"Ask What You Can Do"

Challenge

Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government set out to redesign their website but quickly realized they needed to refresh the entire brand experience. My firm BBMG won the competitive pitch in collaboration with Digital Pulp, a New York-based digital agency.

Solution

It’s not every day you own the rights to a line like this: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” spoken by John F. Kennedy during his 1961 inaugural address. After testing early concepts with focus groups that included faculty, staff, students and alumni, I developed a brand strategy to harness once again the emotional power of President Kennedy’s call to service: Ask what you can do. This insight became the unifying concept for the school’s new brand platform, including the redesign of its website with our friends at Digital Pulp.

After making “Ask what you can do” the School’s new brand anthem, we also created 

a new verbal identifier, repositioning the institution as Harvard Kennedy School, on par with the likes of Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. Then we delivered a wide range of creative solutions--a new style guide, messaging platform, viewbook, website and image campaign--before consulting on the internal roll-out strategy.