Achieving marketing lift-off, Fran Kennedy

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

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

results, and the whole School community, from the marketing team and staff to the students and parents, can feel the wider impact.

Deciding to be involved was the easy part. But having never attended the festival and knowing there would be other family activities on offer made it difficult to know how to stand out from the crowd. Fire-eating would be a step too far, but the opportunity required something bigger than your bog-standard chocolate tombola. We wanted to use the festival to show rather than tell, and to give the School’s impressive Science department a moment to shine without simply talking at parents.

Heading the School’s team of 17 and 18 year-old scientists, CHS Teacher of Biology, Mr Jonathan Hedwat agrees. ‘Usually our best chance to promote school science is either at Open Morning or through outreach work with local primary schools, but this was an exciting new idea. Working with bluedot is an ideal partnership for CHS, as we both share a passion for science and a commitment to engaging the very young.’

Following the festival theme Celebrating 50 years of the moon landings, the school considered what skills aspiring young astronauts might need. Preparing during a busy summer term of exams, study leave, reports, work experience and enrichment week, the team branded their stand, designed logos, produced an astronaut training log for collecting stickers, and created fun but informative signage such as ‘Warning: Mess Zone.’ A social media campaign was launched leading up to the event, with Twitter and Facebook posts counting down to lift-off. We were very excited to be involved and wanted to share our enthusiasm with the School’s wider community, so the social media campaign was a great way to tell everyone what we were planning whilst inviting as many visitors to the stand as possible. This increased our online audience engagement, particularly during the quieter holiday period, and generated excitement for what was to come.

Meanwhile CHS’s team of scientists prepared activities which included a ‘stress ball’ station with handmade nonNewtonian fluid, ‘forces fun’ with an investigation into graphite levitation, exploration of low melting-point alloys, fantastic

ferrofluid within a magnetic field and shape-shifting springs.

Science fans aged from three to twelve would be able to visit the four experiment stations at the School’s tent, collect a sticker for each activity and, upon receiving all four, complete their astronaut training by winning a pair of safety glasses.

More than 500 stress balls, 30 bags of cornflour, and many questions answered later, the stand was deemed a resounding success. Curious young minds were entertained, and parents were thankful for cover when the rain came. But most of all, the families were enthusiastic about the concept and left informed and engaged with a deeper understanding of the School. Without being given the hard sell, spending time at the stand allowed families to ask their own questions; to be taught by older boys and girls rather than teachers; to have their faces painted; or sample bluedot cookies created by the School’s award-winning Sodexo at CHS catering team.

It was a great demonstration of how separate school teams can work well together. This activity couldn’t have happened without the amazing STEM knowledge of students and staff, enhanced by the branding and social media support of the External Relations team.

The organisers of bluedot approved! ‘This kind of fun, hands-on activity plays a vital part in helping to sow the seeds that can develop into a lifelong interest in science and technology. Cheadle Hulme School is a first-class partner to have on board with the festival. Adults as well as children learned lots – and had a lot of fun.’ Fran Kennedy is Director of Development and External Relations at Cheadle Hulme School