Westover School

Recruiting “strong voices”

challenge
Westover School, an all-girls boarding and day school in Connecticut for grades 9–12, enlisted Studio-e to develop a strategic branding initiative that would strengthen the school’s brand, build awareness among potential families, and increase the number of students from the New York region.

solution
We began by getting to know Westover: reviewing the school’s current materials, interviewing its key stakeholders and current students, and spending a few days on campus—we even ran on the campus cross-country trail. We then distilled our findings into a comprehensive document, “Communicating the Westover Brand.”

This document served as the foundation for Westover’s new marketing materials, a set of distinctive admissions pieces: (1) Westover Essentials, which presents an overview of the school, and (2) Westover Profiles, which showcases six current students who reflect the diversity of interests, passions and offerings at Westover. We created content for both pieces—word and image—to dispel myths and reinforce strengths. 

results
Westover saw a 17-percent increase in applications during the 2009–2010 school year. According to the school’s director of communications, “These pieces are really us. Studio-e worked with us to build our communications from the ground up … they really captured who we are.”

Photography by Robert Falcetti and from the Westover School archives.

Westover School, Middlebury, CT.