Cheryl Broom (8s):
Hi, I'm Cheryl broom, CEO of graduate communications. Has your college ever thought about going through a mascot selection process? Do you need a new mascot? Maybe your current mascot is culturally insensitive. Well, that's what happened at Saddleback college, who a couple years ago decided that they wanted to make the move away from a mascot that didn't reflect the values of the campus. Over the next couple of years, they went through just a really spectacular process to find something that could bring a lot of joy and a lot of pride to the campus. And that would better reflect really who they are and what they stand for.

Cheryl Broom (51s):
So today's guest is the director of communications for Saddleback college and Jenny McCue. She was the chair of the mascot selection committee and has just this incredible story of what they went through, including being zoom bombed during forums and how they came to where they are today, which is having a mascot that everyone on campus is really proud of. It's a great conversation and there are so many good tips. I think you're really going to enjoy. Okay, Jenny, I'm so excited to have you on the show.

Jennie McCue (1m 31s):
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Cheryl Broom (1m 33s):
So tell me a little bit about who you are and where your colleges.

Jennie McCue (1m 38s):
Sure. So I'm Jenny McHugh, I'm the director of marketing and communications at Saddleback college. We're located in mission Viejo, California, which is in the Southern area of orange county.

Cheryl Broom (1m 49s):
Great and excited to have you on because you spearheaded oversaw a project that I think a lot of colleges across the country want to do. And that is you redid your mascot.

Jennie McCue (2m 1s):
That's right.

Cheryl Broom (2m 2s):
So what was the mascot originally and why did the college want to redo it?

Jennie McCue (2m 8s):
So Saddleback college had the Gaucho as our mascot. For many years, we were founded in 1968, you know, and I think like most community colleges, our mascot was one of those things that that came about. And there was not much documentation as to how it came about. We're a mountainous area. So it makes sense that, you know, we would be the gauchos. We were also founded at the same time as UC Santa Barbara. So there's some thought that we were the gauchos like UCS B, but the rendering of the mascot itself in all honesty was, was pretty awful. Not only was it very amateurish in its appearance, but it didn't appropriately depict what a Gaucho looks like.

Jennie McCue (2m 53s):
Deltas have very specific characteristics. And the cartoon of our mascot didn't have those typical characteristics of a Gaucho. And it also was very stereotypically representative of a Mexican person, a big sombrero, a big mustache. And over the years, it, you know, was noted to be quite offensive to many groups of people. So it was something that had been discussed for many years. I started working at the college in 2005 and it was discussed as early as then that the mascot image was quite offensive. And there was talk about changing it finally, maybe four or five years ago, the president at the time asked that our athletics department remove the image from the gym and other locations on campus.

Jennie McCue (3m 40s):
And that was sort of the start of a big change. Then we had a vote by survey in 2018, the college still wasn't quite ready to do away with the mascot. There were many college white meetings. There were discussions on, on how to decide if we were going to stay the gauchos or not. And we did a simple survey. It was a two question survey. Should we stay the Gaucho or not? You know, in groups on campus that wanted to keep the gauchos really rally the troops to vote in favor of, of rebating, the gauchos that happened in 2018. Soon after that, we had a new college president and he's great. And he's very understanding of different points of view and understanding that progression is important and that all voices need to be heard.

Jennie McCue (4m 25s):
And that this was an issue for the college because we obviously wants to be inclusive and we respect diversity and we want to be welcoming to all people on campus. And it's hard to live that when you have a mascot that's offensive to so many people.

Cheryl Broom (4m 40s):
And before you keep going, I just want to clarify, cause you kind of alluded to what a Gacha is, but for some people who aren't in Southern California, it's a term they may not have ever heard

Jennie McCue (4m 49s):
True. And gauchos don't even exist in Southern California. It was one of those things that even though we're a mountainous area, why are we galcho? So gout shows come from south America. There are, there are known as Argentinian Cowboys. And what's interesting is that if you do some research, you find some really nice definitions of what a Gaucho is. They're very legendary in south America. They're seen as strong emblematic of somebody, you know, of a pioneering type of person. And in some ways that can be synonymous with a college that's something you'd want. However, after our new president started, there was more talk about our mascot and yeah, we just had the survey, but was that really representative of how the college feels and did it take into account very strong feelings people have about that mascot and my coworker and I were charged with working on a new mascot image.

Jennie McCue (5m 41s):
So we assembled a work group. It was well represented college-wide and we had students on the committee as well, and we have some new mascot renderings drawn for us of what a Gaucho looks like. You know, they have a flat hat, they wear certain clothes. So that's what it looked like. And we were going to start a process where we voted on what we wanted our new Gaucho mascots to look like.

Cheryl Broom (6m 3s):
This is really interesting though. So you, you started by saying like, let's keep what we have, but modernize it, take away some of those stereotypical pieces. Right?

Jennie McCue (6m 14s):
Exactly. That was sort of the early evolution of our final change. And you know, it was obviously kind of a baby step. So what happened? So this was in 2020 that we started this process at the same time that we started getting those drawings. And before we voted on it, campus wide, a petition was circling among faculty and students and staff, and they got many signatures and the petition called for us to retire the Gaucho. So obviously this issue could not be ignored. You know, we had the survey, we were talking about it, but that survey, obviously wasn't a decisive answer. This issue was never going to go away.

Jennie McCue (6m 54s):
So the petition circulated and our college president determined, and this was in fall semester 2020, that we would have forums where everyone was invited to come forward and talk about their feelings of the Gaucho. And it became very clear during these discussions that there was no way we'd be able to keep this mascot. There were very passionate arguments against it. And as I mentioned before, the Gaucho is seen as this legendary figure in south America, but what's missing from a lot of the storytelling and folklore about that mascot is that there was colonization involved. You know, they're accused of raping and pillaging. I mean, just these horrible stories of colonizing people and subjugating them to terrible treatment.

Jennie McCue (7m 40s):
It became clear. We can't keep this mascot, this Amy, there's just no way this is going to happen. Even though there were still a lot of people who were in favor of keeping it, it just, it wasn't going to be so at the end of those forums, and as I said, that was in fall semester, 2020, our college president announced we have to change it. So that decision was made. We brought it forward to our chancellor and our board of trustees. And you know, it wasn't simple. It wasn't a simple decision. We obviously had a lot of people that fought fiercely against it, but it was determined. Saddleback college will no longer be the Gaucho. Do you want me to stop here for a question?

Cheryl Broom (8m 19s):
I love, first of all, I love the fact that you did a survey that just fed two questions. This is like, you started at the very, like, let's just start with the very basic and not get carried away with what should it be and what do we represent? It's like, should we have this? Yes or no. Right. And how was the response? Was it clear from the survey or did it really take the forums to get to the heart of it?

Jennie McCue (8m 43s):
I took the forms to get to the heart of it because the survey meant that we were keeping that Gaucho, but it didn't stop the discontent. It didn't stop it. I mean, people were still really upset. They felt that survey. You didn't really get to the heart of the matter. You're asking a yes or no question without an ability for people to really understand the issue. You know, so many students, weren't given an opportunity to hear arguments in favor of and against the Gaucho. So, I mean, it was a vote without having a lot of opportunity to inform people on what it meant.

Cheryl Broom (9m 19s):
I think that's a really good lesson though, on why he should do both types of research.

Jennie McCue (9m 24s):
Absolutely.

Cheryl Broom (9m 25s):
You need to do a survey, you know, that people have a chance to say yes or no, but you have to talk to people too. You have to get out and ask questions and listen.

Jennie McCue (9m 34s):
Absolutely well, and that was one of the wonderful things about the forums that our president held is that a lot of people, you know, in college campuses, I'm sure Saddleback as no different from a lot of college campuses where you have people on campus who are, you know, in all the committees and do all the work. What happened with our forums on whether to keep the Gaucho or not? A lot of people came forward, who would, I'd never even seen in a meeting, you know, really great part-time faculty who made him passion statements about how offensive that Gaucho was to them from students who said, you know, I feel awful coming to campus and seeing that image or knowing that that's what we are.

Jennie McCue (10m 16s):
That's not who I am and it's not reflective of what this college means to me, but it makes me think a little bit differently about the college and what the college may think of me as a student. So it really brought a lot of voices forward who we hadn't heard from before. And that was so important.

Cheryl Broom (10m 32s):
Yeah, that's fascinating. And it's also so interesting on how, how tied people get to the college mascot or the college logo. It has so much more meaning than we are then at least I personally would think that it, it would have

Jennie McCue (10m 50s):
Absolutely. I mean, it is reflective of our brand. How can we say, you know, we have a new tagline welcome to opportunity. How can we promote that? And at the same time have a mascot that is horribly offensive to so many of our students, it doesn't work. You've just can't, you can't promote something and have it be true if at the same time you have this embarrassing mascot.

Cheryl Broom (11m 16s):
Yeah. You have to take a holistic view of your entire brand.

Jennie McCue (11m 20s):
Absolutely.

Cheryl Broom (11m 21s):
So how long did that process take? How long did this go on for?

Jennie McCue (11m 24s):
So everything I'm talking about happened over the course. So we did the two question survey in 2018. In 2019, we started looking at different designs for the Gaucho in 2020, we had finalized it. And then we were told stop because we have this petition that circulated. And then in fall 2020, we had the forums where we ultimately decided Saddleback college can no longer have the gauchos as our mascot. So then an early spring semester, 21 or college president asked me and my colleague who had been overseeing the work group to get new Gaucho designs. He asked us to shift, focus and assemble our work group to identify a new mascot for the college.

Jennie McCue (12m 8s):
So that started in early spring, 2020.

Cheryl Broom (12m 10s):
Okay. And who was on that work group?

Jennie McCue (12m 13s):
So that was myself and my colleague who runs our tutoring center. And she's now an interim Dean. She and I were co-chairs. And then the group was more represented with faculty representatives from athletics students and classified staff as well.

Cheryl Broom (12m 30s):
Okay. So now your task get rid of the gown show, find us something new,

Jennie McCue (12m 35s):
Right.

Cheryl Broom (12m 36s):
And how did you even begin to do that?

Jennie McCue (12m 39s):
So at the end of the day, it just all kind of came together quite easily. My colleague and I, who were co-chairs got together and just kind of made a rough outline and brought it forward to our work group and it all fell into place. So what the work group determined to do was we would solicit nominations for our new mascot over the course of a month. So that happened in, in January and February of 20, 21, we got hundreds of nominations and then the work group together went through them and chose about 25 that we thought would be acceptable. We got all this.

Cheryl Broom (13m 13s):
You just let people like, just tell it, just give us ideas.

Jennie McCue (13m 16s):
Exactly. And we got tons of ideas. We got some silly ones. We got some funny ones, we got some great ones. We got some that we thought we'd never would have thought of that before, but really good ones. So yeah, I mean, hundreds, we narrowed it down to about 25. The work group did. And then we held more college wide forums where we presented the 25 semifinalists and we allowed each forum to talk about what they liked, what they didn't like. What was great about that was there were some really good concerns that were raised that we hadn't thought of. For instance, one of the mascot suggestions. I don't even remember what it was.

Jennie McCue (13m 56s):
Maybe it was the CRO Saddleback college has a lot of crows on campus. So there were a lot of submissions for us to be the crows. And a person student told us that the Crow is actually seen as bad luck and the Persian community. So that was good to know. Never knew that we wouldn't want something that would be considered bad luck to our burden community. We do have quite a few proven students and nevertheless, you just don't want something like that. Anyway. It also provides us.

Cheryl Broom (14m 22s):
Nobody likes crows. Yeah. I think they fly from your, your campus over my house, but it's actually pretty fascinating. Every night. There's like a million crows that go through our backyard.

Jennie McCue (14m 36s):
So anyway, we are not the crows. I will tell you that much. We did not end up being oppressed, but what was kind of nice as we had a lot of people on campus, because we're about, we're about seven miles inland from the ocean. However, we are not considered a coastal. You know, we're not on Laguna beach where a good 15 minute drive to live on a beach. But because we have this mountainous terrain, Saddleback is a much more of a Chaparral area than coast. However, people like to think of us as coastal. So we got a lot of submissions that were like the surfers and the sandpipers. And, you know, I never thought they would work because I just, we're not a coastal campus.

Jennie McCue (15m 17s):
But thankfully students in our group said, you know, I think these ocean mascots, aren't going to work for us because we're not considered a coastal campus, even though people might want us to be, we're really not. But then we'd also have to think, are we changing our colors because our colors are Cardinal and gold. Are, are we going to change our colors? No, that was never in the plan. So that kind of helped weed out. A lot of people who were really rooting for sort of an oceanic mascot, but anyway, so we have these forums at the end of each forum. And again, everybody was invited to speak and offer their opinions and, and you know, their, what they liked and didn't like about each submission. And then, then they can vote on their top five favorite.

Jennie McCue (15m 58s):
So we did four forums. And at the end of that, we had a research department help us find our top five finalists. And then we did a college wide vote. We did a survey, which do you like the best? And they could choose among five. And ultimately we had a winner in may of 2021. So all of this took place from the gathering of mascot nominations to having the forums, to selecting the finalists and having a college wide vote to select the winner that took place over about a four or five month period.

Cheryl Broom (16m 32s):
Okay. And you weren't showing drawn concepts. These were just words at this point.

Jennie McCue (16m 38s):
Exactly. They were just words.

Cheryl Broom (16m 40s):
And some of your forums were very interesting. I know one of your forums went viral.

Jennie McCue (16m 47s):
It did. So this was, this was going back to the forums where we were just talking about whether we remain gal too or not. We had a student forum and unbeknownst to us, our sneaky students invited a social media instigator who was well known to the student community. Hadn't been known to me and I didn't attend that forum, but I had heard that there was somebody who brought a ridiculous idea forward and he just kind of laugh after. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. Well, then I saw on Twitter that night, what had happened. So this person that came in into the meeting and made this crazy suggestion is actually a social media instigator with quite a following.

Jennie McCue (17m 28s):
And he recorded himself with a suggestion for what our new mascot should be. It's not safe for work. So I'm not going to say it here, but anybody can search on Twitter for Saddleback college. And you'll probably find it. I think the last I looked, which was many months ago, it had gotten well over 2 million views. I mean, well over that. So, but he had a suggestion for what our new mascot should be and he pinned it on Twitter and we, yes, we got a lot of attention.

Cheryl Broom (18m 1s):
How was that handled when that happened?

Jennie McCue (18m 4s):
So when we did those specific forums on whether we should keep the Gaucho mascot, we had two faculty members who helped facilitate that and it really bothered them. They really felt like this person, you know, captured, you know, cause this was all on zoom because this was during the pandemic, the social media instigator had recorded it and posted it on Twitter and had captured images of our students. So they just felt that students were being made fun of. And so I met with them, our college president asked me to join them. And my advice is any, I think communications person would, would be ignore it. You know, we're not going to give him any oxygen by showing that we know about it or saw it, you know why?

Jennie McCue (18m 49s):
And it, it's just one of those things that we deal with today. It happens and it's silly. It didn't make us look bad in any way. It was no threat to our reputation as a college. It was just a social media instigator who came and did something that he thought was funny and people got to laugh about it. We'll move on. But he did make a reappearance. When we were discussing our finalists for the new mascot, he came back and he said, why didn't anybody? Except my idea for the mascot that I had nominated. And it was funny. And it ended up being handled perfectly because my colleague, who I was leading the meetings with somehow didn't get the message that this had all happened.

Jennie McCue (19m 32s):
So she answered him very honestly. She said, you know, we went through a process and we have ideas that went forward and the work group selected them. I'm sorry, your idea wasn't but this is how it worked. And, and then my coworker, who is the manager of our president's office, he knew who he was and he deleted him or he banned him from the meeting then. So yeah, he came back.

Cheryl Broom (19m 54s):
Now, you know what a perfect response though. And because she didn't know the history, she wasn't like triggered or upset. She just handled it very professionally.

Jennie McCue (20m 2s):
No. And I'm seeing in that video, I'm kind of shaking my head because I'm thinking, okay, the person who has the ability to oust him, now's the time to do it. Like I just wasn't answering, but she had this great response.

Cheryl Broom (20m 14s):
I remember seeing you in the video, you have a like hysterical look on your face.

Jennie McCue (20m 21s):
I know my daughter saw it too. And she actually commented that's my mom.

Cheryl Broom (20m 28s):
I think though, I mean, there's so many great lessons that you've already shared in this process, but just another little takeaway is we are in a world of zoom and zoom bombers and social media instigators, and you just never know what you're going to get.

Jennie McCue (20m 43s):
No, you don't. I mean, it keeps it interesting, but you know, I think overall we had a really great process where everyone was invited to participate. Everyone was invited to submit ideas. I think we have a very transparent how we made the decisions. And yeah, I think at the end of the day we were the Bobcat's now I think people are happy with it. It's relevant. We have Bobcat's in our area. You know, it works well. We have a beautiful new design and branding package. I mean, not everybody loves it. I will admit our athletics department, I think would have rather stayed in the gauchos. It's been accepted for some more enthusiastically than others.

Jennie McCue (21m 24s):
And that's okay. That's okay. I think because we had such a fair process and we're very transparent. Nobody can say that it was unfair.

Cheryl Broom (21m 32s):
So when you did that survey, the five sent out the five, did you decide beforehand that whatever one wins we're going to live with?

Jennie McCue (21m 41s):
We yes, because we had narrowed it down to five that were acceptable.

Cheryl Broom (21m 45s):
Okay.

Jennie McCue (21m 45s):
We were, we were okay with any of them.

Cheryl Broom (21m 47s):
I guess that's always kind of like the scary part of doing a survey like that. If there's something in there that you don't love, it's the one that's going to get picked, you know.

Jennie McCue (21m 57s):
Exactly. No, we wanted to make sure of that. So when our work groups select the 25 semi-finalists they all had to be appropriate. Something we could live with, you know, not ridiculous, nothing. That's going to invite ridicule for the college. And then when we had the forums and they were winnowed down to five, yeah. It was something that everybody could live with.

Cheryl Broom (22m 17s):
And then once you made the decision, how did you announce it?

Jennie McCue (22m 20s):
So that was kind of fun. So our video production staff did like a little shell game, actually, I'm sorry. I suddenly had five finalists. We ended up actually ended up with three finalists and they did a video of a little shell game. So it was just like Bobcats mountain lions Rattlers. And they kind of did this. And then at the end I'm doing this and nobody can see it in the podcast, but it looked, it was a shell game effect. And then it revealed Bobcat's was the winner with a yay and the recording. So we sent that out. We said, we have a new mascot click here to view the video. And it was super cute, nothing fancy, but people really enjoyed it. I got a lot of reply emails saying this was great.

Jennie McCue (23m 1s):
You know, loved it, cute video. Then over the summer we hired a designer and came up with two great Bobcat designs. And the beginning of the fall semester, 2021, we held a vote to determine what the design would be. And then that was revealed at our stadium grand opening. And we have a brand new stadium at the college and we had our grand opening celebration October 1st. And so we revealed the mascot design there.

Cheryl Broom (23m 26s):
How amazing, how great.

Jennie McCue (23m 28s):
Yeah. It was fun.

Cheryl Broom (23m 29s):
A lot of colleges hire companies. There are companies who specialize in this. Did you think about doing that or was there a reason that you wanted to do it on your own?

Jennie McCue (23m 39s):
No, we hired a company to do it.

Cheryl Broom (23m 41s):
Oh, so you did. Okay.

Jennie McCue (23m 42s):
We did. And so to those marketing directors out who are thinking of going through this process, there are design firms that are looking at newspaper articles about this because you will likely get some media attention when you change your mascot just as Saddleback college did. And design firms look out for that and they reach out to you. So that's how we found ours. We use perch creative, they were great to work with, but they did reach out to us after seeing something in a newspaper about us changing our, our mascot. So, and, but we did, we did choose to work with an outside vendor only because, you know, there's so many feelings behind this and our designers are already so busy and it just seemed, you know, it would be good to have somebody who's not attached to the college in the same way.

Jennie McCue (24m 30s):
And you know, sometimes people in the setting for better or worse trust the opinion and talent of an outsider as opposed to an insider, whether it's true or not, we have a very talented design team in this case for a lot of reasons. It made sense to hire an external designer.

Cheryl Broom (24m 47s):
Yeah. Well, I, I, I think this is one of those projects where it does really seem to make sense because you take the politics and the emotion out of it. Yes. And you have somebody who could just be objective and, and they just want to give you the best work that they can do. They don't have any real skin in the game.

Jennie McCue (25m 4s):
No, absolutely not. And you know exactly. And they've done it before. You know, we really wanted somebody with a lot of experience doing this kind of work, who also knows what's out there. Right. You know, we wanted something unique to us. We're now in a process of trademarking the designs. So we didn't want to be in a, you know, in a situation where we create something that potentially looks like something else. Like these people know what they're doing. This is their market. They are professionals. So it was, and you know, and they also know potential pitfalls and what's going to stand the test of time.

Cheryl Broom (25m 36s):
How interesting. I hadn't even thought of that. I mean, you would want to make sure that you weren't super close to another university or colleges design.

Jennie McCue (25m 44s):
Exactly.

Cheryl Broom (25m 44s):
What are you going to look up every college and university?

Jennie McCue (25m 47s):
There was no way. And yeah, we didn't choose something super unique for Bobcat's, you know, Montana state as the webcast. There's a lot of Bobcat's in the world. There's no possible way we can look at all of them. So yeah, we know that what we ended up with is great and, and unique to us.

Cheryl Broom (26m 4s):
And then how much like logistically once you made this change, did you have a lot like uniforms or the, the floor of the gym, anything that needed to be changed?

Jennie McCue (26m 15s):
Things need to be changed, but we decided we'd do it as needed. You know, we just can't spend that kind of money to instantly change the gauchos banner on the baseball stadium. We're redoing our gym floor now. So thankfully a lot of things, the timing of it happened after the announcement of the new mascot in the new design. But, you know, in a perfect world, we could have waited to have everything done after the announcement, but some things are going to stay gauchos for a little while.

Cheryl Broom (26m 42s):
And people know the process you went through and that the change is coming. I'm sure that they're probably accepting of that.

Jennie McCue (26m 48s):
Yeah, exactly.

Cheryl Broom (26m 49s):
Yeah. What an amazing story

Jennie McCue (26m 52s):
Was. Yeah.

Cheryl Broom (26m 55s):
Any other tips or advice you would give to other colleges thinking of doing this themselves?

Jennie McCue (26m 59s):
I, you know, I don't think it's anything earth shattering have a website that keeps everybody informed where people can go back to that's where you put, you know, it was our information hub. That's where we put all of our press releases, where we posted the semi-finalists and the finalists, that's where we posted a link to the survey. So that was just really helpful because it kept us organized and allowed a place for everybody to get information as they needed it. So that was very helpful. Have a process. I mean, I have a colleague to work on it with because it's a lot. And again, there's some very passionate ideas behind it and it's nice to have a coworker to go through it all with and laugh about it with.

Jennie McCue (27m 40s):
So I was very lucky that I had a really good colleague to coach her the committee with. And then finally just be very transparent. I think this is one of those situations where people want to be kept informed about how the sausage is made. So I think we, I think we ultimately did a really good job of that. And at the end of the day, nobody could say that this wasn't a fair process

Cheryl Broom (28m 0s):
Because your website, is it still up? If people want to go look at it,

Jennie McCue (28m 3s):
It is, it's a very original name, I think at saddleback.edu/mascot.

Cheryl Broom (28m 9s):
She's checking it right now to see if they still live.

Jennie McCue (28m 13s):
I'm seeing making sure it's still there. It's still there. We're actually, I'm sure many other marketing directors can relate. We are going through the pain of redesigning our website right now. So this won't be here forever, but yes, for now we have saddleback.edu/mascot and includes our announcement, our selection criteria, and more, I hope it's helpful.

Cheryl Broom (28m 32s):
Anybody is interested in seeing your Bobcat. Is that on your website? Is it live?

Jennie McCue (28m 37s):
It is. It's on the landing page of the website.

Cheryl Broom (28m 39s):
Awesome. Well, sounds like I'm going to go visit it when we get off this call. Very good. I've heard this story, but I haven't ever seen the final, final.

Jennie McCue (28m 48s):
Drawing. You will be dazzled.

Cheryl Broom (28m 51s):
Well, I think a lot of your takeaways were it's so similar to things I learned when I was at MiraCosta and we redid the college logo and the mascot itself, after going through, we changed the college logo and we changed the college colors. And that project was very controversial and emotionally driven and difficult. And we, we used a firm to help us. And now my creative director here at graduate communications is the creative director that redid the logo for the other firm because he did such an amazing job. But what I learned through that process, just how, gosh, I, how emotionally charged these discussions are.

Cheryl Broom (29m 36s):
And when we finally, we got to the end, we changed everything. And the college said, what about the mascot? And I said, why don't we do that for our hundredth anniversary? I won't be working here anymore.

Jennie McCue (29m 54s):
Yeah. I don't blame you. It's funny how these projects bring such emotion in people. You know, Logan was one of them. I just mentioned our website. It's the same, people have very strong feelings about these things that can be kind of surprising. So it's a good thing to expect.

Cheryl Broom (30m 9s):
Yeah. And I think my takeaway from the project that I did was, you know, you think of your whole brand. We, we say a logo is not a brand, a, mascot's not a brand and it's not, but for some people, those marks represent their experience. And so they do, they do hold a lot of like value for people. So for me, I was like, oh, it's just a logo. Like we just need something more attractive to put on our brochures and our website. And it was so much more than that.

Jennie McCue (30m 38s):
Yeah, absolutely.

Cheryl Broom (30m 39s):
Yeah. And it came down to the end of the day for my experience, just like yours, we revamped the process, slowed it down, got more input, did more focus groups made presentations and that the ability for people to speak and participate became what ended up making it a success.

Jennie McCue (30m 57s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the same with us. It's just having that ability to participate is so important to people they need to be heard.

Cheryl Broom (31m 4s):
Well, good work.

Jennie McCue (31m 6s):
Thank you.

Cheryl Broom (31m 8s):
And anybody interested in seeing the mascot or the process go to saddleback.edu/mascot, but before the end of the year, when Jenny redoes her entire website And thank you so much, I hope you turn this into a presentation at a conference.

Jennie McCue (31m 26s):
I plan to thank you so much.

3 (31m 33s):
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