Westover School

“Inspiring women”: from celebration to campaign 

challenge
Westover School, an all-girls boarding and day school in Connecticut for grades 9–12, engaged studio-e to develop a strategic approach to its centennial identity and messaging that would transition naturally into an identity and messaging for the largest campaign in the school’s history.

solution
We developed a central theme to bridge both initiatives: “Inspiring Women.” For the centennial, we wrote a celebratory tagline, “100 years of inspiring women,” and combined it with a variation of the beloved school seal to create the centennial identity. The theme and identity resonated with alumnae, generating pride in their accomplishments as they took part in centennial festivities and shared inspiring stories.

As the centennial year came to a close, we carried the theme forward and named the campaign, Inspiring Women: Campaign for Westover, allowing us to build on the centennial messaging by adding themes such as inspiring global change, inspiring leadership and inspiring education. We designed a campaign identity that uses a series of four photographs to portray the Westover experience, connecting donors to the school. On the campaign website, the photograph will become a place for videos, providing a “viewfinder” into life at Westover.

With these items in place, we created a campaign case statement focused on the current “historical moment” for women, explaining why an all-girls education is more important now than ever before. To support the message of “now,” we developed five compelling stories, each featuring a current student paired with an alumna. As their stories unfold, their accomplishments touch upon a core aspect of the Westover experience that shaped their lives.

results
The Centennial Weekend was a great success, with more than 700 alumnae, faculty and friends in attendance and a donation to lead the campaign—the largest gift in the school’s history. The campaign is now underway; we will post more specific results as soon as we have them. 

Photography by Robert Falcetti.

Westover School, Middlebury, CT.