A new communications toolkit is available to support you in communicating the value of UC ANR and promoting your work. Topics addressed by the toolkit will be continually refined and updated (It's a work in progress).

The branding section offers an overview of brand basics for UC ANR, information and resources for branded photography and videography, and writing and visual style guides. The visual style guide will be fully refreshed by the end of January; please contact Strategic Communications with visual style questions in the meantime.

The logos and templates section includes downloadable logos and templates for posters, newsletters, presentations and other materials as well as information for ordering business cards. Materials are available in English and Spanish. 

The public relations section contains a media training request form, templates for writing press releases, and best-practice information for media and government relations. There is also a page on crisis communications.

The social media section covers policy and guidelines, resources, a list of ANR platforms to follow and sample posts.

The web communications section offers information and resources for effective web design, accessibility and search engine optimization as well as links to SiteBuilder training resources.  

The Spanish resources page is your guide for working with the News and Information Outreach in Spanish (NOS) team to communicate with the Spanish-speaking community as well as underserved populations.

The section on working with Strategic Communications explains “who to contact for what” and offers content development and promotion tools as well as information on partnering with us to tell your story. 

The toolkit contains multiple links to the Learning and Development site, a go-to resource for many of these topics, with the goal of making it easy to find what you're looking for. 

Strategic Communications will continue to add resources (especially training resources, policy updates and visual style guidance) to the toolkit over time. We welcome your suggestions and questions.

A couple of items have been posted to the Telling Our Story section of the ANR Branding Toolkit. You'll now find the We Are UC ANR video as well as the We Are UC ANR one-sheet flyers.

“The flyers have a choice of four different front page images, the copy is the same on all four,” said Cynthia Kintigh, marketing director. “The We Are UC ANR video is a great three-minute explainer about who we are and what we do, told in beautiful images of ANR folks in the field.”

Sharing the page with the flyers is a link to the online version of the Annual Report Snapshot – with robust features like maps and embedded links to academic profiles. 

“This is a great link to share with constituents and decision makers,” Kintigh said of the Annual Report Snapshot.

A month-long public awareness campaign titled "We are UC ANR" launched June 1. The campaign was designed to help those who have struggled to wrap their arms around all that UC ANR does. It features two new website products: A three-minute video that explains UC ANR's origins and current activities, and an interactive map that shows the locations of UC ANR programs across the state.

The communications team is asking everyone – UC ANR staff and academics, farmers, 4-H members, volunteers, agency representatives and all other stakeholders – to share their ANR stories through social networks, with the hashtag #WeAreUCANR. To make this easy, the team developed a toolkit that includes sample posts and tweets, images, short video trailers and messaging.

We are all problem-solvers, catalysts, collaborators, educators and stewards of the land. UC ANR is a bridge between the people of California and trusted, science-based answers to everyday questions. Please help us bring UC ANR alive to current and future stakeholders.

We are UC ANR webpage (with video and map)

We are UC ANR social media toolkit

This new look for the top-level brand is being rolled out slowly with digital implementation first. We know that folks have invested in signage, shirts, printed collateral materials and other durable items, and we're not going to ask that any of these items be changed. Additionally, the Brand Toolkit contains close to 1,000 assets—everything from logos to business cards to PowerPoint templates. Updating those assets is a daunting task and a challenging brand management issue.

This multi-level brand approach is not unprecedented. A good example is how UC Berkeley handles their brand package. There's a high-level brand for the campus and other sub-brands, like the script Cal and iterations of the Golden Bear. Each has a place in the brand family. This is especially applicable for well-recognized, even well-loved brands with a lot of brand equity—like the script Cal, the vintage bear, or even 4-H, UCCE, Master Gardener and others in our own brand package. 

Over the coming weeks, as we roll out the re-design of the high-level pages of the website, you'll see the new ANR brand in action. If you need to order durable items there is no need to delay; feel free to use the current brand packages available in the Brand Toolkit.  Future changes to the sub-brand packages will be minimal and won't be incorporated into the sub-brand packages for at least 8 to 12 months.