Berkeley apparently thinks it has a branding problem. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Ask Peter Symonds where he went to college, and his answer might depend on who you are — or why you’re asking. “If we’re at a football game, I might say I went to Cal,” said Symonds, a civil engineer who lives in Pleasant Hill. “But if I’m in a professional setting, I’ll say I went to UC Berkeley.” Switching between the more colloquial “ Cal ” and the loftier “ UC Berkeley ” is common among alumni of the venerable public university — the first in the UC system, known for its Nobel laureates and research laboratories, but also for its Pac-12 football team...
The two discrete labels have created a branding problem for the institution, one that perplexed Chancellor Carol Christ. Last month she formed a task force of students, alumni, administrators and brand experts, and asked them to research how people understand and deploy the two names. The idea: Find a way to merge them, or at least to make them co-exist more harmoniously. By the end of the year, Christ hopes the task force can “develop a naming framework” to encompass the university’s traditions, reputation, sponsorship and licensing agreements and relationships with donors...
Note from yours truly. Universities don't do well with Madison Avenue branding. The image on the left above from 2012 shows an attempt by UC to come up with a new "modern" logo. It was quickly pointed out that if you inverted the logo, as in the image on the right, it looked like an elephant's rear. That was the end of the new logo.*
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