At first glance, the single-school campus at Northwestern Area School District looks like any other in a rural region.
A district of roughly 300 students -- with youth from multiple smaller communities just off the highway in Galette, South Dakota -- the district shares many qualities with schools across the Upper Peninsula.
But a recent rebranding and remodeling campaign, complete with a logo on the gym floor and name placards outside each classroom, made the eastern South Dakota school district look a
little too much like a fellow institution of education in the U.P.
“We had someone reach out and offer to make some shirts, and that was the logo they gave us. The logo was great and fit what we wanted,” said Rob Lewis, who is superintendent of the Northwestern Area School District.
Unfortunately, the logo used the same colors and design as Northern Michigan University's logo for the Wildcats. NMU internally designed the Wildcats athletic logo in April 2016, as part of a larger rebranding that included the university’s new compass rose and torch logo. The images were copyrighted, meaning that only Northern Michigan has the right to use that logo.
The Northwestern Area School District had no idea about the overlap with the NCAA Division 2 university in the U.P. until both groups were tagged in a tweet on X/Twitter in November 2023, according to Lewis.
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Courtesy of Northwestern Area School DistrictCelebrating the Wildcat Willy mascot with both schools, the new Northwestern Area Wildcat Willy stands with NMU's Wildcat Willy before the school pep rally.Copyright infringement is nothing new to rural schools, even in Michigan. Multiple schools in the Upper Peninsula use branding from college or professional teams, even with one using a mirror image of the Panther from Permian High School in “Friday Night Lights.” But most of the time, a school is able to switch a color scheme or a name to create something new called a “derivative work.” Defined in the Copyright Act of 1976, derivative works take one or more preexisting copyrighted works and adapt them.
An example of derivative works used for a high school mascot comes from another small school in the Upper Peninsula. As the Nordics, North Dickinson took the logo used by the Minnesota Vikings from 1966-1996, flipped it to face the other direction, then changed the color scheme in the helmet. It was the same approach used by high schools in Idaho, Texas and Indiana, but the logos were different enough to be used without confusion with the NFL team.
“When I go to different schools, you start to notice it: those Patriot logos are the New England Patriots, that is the block W from the University of Wisconsin logo. You ask schools about how they got their logo, and they just tell you that it was in place before certain staff got (hired by the school),” Lewis said. “But the biggest thing is that you don’t have the same colors, and we just happened to with NMU.”
Because the green and gold were the same between the two schools, Northwestern was unable to make any changes, resulting in a copyright violation. Reversing expensive infrastructure upgrades or facing potential litigation for illegal use of copyrighted images was a difficult undertaking for the school district, but the first step was to admit to the logo usage.
“I get a call, and they said, ‘Apparently, we’ve adopted your Wildcat logo’,” said Derek Hall, chief marketing officer for Northern Michigan University. “Sure enough, I went online, and it was everywhere, on everyone, all with a huge Wildcat head. This is 100 percent straight up our Wildcat.”
Despite the copyright infringement, Northern Michigan University had an opportunity to improve the situation -- and did.
Hall credited Lewis and other staff there for their transparency and willingness to work with NMU to find long-term solutions.
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Courtesy of Northwestern Area School DistrictNorthwestern Area School District parents, students and staff participate in a pep rally on Nov. 4, celebrating the collaboration between the school district and Northern Michigan University. With the support of NMU administration, Hall and the marketing department created a full style guide for the South Dakota district, complete with style guides, hexadecimal color codes and best usage guidelines for various versions of the logo.
After driving nearly 700 miles from Marquette to Galette, South Dakota, Hall addressed the Northwestern Area student body on Nov. 4 -- to formally welcome the Wildcats in South Dakota to the larger Wildcat family. With a Wildcat Willy mascot suit in tow — another shared marketing trait between the university and the school district — Hall taught the students various Wildcat cheers, NMU-branded freebies and spent time talking about the university.
“We had a great pep assembly. I adopted them into the Wildcat family,” Hall said. “We have a Wildcat pledge. I had them all stand up and repeat the pledge. We did some cheers, and it was just an amazing event.”
But some of the most important items taken to South Dakota were brochures and applications to Northern Michigan University. South Dakota is not in NMU's regular recruiting area, with its closest recruiters working about five hours north in Minnesota.
The Northwestern Area School District has various local colleges within a two-hour drive of campus, including Northern State University, similar in size to NMU, and Augustana University, which is NMU’s newest conference opponent in men’s ice hockey. Those colleges participate in various in-person recruiting events and college fairs to give plenty of options to Northwestern Area students and those in surrounding school districts. But the marketing mishap gave NMU a chance to enter the market and entice students that would feel right at home on the shores of Lake Superior.
“The first thing I did is I checked with our admissions folks. What if I created a relationship with this small school a little bit outside of our normal area? And (admissions) were supportive, so yes, let’s do something,” Hall said. “That kind of gave me a green light to talk to our legal department, and we had a lot of flexibility in what we could do.”
Hall said multiple Northwestern Area students have already applied to NMU, with the potential of additional applications thanks to the thousands of students and parents that saw positive local news stories about the pep rally.
The move will add extra diversity for incoming classes at Northern Michigan, positively pushing the brand and prestige of the university for taking friendly and positive actions during the challenging and ongoing issue of overlapping intellectual property problems.
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Courtesy of Northwestern Area School DistrictNMU Chief Marketing Officer Derek Hall presents the Wildcat Pledge at the pep rally. Lewis said that schools that find themselves looking for new logos and branding should go through search engines to see what logo designs already exist. However, if a mistake was made, being honest about the situation is the best policy.
“Working with Derek at Northern Michigan has been wonderful,” Lewis said. “It didn’t have to go that direction, and we are very grateful.”
Brice Burge is a regular contributor to UPword.