By Avery Maier ’13, News Editor
It’s the year for the Cincinnati schools to rev up their marketing campaigns. The faces of students attending Ursuline, Moeller, Seven Hills, and other Cincinnati schools occupy the billboards along Kenwood Road. Many television advertising slots have also been filled in an effort to encourage the Cincinnati public to consider these schools. Rather than appealing to all of the Cincinnati public, Country Day is “being much more targeted than broad” with their marketing approach, said Mr. Aaron Kellenberger, Director of Admissions.
CCDS has hired a marketing firm—Ologie, based in Columbus—to help promote the school in new and better ways. The firm will present their new CCDS marketing campaign at the Enrollment and Engagement meeting on Thursday February 10.
Mr. Kellenberger said the other schools are using a “broad based approach…trying to get everyone to look at them.” With Country Day’s high academic standards, Mr. Kellenberger believes that CCDS cannot target everyone in the general public.
Dr. Rob Macrae, Head of School, who acts as a “chief spokesman for the school,” said that in a marketing campaign, “There have to be things that reach different people, but there [also] has to be the common thread: the value and the steadfast commitment to superior academics.”
CCCDS’s targeted approach is not as flashy as some of the other schools, with billboard and television ads everywhere, but it is proving to be very effective. While the amount of marketing CCDS is doing remains unchanged, the amount of new families enrolling in Country Day has increased.
“Last year at about this time we had about 116 new students and this year now we have 151 new students,” Mr. Kellenberger said. He also stated that CCDS inquiries have increased
by 60 percent since last year. The number of students already enrolled has increased by 30 percent since last year.
Word of mouth, direct mail pieces, and open houses are all part of Country Day’s marketing technique. By using these marketing strategies, CCDS is able to pinpoint families that are more likely to enroll.
CCDS is using a “grass roots effort of training our current families to help us recruit,” Mr. Kellenberger said. Families that enjoy attending CCDS and communicating this, have a greater chance of encouraging other families to join the CCDS community.
Trustees, alumni, and current parents make up the group of about 250 people CCDS asked to aid in recruiting new families. This approach is much more targeted because these families “may know other families that might be interested in sending their child to Country Day rather than hoping that someone who passes a billboard might get interested,” Mr. Kellenberger said.
In anticipation of the Columbus marketing firm’s recommendations, CCDS worked on its own marketing research with “current parents, board of trustee members, faculty, really trying to get all this information on our families and why they looked here,” Mr. Kellenberger said.
From this collected information, the marketing firm will be able to create an image that best fits a school that has 18-month-olds as well as twelfth graders. “We [can] come up with a short list of bullet points [with the facts] we want people to know about Country Day,” Mr. Kellenberger said.
After being thrust into the everyday life of CCDS, the marketing firm left amazed. “They said that there were some really unique things that the faculty had talked about in those interviews that they hadn’t heard at any other school before,” Mr. Kellenberger said. The marketing firm will take these unique characteristics and use them in a way that can be marketed to prospective families.
CCDS is “the best school in Cincinnati,” Dr. Macrae said. “It’s academically rigorous, intellectually challenging; very emotional, very personal; it’s inspirational. It’s for people who want their children to live extraordinary lives.”
Photo courtesy of Cincinnati Country Day
