It All Starts with Brand Identity

“It all starts at Park” was the perfect foundation for The Park School’s newly launched enrollment campaign. The campaign leveraged the independent school’s recently completed website redesign, which included extensive research and brand positioning. 

Our goals for the campaign included:
— Articulating key messages—both verbal and visual—to effectively communicate Park’s strengths, values, and future vision;
— Recommending strategies to best communicate these messages across various platforms and contexts to support enrollment objectives; and
— Developing a cohesive brand messaging framework to ensure seamless communication.

To kick off the project, we spent two immersive days at Park’s campus in Brookline, MA with our strategic partner, Michelle Lansing.  Our team connected with faculty, administration, students, and parents, sharing lunch in the dining hall, attending a school event, and exploring Park through a student-led tour. 

The visit, filled with palpable energy, confirmed that Park is a truly special place, embodying its mission as a student-first community. Our objective became clear: tell Park’s unique story by highlighting its key differentiators:
— Park’s core values—Academic Excellence; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging; and Social-Emotional Learning—are seamlessly integrated to create a unified experience.
— The “Park Arc” illustrates how student development, learning, and experience are age-appropriately
— fostered from beginning to end, reflecting the idea that “It all starts—and continues—at Park.”
— Park’s academics are exceptional.

It was crucial to present Park’s core values without prioritizing one over another. Equally important was highlighting the student journey from Pre-K through 8th grade, capturing the unique aspects of each year while demonstrating a continuous curriculum.

This was achieved through a narrative woven throughout the viewbook, illustrating the distinctive growth of each year: sparking lifelong learning, exploring the freedom of curiosity, growing strategies for creative problem solving, sharing ideas to gain perspective, practicing empathy and advocacy, learning to lead by example, understanding our role as global citizens, building inner confidence and self-awareness, meeting challenges and adapting to change, and making change for a better tomorrow. This narrative was complemented by detailed information for prospective families about what to expect each year at Park.

While the storyline was built on “It all starts at Park,” the visual direction drew from the School’s identity guidelines, including its modular logo, color palette, and typography. To personify Park’s energy, we commissioned illustrator Holly Wales, whose journalistic yet whimsical style brought visual richness to the project.

To authentically capture the Park experience, we collaborated with photographer Jared Leeds on both photography and video. Existing photography from the School’s own Flo Farrell and others complemented the new imagery. This consistent narrative and visual style were carried through all communications, ensuring a cohesive message.

While the viewbook is a critical communication, it’s typically one of the last that a prospective family receives. With this in mind, we developed a communication strategy that begins with social media. Working with Digital Strategist Michael Workman, we created a targeted digital strategy that directs key audiences to the admissions section of the website. Here, they encounter an engaging student-focused video that embodies the Park experience.

Ongoing engagement includes an email stream that connects our target with Park’s story and, eventually, the viewbook. The final communication in this comprehensive suite is a personalized postcard from an administrator, parent, or student—making prospective families feel like an integral part of the Park community.

This successful articulation of key messages, a comprehensive communication strategy, and the seamless brand implementation truly “started at Park.”