilliant comedian, John Oliver put it, you can gift wrap a dog turd, but it’s still a dog turd.
To be clear, I’m not saying we’re dog turds, but I do feel like we are currently experiencing a serious midlife crisis and we just bought ourselves a new Porsche (thanks Vandejong!). But there is a corresponding emptiness and a sense of unfulfillment that comes with this. What we now need is a careful introspection and a more substantive reassessment of what we are about.
Crackers
With our international orientation also being put to the test under the new government’s policies, it is paramount for us to (re)define ourselves and how we position ourselves in the world. What can potentially help us in this quest is not just to seek guidance from marketing experts, but from firms like the Minerva Project who have a lot of experience helping elite universities all over the world to innovate themselves from within. (Full disclosure, I’m currently trying to recruit Minerva for my Conflict Prevention & Resolution course and may be a bit biased). Regardless of how we approach making Maastricht more uniquely Maastricht, one thing is clear: We need to invest not only in our aesthetics, but also what is underneath it. In short, we need to be better crackers!
Mark Kawakami