Building MK:U a home of its own.

The challenge

The brief started as a brand for MK:U in its own right. A specialist research partner gathered the insight, and our brand workshops shaped it into a strategy. But the research also pointed somewhere new. MK:U would work harder as a campaign brand for Cranfield, leading its degree apprenticeships, than as a standalone entity.

So the real question became where MK:U should sit. Too far from Cranfield, and it lost the credibility employers and learners look for. Too close, and it disappeared into the university. Either way, it had to make sense to two audiences who want very different things from an apprenticeship.

The solution

The pivot changed the structure, not the audiences, so the strategy still did its job. We built the campaign around one word, Build, and one strapline: ‘Build your tomorrow’. From there it splits by audience. Employers get ‘Build your people’, growing future leaders and digital capability from within. Learners get ‘Build your career’, a more personal message about where earning while learning could take them.

The identity follows the same logic. Each audience has its own palette, linked by a shared green that keeps the campaign recognisably one thing. The pixel system combines the Milton Keynes grid with the rectangle in the MK:U logo, so even the graphics are rooted somewhere real. It’s all set out in a campaign toolkit covering logo use, colour, type, photography, layouts and tone of voice. Four layout types, from photo-led to purely graphic, also live in locked Canva templates, so MK:U’s team can turn out new assets quickly without drifting off-brand.

The final piece was a home. MK:U’s apprenticeships had lived on pages tucked inside the main Cranfield site. We carried out keyword and competitor research, wireframed the journeys each audience needs to take, and supplied content documents for MK:U’s team to write into (they preferred to own the copy). Then we designed, prototyped, built and launched a standalone MK:U website, which we continue to host and support.

A special thanks to

Kamila, Business Development Lead; David, Head of Web & Digital Experience; and Amy, Head of Brand, at MK:U / Cranfield University for their input and direction at every stage, from the first workshop to launch.

Sometimes briefs change; it happens. What didn’t change was who MK:U needed to talk to, and that gave us something solid to build on. Seeing it grow from pages tucked inside the Cranfield site into a brand with a home of its own has been a proper highlight. Glad to have been a part of the journey.

Marc Smiddy, Creative Director – Stratos