the Pebble Spring 2017

decide you’re a school with a tremendous
amount of tradition that you want to keep,”
said Sheehan, whose son happens to be an
MPH alum. “And don’t get mixed messages
into it. So you’re ultimately either red and
white or you’re whatever this is, blue, green
and teal. Trying to be both is really a dreadful
idea.”
Crane representatives and Neuner both
said they disagree. Pam Mason-Norsworthy,
Strategic Partnerships Manager at Crane, said
that marketing campaigns for established independent
schools need to respect the school’s’
history while also moving forward and that
marketing schools is different than marketing
products.
“We often need to contemporize a school’s
visual presentation and messaging while
still honoring the institution’s history,” Mason-Norsworthy
said. “That doesn’t mean
there’s a foot in the past and one in the present,
but rather that we respect the beloved
visual representations that have come before.”
Other schools that have worked with
Crane and implemented advertising-specific
colors appreciate this balance. St. George’s Independent
School in Tennessee, like MPH, has
two sets of colors, and communications director
Sarah Cowan said that despite there being
some initial confusion, the marketing strategy
has been successful for the school thus far.
“It’s not uncommon for institutions to
work within their school colors, but I think it’s
fairly limiting for an institution or corporation
to feel constrained by a specific color palette,”
Cowan said. “Recognizing tradition or history
is important, especially in a school; being
constrained by it in a difficult and competitive
market is not smart.”
An Administrative
Analysis
Looking back, Neuner and Stegeman
agreed that the school could have
better communicated the campaign
with the MPH community; Dunaway said the
communication was “good: not great, not bad.”
Neuner noted that the reception of the new
colors might have been even more positive had
the school presented in front of small student
groups and had discussions begun earlier.
But, Neuner said, the school also had to
balance its approach.
“It’s a little bit of a catch-22, because the
bigger deal you make it seem, the bigger deal
it is,” she said. “We thought that the more we
brought it up, and the more we made a big
thing about it, the more it would appear to ...
students that we were changing everything.”
Dunaway added that it would’ve been
impossible to take into account everyone’s individual
thoughts and that Crane was capable
of best showcasing MPH in its true form.
And for him, Crane did this through the
campaign’s language more so than the new
colors or logo, such as the main catchphrase,
the “MPH Effect,” which has also been more
specifically defined as the “tenacity effect,”
“integrity effect,” “readiness effect” and “preparedness
effect,” among several other descriptors.
“I’m amazed that there’s so much interest
in the colors, you know, we’re not talking
about the language, because that’s what describes
the school,” Dunaway said. “The colors
are absolutely secondary. When … prospective
parents read [the viewbook], they’re looking
at more than the colors. They’re looking at the
way it describes what it means to be a student
at this school, and that’s what’s compelling
about this place: it’s the kids we have here.”
That language was given special attention
by administrators, as they agreed that it is the
primary way to convey what’s special about
MPH.
“Lots of things have had an effect on you,
but the school has had an effect on you, and it’s
sometimes hard to define what that is, but if
we say the ‘MPH Effect,’ you know what we’re
talking about. … We want people, when they
hear MPH, to think, ‘MPH Effect,’ ” Dunaway
said
Ȧnd prospective families seem to be buying
the Effect. MPH has enrolled seven new
students since the campaign began, the highest
number of mid-year enrollees in at least five
years, Neuner said. Dunaway added that there
has been a 60 percent increase in inquiries into
the school from this time last year.
Now it’s a matter of time to see whether or
not the greens and blue and Farmhouse-less
logo will continue to draw in new families and
if the red and white can remain strong. While
the school has said that nothing has changed
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