Summer Boarding Courses
Aspirational brand platform
Brand identity
Marketing materials
Website redesign
Website build
The need for an aspirational brand platform
Approaching summer 2022, Summer Boarding Courses (SBC) were at an exciting and crucial point of growth. After 2 years of not running summer schools in person due to the pandemic and, supported by Dukes Education, they had a great opportunity to welcome back students from 71 different nations to experience SBC courses in action again.
Catering to a wide age range of students (4-17) across the globe, there are many reasons for wanting to study with SBC such as boarding experience, university preparation, academic success, confidence building, making new friends and experiencing a new culture.
Top of parents needs are bettering their child’s English language skills, life affirming immersion with peers and meaningful experiences for their children that light a spark for life. They value meaning over material and are looking for an experience that shares their values.
The Summer Boarding Courses brand identity did not represent them as a whole company very well. As their name suggests, their messaging lead with the ‘what’ and ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’.
SBC wanted to develop a more aspirational brand platform and visual identity that resonated better with students and parents. One that could grow with the business, balancing being educational experts and leaders in the industry, with the personable, charismatic and inspirational humans that make their summer schools such a memorable experience.
Defining the right solution
We dug beneath the surface of SBC, thinking critically about what their audience wants and needs, to clearly define why parents’ should care that SBC exists, who they are and what this means for the parents and their children.
A discovery workshop with SBC uncovered many insights, clearly identifying that all audiences (overseas reselling agents, schools and parents) were unified by the influence of satisfying the parent. Resellers are exposed to many schools and are driven commercially, but they want their clients (parents) to be happy and come back year after year. As do SBC.
Similarly, to overseas schools, the quality of the experience is of paramount importance as this reflects on the school, therefore in successfully meeting the needs of parents we satisfy the needs of resellers and overseas schools.
Sparking excellence
Our interrogation of what the SBC experience means to both students and parents led us to a clear brand purpose:
‘Lighting a spark in young people to set them up for success in whatever they go on to do’
A sparking halo representing SBC’s purpose encircles the Dukes Education crown as a mark of quality and assurance.
Bringing the brand to life
Our work with SBC went beyond developing the brand and visual identity. We demonstrated how the brand comes to life in various forms of integrated marketing communications, including social media content.
The primary focus of our efforts to stretch the legs of the new visual identity was their website, arming their digital team with a suite of re-designed and newly built components.
