Why should an event planner be concerned about branding? For Dick Bruso, president and founder of Heard Above the Noise, the answer is simple. “It’s all about setting yourself apart,” he says. In the higher education community, setting the institution and its events apart is more important than ever. Students and parents have “many choices as far as universities or colleges go,” says Bruso. Universities themselves are also often specialists in a given area of academic, extracurricular, or experiential endeavor. Helping these two populations find one another is part of the mission of branding.