Visual Marketing: 99 Proven Ways for Small Businesses to Market with Images and Design

69. Changing Perceptions One School at a Time: Using a Marketing Pamphlet to Update an Organization's Image

What do you do when the perception of your day school is pretentious and outdated? You refresh your image with some powerful marketing. That's just what Portland-based Catlin Gabel School did. The private school for preschoolers up to 12th graders realized that their community had unjustly created the opinion that it was stodgy, stuffy, and so-so at educating its students. In order to refute the rumors, Catlin Gabel hired a makelike design studio to create a fun and fresh pamphlet that expressed what the school is really about.

A makelike writer attended class with the students, and an illustrator mapped out the landscape by hand. Then, as makelike designer Mary Kysar explains, they created a three-color publication that may be read as a traditional eight-page brochure or unfolded and viewed as a large poster.

Why It Works

The pamphlet plays on the rumors about the school (“Catlin Gabel is not…”) and highlights its progressive perspective. It provides a surprising amount of information on the school's teaching philosophy, as well as a childlike illustration that provides personalized insight into what the school is really like.

This pamphlet turns the traditional private school ...