WSU launched the “Here We Go” campaign, the university’s first public relations campaign in nearly 20 years, in early September.

The campaign’s intention is to promote WSU as a university and to tell it’s story, said Phil Weiler, the vice president for marketing and communications for the Washington State University system.

“We want to increase awareness of WSU and we want to increase the reputation of the university,” Weiler said. “I hear time and time again people saying we need to do a better job of telling our story.”

The creation of the campaign initially started a little over a year ago, beginning with discussions with WSU President Kirk Schulz, Weiler said.

Weiler said the research and planning behind the campaign was funded by an unrestricted donation from a donor who allowed their contribution to the University to be spent on whatever Schulz saw best fit.

“The one-time funding from the president took us through the first three steps. We were able to do the research, put together the brand positioning and we were able to develop the creative concept,” Weiler said. “I was able to go to the budget committee this current fiscal year and we had asked for $2.4 million annually that would run for multiple years to fund this campaign.”

Due to tight budget conditions, the budget committee allocated $1.7 million just once to the project, he said, which was still enough funding to launch the campaign.

“The advantage of paid media is that you get to decide what the message is; you get to decide where that message appears, and how often that message is repeated,” Weiler said in a meeting with the Board of Regents.

Weiler said WSU placed a strong emphasis on paid media campaigns prior to the 2008 recession, after which WSU had to cut funding to marketing in order to work with state budget cuts.

The campaign’s ethos focuses on WSU’s emphasis on problem-solving, learning and community, according to the official campaign website.

“Washington State University owns the idea that we have a footprint across the state that far exceeds any other public university,” he said. “That led us to this positioning statement that we are Washington’s public research university; we have this vast network that has a dramatic impact on people.”