St Christopher School: integrated marketing

To promote an innovative student accommodation offer to 'first time buyers' of independent education, we repositioned the idea of boarding, achieved an increase in boarder numbers and enhanced the school's reputation in its sector.

Introduction

St Christopher's School is an independent school with an international outlook and an ethos that encourages curiosity, judgement and kindness. To make their new weekly boarding offer viable, they needed to offset the reduction in revenue with an increase in the number of students boarding.

Objectives

• Reposition the idea of boarding in the minds of prospective parents
• Communicate the new weekly boarding offer to existing parents
• Retain all existing boarders
• Attract a number of first time buyers of independent schooling
• Enhance St Christopher's visibility and image as a leading school that provides accommodation

Strategy

To make best use of the budget we planned to use the school's existing communication channels; website, e-mailing list and other school printed literature. This allowed us to talk to the target audience regularly without stretching the school finances. The website would act as a central hub for all communications, allowing for both existing boarders and 'first time buyers' to have a place to view, apply and share the new boarding offer.

Insight

While we were working up ideas, our background research revealed that choice of school is often more about the desire of the child than the edict of the parent. Acting on this insight we designed the visual language to appeal to the kids alongside content relavant to parents.

Solution

Many people still think of boarding school as being about cold showers, cruel housemasters and homesick kids. We wanted to banish all that as at St. Christopher it just wasn't true. We came up with the concept of, 'Boarding is Changing 4 Good' to say the school was redefining the boarding experience forever.

We developed a handmade, 'pinboard' graphic direction, inspired by the way students organise their space at St.Chris. We used this imagery to develop landing pages for the website, e-mail template and print materials to be sent with the regular school newsletters, prospectus and other media.

Results

The campaign is ongoing but the early signs have been excellent, as nearly all existing boarders have taken up the the new offer of weekly boarding at St Chris. New enquiries are being generated through various channels and offers of places are being sent to new applicants in the near future, filling the positions for boarding for the coming school year.