The headline is my offering as a marketing slogan for U Minn. It sums things up cleanly.
What precipitated it was a Star Tribune item -
The U paid a marketing firm $15M for a new slogan. The internet has thoughts.
“Leave a Future” is the University of Minnesota’s first new tagline in 20 years. People aren’t quite sure what it means, or what to think of it. By Eleanor Hildebrandt and Zoë Jackson - The Minnesota Star Tribune - March 19, 2026 at 6:26PM
The story is paywalled, but basically the slogan had been "Driven to Discover" which is something a university would be expected to say.
"Leave a Future" makes me think of putting a baby onto somebody's doorstep, ringing the bell and getting out of sight before the door opens.
But, that's me.
Strib noted the U Foundation and the U somehow splitting costs apparently have used the firm "Rise and Shine Partners" for marketing services - no shit, "Rise and Shine." Slogan specialists, apparently. A brief early paragraphs excerpt -
Officials from the U were unavailable to comment for this story. The U’s foundation, which paid for the majority of $15 million contract with marketing firm Rise and Shine and Partners to help the U with branding over five years, also did not respond to a request for comment. Rise and Shine and Partners said it could not comment on active work.
At a March 6 meeting where U staff unveiled the new slogan, Susan Hagen, the U’s director of creative services, said the tagline is about evolving the university’s brand to prioritize education and service alongside research. She said research showed that the community wanted to “expand beyond a hard focus into just research.”
Hagen said the university’s branding needs “to be a little less Minnesota humble and a little more bold and proud.”
Susan Hagan is made by that multi-paragraph text to look like a skilled bullshitter, so rise and shine that thought for a while. Or whatever. More bold and proud? Huh?
"Pay your library fines" could also be a fine university slogan, for any university.
But leaving a future seems to mix tenses strangely, as Strib noted a student saying.
But back to my impression, that doorstoop baby is a future, and being left completes the thought. Tell me I am wrong.
"Get serious once you get here," is another good university slogan for any student not having gold family connections, where that golden family offspring can get by on "C" grade point average and do well as a graduate. Trump's son in law got through exHarvard after all, so perhaps Harvard should have a marketing slogan,"The Endowment Gains a Future." Who knows.
Another slogan and leave it there, "Not Animal House." That indirectly suggests either a step better or worse in administrative chops than the fictional institution.
"Pay Tuition" seems too harsh. It's not about cash flow, is it?
To the extent slogan formation is like headlining, the Strib headline did sluff over the Rise and Shine people doing marketing services over five years, getting fifteen million over time, not for a one shot "Leave a Future" thing, and the clarification in the story arguably left the fleshing out bit too late in the story. Headlining 101 lore is do not misimpress, but hook the reader by ambiguity, such as,"The Iranians have shown multiple options after the first bomb dropped." A headline like that, the reader wonders, what "options?" You suck the reader into the story.
This Strib headline gets the reader wondering, "What Internet thoughts?" It does work that way. Actually, "The Internet HAS Thoughts," would work as a headline for this blog, as in where do you go with a tagline like that? What "Thoughts?"
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