14 | BR ANDING | COVER FEATURE K ING'S SCHOOL , ELY
BAT TLE OF THE BR AND S
In these competitive times, a good image is vital to a school’s success, and this can be achieved by clever branding or rebranding. As Paul Dimery discovers, those who strike the right chord will reap the benefi ts
BELOW: Solihull's sharpened- up new crest. BELOW RIGHT: Edge Grove school, clothed by Stevensons
It was a late July evening and I was heading out of the door en route to my school prom. Suited and booted, I was the archetypal fresh-faced teenager: except that I wasn’t as fresh-faced as I thought. My mother stopped me in my tracks, pointed out the traces of fried egg around my mouth and told me that, in a symbolic sense, egg is exactly what I’d have on my face if I made any advances on a girl looking like that. Wiping the yolk away with her handkerchief, she gave me an important piece of advice, and one that I’ve since referred to on numerous occasions: “First impressions count.” While my mother’s soundbite seemed ingenious to
my teenage ears, in truth it was nothing new – in fact, that advice has been drummed into young people by their parents and teachers since time immemorial. How ironic, then, that many schools and colleges are now practising what they preach and adopting that very mantra to at ract young people to study with them. In these fi ercely competitive times, my mother’s phrase
has never been more apt. Inspired by headlines hailing year upon year of record-breaking A-level results, and fearful of tabloid horror stories that paint some modern schools as post-apocalyptic wastelands besieged by drug gangs, parents aren’t taking any chances when it comes to their children's education. Only the very best will do, which means that the pressure is on schools to stand out from the crowd. “Competition is becoming increasingly fi erce in all
walks of life, and the education sector is no exception,” explains Martin Bojam, Managing Partner of 360 Education, a nationwide company that specialises in brand development and marketing communication. “For a school to prosper, it must ensure that it is full or, inevitably, fi nancial pressures will begin to erode the quality of its provision and undermine its at ractiveness to parents and potential pupils.” The question is, how do schools go about achieving maximum capacity? Obviously, high-quality learning
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