Looking out
Achieving marketing lift-off Fran Kennedy finds outreach also raises market awareness
School’s out for summer. Many students will have packed their tents, wellies and sun cream, ready for braving whatever the British weather decides to throw at them across the UK’s burgeoning festival scene. It’s the last place they’d expect to run into someone they know, let alone one of their teachers! This year the UK is host to more than 750 festivals. No longer just for teens and young adults, family-friendly festivals are on the rise. Kids, mums, dads, aunts, uncles and grandparents are all getting in on the outdoor action, giving parents a chance to relax whilst the children are entertained. Alongside the music, education is now part of the fun too. Bringing new meaning to the phrase ‘summer school’, Cheadle Hulme School showed no limits to upping the marketing ante when its own squad of STEM scientists took to the fields at the UK’s biggest family festival, bluedot. This annual music, science and culture festival takes place at Cheshire’s UNESCO World Heritage Site, Jodrell Bank Observatory and Discovery Centre, and attracts 5,000 visitors daily. Alongside this year’s headliners New Order, Kraftwerk, 808 State, Hot Chip and 46
Autumn 2019
Jarvis Cocker, for the first time Cheadle Hulme School took up their position beneath the Lovell Telescope in the Star Fields to host the CHS STEM School, an interactive stand of science experiments for kids and their grown-ups, run by a supervised team of the School’s Lower Sixth scientists, tasked with sharing their love of all things scientific and technological. We’re always looking to do things differently when it comes to raising awareness of CHS. What better way to do that than by tapping into the opportunities on our doorstep? It’s the right catchment area, full of families eager to play and learn, so it made sense to become an event sponsor and official partner. Most of our families discover CHS through word of mouth, so taking part in such events enables us to engage in a relaxed conversation with parents, particularly when they have plenty of time on their hands, their children are occupied, and everyone is enjoying themselves. Previously much of our marketing has centred on print advertising, so having done that for a few years we wanted to diversify. Sponsoring an event such as this provides tangible
