UNDERSTANDING YOUR STAKEHOLDERS THE ROLE OF RESEARCH IN BRAND DEFINITION

Carolyn Reed explains why consumer research should underpin every school’s brand strategy and provides a step-by-step guide to managing a successful research exercise.

Netflix and The White Company: these are not necessarily brands that you would normally put together in one sentence but, for the purposes of this piece, they both have something in common – clear brand definition.

From a branding perspective, it is immensely helpful that they both created and sell an instantly definable product and their names have become synonymous with that product. This sheer element of clarity is their raison d’etre. We’d all be surprised if The White Company started selling purple pillowcases or Netflix opened bricks and mortar cinemas. These new-born brands were the brain children of their originators, springing from a fertile imagination but also benefiting, undoubtedly, from a good deal of consumer research before they were launched.

Diluted or diffused

Most schools are not new-born brands. They emerged decades, if not centuries, ago with specific purposes that were relevant to their time and place. Consequently, heads and marketeers are almost always inheriting schools whose original identity and ‘brand difference’ has been diluted or diffused over time in an increasingly crowded and everchanging market. As a result, regularly revisiting brand definition is vital to ensure the clarity and relevance of a school’s marketing activities.

If this sounds familiar to you, then it could be time for a review and some research. Don’t be alarmed! Believe it or not, this can be a hugely rewarding and enjoyable process. Compared to the behemoth brands like Marks and Spencer or John Lewis, undertaking brand definition research for a school is totally manageable.

Of course, the redefinition of a school brand could very easily be left solely to the imagination of the head, but this autocratic approach may not endear them to the governing body!

Triggers For Revisiting Brand Definition

• A creep of lower admission numbers without any obvious cause

• Noticeably increased competition ‘invading’ your territory

• A new head or bursar who needs to quickly understand the market challenges for their new school

Evidence-based rationale

From a sheer business development point of view (and let’s remember that independent schools are indeed multimillion-pound businesses), there are very few boards of governors willing to take a punt on a brand strategy and definition without robust research and an evidencebased rationale. Most governors will have come to the governing body through a professional or business route and will regard this process as best practice. Marketing departments, the engine house for the delivery of a brand strategy, need to feel assured that their planning can flow from an agreed objective achieved by consensus from the top down.