DEDICATION
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This book-like thing owes a heartfelt thanks to the students, faculty, and staff of Shanghai American School who do work worth marketing – every day.
We are also grateful to the school, without whose support this
mini-book-or-whatever-it-is would not exist.
The kind-of-like-a-book-but-truth-be-told-maybe-more-like-a-website is dedicated to our fellow Marketing + Communications members through the years: For your belief in our goals, your embrace of lifelong learning, and your ability to do remarkable work,
you are loved alphabetically.
Abby, Anita, Caresse, Carrera, Cindy, Cristin, Cyndi, Daya, Diana, Fan, Jasmine,
Josie, Joyce, Kay, Keiron, Kelsey, Kendall, Lily, Mette, Peggy, Sam, Sandi, Sandy, Shavonne, Suzanne, Tanya, Trudie, Wansien
(Yes, it looks like a lot of people. But keep in mind, most of them were Eagle Shop managers at our Pudong campus… a job only slightly more stable than being the drummer for Spinal Tap.)
INTRODUCTION
Our former marketing department leader swears it happened multiple times:
He’d be at a party or bar and would strike up a conversation with a stranger. Inevitably, small talk would turn to work and someone would ask him.
“I’m the Director of Marketing at Shanghai American School,” he’d proudly declare.
“Ahh,” they’d nod, familiar with the name of China’s oldest and most storied international school. Then would come the awkward pause, as they’d stir their drinks before asking the seemingly obvious question.
“So, um, what do you DO?”
“So what do you do here
in Shanghai?”
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
It’s easy to assume Shanghai American School sells itself. At least, until you visit.
If you had walked onto SAS’s Puxi campus a few years ago, one of the first signs you would’ve seen as a visitor was a campus map. Or rather, a sign that had once been a campus map. What remained resembled the Dead Sea Scroll – so weathered by the sun, it had turned almost entirely black and unreadable, with cracks running throughout. If it had not been so severely weathered, you’d have seen that the map was so old, it indicated the softball and baseball fields would be built “in the future.”
Those fields had been built a decade earlier.
First impressions on the school’s other campus, in Pudong, were no better – prospective families were greeted with a sign directing them to turn left for the admissions office. In fact, the admissions office had changed locations years earlier, and was now located to the right.
These were the first impressions given to visitors by what was allegedly Shanghai’s top international school.
Designer David Carson says, “You cannot not communicate.” That is, every action you take sends a message, intended or not. At SAS, the message that was being sent was completely at odds with what the school is – a welcoming place and a school that, signage aside, truly is Shanghai’s top international school.
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Campus signage wasn’t the only incongruity found at SAS. The website was filled with typos and outdated information, and didn’t even mention some of the school’s most innovative programs. And the school was running ads that could be mistaken for a parody of school ads – photos of children on playgrounds smiling for the camera, or perhaps a high school student peering intently through a microscope. The words “excellence” or “future” would appear in most headlines. On some ads, a starburst graphic promoting the next tour would add the kind of sophisticated touch found in the marketing of dollar stores. In short, one of the best schools in Asia had managed to make itself look pedestrian.
Excellence
FUTURE
FUTURE
Excellence
FUTURE
Excellence
Tours today!
2nd
SHANGHAI
most competitive international
school market in
the world
A steep decline in the school’s applications and enrollment over the previous three years suggested otherwise.
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The school didn’t have a product problem. But it had a very significant marketing problem. That problem had, four years earlier, led our former director and his wife to enroll their daughter at a British school, only to soon discover they’d signed her up for an immersive performance of Mean Girls.
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The opportunity was clear: If we at SAS could just accurately reflect the educational experience that awaited students here, we could excel in our competitive landscape.
Not to mention help parents avoid one of their worst nightmares: Choosing the wrong school for their child.
We could speak firsthand about the impact of that first impression. Four years earlier, when our former director first moved to Shanghai from the United States, he and his wife scoured the city looking for the right international school for their daughter. Comparing notes after two long days, they each had SAS listed dead last. Their impression was one that was shared by many other prospective families at the time: SAS just didn’t care what school they chose.
From a marketing standpoint, the school had managed to institutionalize indifference.
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By 2016, SAS’ approach was taking a toll. With dozens of new international schools, Shanghai had become the second-most competitive international school market in the world. Yet SAS was still acting as if all it had to do was open its doors and turn the lights on, and a line of prospective families would line up to get in.
Number of Applications
OUR
PURPOSE
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THIS IS WHAT WE DO:
We help parents make the most important
decision in the world about the most
important person in the world.
As for the person who asked what we do?
THE BASICS
Before marketing can create an impact for an organization, a brand needs to develop a strategic foundation of beliefs and structures that can guide and inform the work.
These were ours:
1.
OUR MISSION:
Be Remarkable
In most industries, a company’s marketing investment represents between 5-15% of overall budget. In schools, that number is more likely to hover around 1-2%.
With this in mind, we used our budget to focus on creating content that is self-propelling; that is, to make communications or experiences that are literally worth talking about. The fact is, creativity can serve as a powerful investment multiplier, enabling a school to transform its marketing approach from paying for an audience’s attention to earning it. Inspired by a rallying cry of “Be Remarkable,” we endeavoured to create content that gets noticed, shared, and discussed, thus reaching more people, more often, than our budget would allow.
2.
OUR PHILOSOPHY:
Don’t Outspend the Competition, Outsmart Them
It takes more money to create a brand reputation than it does to maintain one. Fortunately, Shanghai American School had a strong reputation already. This allowed us to spend less on advertising, buy smaller booths at school fairs, and bypass costly partnerships. That is, as long as the work we created was remarkable.
3.
OUR CORE BELIEF:
The Experience Is the Brand
Marketing is a landscape changer – yes, even in the world of schools. That said, we know that no brochure, video, website, or ad will override the experience someone has. So at SAS, we tried not to do “marketing.” Rather, we merely focused on amplifying the experiences that happen here. This approach resulted in communications that painted a more authentic picture of the school for prospective families. Because of that, the families we attracted to our school were – for the most part – right for our school because they knew exactly what they were investing in.
4.
OUR AUDIENCE:
The Five Personas
Every school serves a diverse audience of families. At SAS, that breadth is particularly pronounced and includes mindsets that span from “I just want my child to be happy” to “Harvard or bust.” To help understand our audience segments and the expectations they carry, we identified audience personas. Five is more than ideal, but each represented an audience segment that totaled more than 10% of our family community.
There was Susan, the straight-from-the-US expat mom; Victoria, the western-born or educated Chinese mom; Cherry, the more locally-minded Chinese mom; Min-Ji, the Korean mom; and Annika, the professional expat mom, for whom Shanghai is but the latest stop on her family’s global journey.
Yes, we know – fathers play a role too. But good marketing requires choices to be made, and our choice was to focus on the most likely chief influencer in the family. Sorry, dads.
These personas represented our external audience. However, we believed passionately that our most important audience was the community of families we already have.
Consider this: In every product category, word-of-mouth advertising plays a key role. In schools, a full 60% of school enrollment decisions are influenced by word of mouth. So we used the blueprint of cult brands such as Sriracha, Lululemon, and the early years of Starbucks: Instead of counting on traditional advertising, we focused on creating communications that turned families into fans and fans into advocates.
5.
CONTENT PILLARS:
Focusing Our Content
Our content fell into five buckets: Academics, Activities, Culture, Outcomes, and Faculty. Each served a strategic goal, supported by differentiating qualities of SAS, and each were weighted based on the channel in which they appeared.