MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
HOW TIMES
HAVE CHANGED Hilary Moriarty gives a personal perspective on the way in which schools marketing has evolved over the years
S
ometimes you live through revolutionary times without even noticing. Then one day you wake up, and the world is different. I’m thinking in particular of the world of schools’ marketing.
Selling on merit
I remember a time when it was rare for an independent school to employ anyone with a particular brief labelled ‘Marketing’. There was a fairly pervasive notion that a good school would sell itself on its own merits. Parents would like what they saw
and heard about a school and its pupils, almost literally on a personal basis – smartly dressed students behaving well on the streets, occasional articles in the local press when a student was selected for a county or national team, Oxbridge entrants smiling in the local paper. Happy pictures of certificates being waved on Results Days. And for the many independent day schools – the school was there, around the corner, within reach. Why go elsewhere? ‘Go elsewhere’ is of course exactly what independent boarding schools hoped parents would do. Sometimes a very long
way elsewhere. I write as someone who lived in South Wales and sent a son to boarding school in Lancashire. I don’t recall any advertisement for the school, but they had stayed in touch with my husband because he was an old boy. Indeed, former pupils have long been fair game, if not for their sons and daughters to join the school, then for contributions to the school’s continuing prosperity in a very demanding market. Apart from academic results, schools need to build and renovate to present a fine twenty-first century face to today’s
“A good school would sell itself on its own merits” Summer 2019 I schooladmissionsplus.com
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