97. Building Trust and Standing Out: The Power of Branding in Schools with Madison Carr

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Tara: Welcome to Mindful School Marketing. I’m Tara Clase. 

Aubrey: And I’m Aubrey Bursch. Today we’re joined by Madison Carr. Madison is a both sides of the brain kind of thinker. She’s always had a passion for making things look better and work better, which has led her to working with schools to upgrade their brand strategy and visual identity.

Her focus is helping schools understand who they are and look their best so they can connect with the right audience. Welcome, Madison. We’re so excited you’re here. Hello, thanks for having me. 

Tara: Yeah, thanks for being here. Before we get started and diving into our deep dive chat, can you share a couple key things that led you to specializing in branding for schools?

Madison: Absolutely. So I, I’ve been a designer for, for more than a few years. And like most designers, I started out doing all things for all people, just whatever it took to get some clients. So I’ve had a wide range of experience working with companies and nonprofits doing logo design, print design, web design, you name it.

And it kind of just stumbled into my way. I found a client who was a small school looking to upgrade and. Of course, I wanted the job. So I said yes, and I worked with them and really liked it. I, I started to realize that there is this whole industry of schools. It’s becoming very competitive, very it’s a growing industry and I was homeschooled.

So I have very little context for the private school industry. But as I worked with this client, helping them understand. their brand, upgrading their logo and their look. I just realized that there was a real need as school choice grows, as the competition for schools grows, that. Branding can really set you apart.

So I worked with them, had the opportunity to work with some more schools and just built off of that and have now for the last two years really been focusing on understanding schools, the landscape they’re in, and really tailoring my services to work with them on the strategy side and the design side.

Aubrey: That’s fascinating. And I’ve definitely, I’ve enjoyed watching like you, you know, dive into schools and have appreciated the insights that you’ve shared with them regarding branding. I think maybe this is one of the most common questions that we’re thinking of when we’re thinking about branding, but what role does branding play in helping schools stand out in a competitive landscape with increasing school choice, I mean, People, parents have many schools to choose from nowadays and many learning options.

Madison: Yes, yeah, the options are numerous and they’re, and they’re growing. So for schools that, that want to connect with the right students, the right families, branding is really key because it does two things. It makes sure that Everyone within the school understands who they are. So I call that internal alignment.

And then it informs how you present your school to the rest of the world. So you can share the right things, the right facts and the right personality with your audience. I call that external influence. So everything about branding revolves in those two things, getting the team on board. And making sure you’re unifying your efforts to share the right message with the right people, the right time.

And, and that’s how schools grow in the meaningful ways with their brand. 

Tara: Excellent. Yeah. How can schools begin to evaluate and strengthen the, the roots of their brand before focusing on the visual elements like logos and. other design elements. 

Madison: That’s a great order of the question because most people will jump at oh we want a new logo, we want some new colors and they don’t give much thought to their brand strategy.

Something I really focus on with schools is doing things in the right order, in the right sequence, and strategy is the foundation for a brand. And strategy is, it’s rather complex, there’s a lot that can go into it, but at its roots it’s really making sure that your decision making team is on the same page.

You’d be surprised, I’m sure you guys know this, working with schools, there are many a school team where each of the key decision makers have very different views of who their school is, what their personality is, what their ethos is how they want to come across to the world. So, strategy is essentially one big aligning session.

It’s saying, how do we get everyone on the same page, you know, how do we hear from everyone, but then make sure we have a true north. And long before you can even start thinking about what should our colors be, what should our mascot be, you need to make sure you’re on the right page strategically. So that’s, that to me is always the first thing is, you know, is your decision making team, are they actually aligned?

And then the second part of that is, Once we’re aligned, are we present ourselves in the right way to our audience? And we didn’t know our audience. Many schools do not know their audience. So that all has to come before we can really think about what’s our logo be? What’s our school colors be? It’s really understanding the behind the scenes structure of the school.

And then once you have that in place, that informs All the things design, you know, it informs what colors should you have? What should that visual feeling be? What should you know, the copywriting be for your social media, all those kinds of things. So usually when a school comes to me, they say, we don’t like our logo, need a new logo.

I said, that’s great. But first let’s start with strategy. Let’s understand who you are and what you’re trying to be, what you want to be. And then we can make sure we get you there through your, through your brand identity. 

Aubrey: That is so, such an important step. I’m curious, like out of the amount of schools that you work with, how many come to you knowing exactly, like, like everyone’s unanimous, like this is who we are, this is like what we do, this is like how we stand out in the competition.

I’m just curious because I have some thoughts around this one. Sarah probably does too. 

Madison: Yeah I wish I could say all my clients were like that. I’d say very few are. Usually, so, Usually people I first interact with are marketing directors and mission directors These are the people on the team that are really working, you know, with the brand assets most.

And they’re the ones that are up close, seeing if there’s a disconnect between how the school thinks of themselves and how people perceive them. So usually when I talk with them, they’re the ones saying, I just don’t think we’re aligned internally. We don’t really have direction or, or identity is kind of lackluster.

So usually for, from the marketing side, there is at least alignments of we need to improve things. Then the next challenge is, well, let’s convince. Everyone else that we need improve things. And then once we, once we step into doing the strategy workshops, that’s when it all comes to the table.

And that’s when we can really say, we get everyone a choice, an option to say, here’s what I think about that school. Here’s what I think are our key values are or our personality is. And that’s when we started kind of detect. Okay, there’s, there’s some crossed wires here. Some schools have more or less it together.

They just need some help of formalizing it, making it actionable. Some schools need, you know, a lot of facilitating to get all on the same page. But I don’t think I’ve had any school come up to me so far and be like, we have it all figured out. You know, I don’t think I’ve experienced 

Aubrey: that yet. I think it’s worth that time though.

Those strategy workshops is so worth it. Like, and Tara, you can speak to this because when people come to design a website, they’re like, you know, we did the same. Yeah. Yeah. You need to be on the same page. And like, when we’re, when I’m doing market research, like, They’re also surprised. Like the parents think one side, the outside external audience thinks another, the in the faculty think one thing, the staff think another, but if we’re not all on the same page about like, What does our school do?

Like, what’s our value proposition? Like, how do we talk about it? Then it’s a waste of money to like design the logo or build a website. I mean, like, yes, you need those things, but like, it would be so much better and so much better use of a small school’s time to get. That foundational work in first. Yeah, we 

Tara: do.

Yeah. We do a survey before we start a website project, just to make sure, because a lot of these times, these conversations haven’t happened and you’re working with the communications person who has a very clear idea of what they want, but the head of school or the head of the board, they all have different thoughts.

So you want to make sure that everyone’s on the same page before you start. So I really appreciate your sharing that process, because I think it is, it’s a really critical piece. You don’t want to waste your time and spend all this money on a new brand and then have somebody come in after it’s done and say, well, did you think about it this way, right?

Madison: Yeah, it’s also really helpful when it comes to design phase, and I’m sure you experienced this too with websites design visual things. It’s so subjective, right? And when you’re designing a logo it can be really hard to remove personal preference. from it and really just look at does this work or not for who we are.

But by doing all that strategy work first, it, it makes my job easier down the line when we move into doing the logo design of saying, obviously we, we all want to like our logo, but what really matters is that it captures our school spirit and connects with our audience. So that’s the length that we can view all the design work and then otherwise if, if you do the logo and all that stuff without a strategy you have to field a lot of personal opinions that really have no bearing on the school, have no bearing on the marketing efforts so that to me has always been a really helpful thing that I do with all clients, but schools in particular because there’s a lot of A lot of voices in the room.

It’s really giving that that lens of if we want our our logo and our identity to be effective and profitable. We need to see it through the lens of who our school actually is. We wanted to be and the people that we want to reach so that that lays the right foundation for going into design work.

Aubrey: Absolutely. I mean, that’s so key. I think, you know, because you can refer back to it’s different like you’re referring back to data or like collection of information as opposed to Jenny said this and Paul said this and the board said this like in like it gets away from that and starts going back to like the what the impersonal piece of like, this is what the data showed.

This is what our results showed. This is what we agreed upon. So, great. I really appreciate you kind of pointing that out. Shifting a little bit I’m curious because I think this comes up a lot. Can you explain the difference between a school’s mission statement and a comprehensive brand strategy?

Madison: Absolutely. Yeah, this definitely comes up a lot. I feel like I’ve encountered many a school that they have a mission statement and they say, well, that’s all we need. You know, we have our strategy all sorted out. We have, here’s our mission statement. It’s on our website. And The important difference is that a mission statement is a vital, albeit small, part of a brand strategy.

Right, so we usually start with the mission statement and the vision statement. The way I define the two is a mission statement is Is that big picture goal, right? It’s that future thinking. It’s that bird’s eye view of here’s here’s where we want our school to be. Here’s what’s driving the school. It it needs include a lot of things, right?

A lot of different schools, you know, Their mission statements maybe get a little lengthy, and that’s okay but then a vision statement, I frame as that, that, that day to day mantra, right, is that heartbeat behind the school, it’s, it’s a more actionable compact thought that everyone can get on board with, because realistically, your, your entire staff is not going to memorize your mission statement they’re not going to have it, you know, be able to recite it all the time but a vision statement is kind of that actionable part of it that, it’s something our team can latch onto and really get behind And it, it is kind of that the gasoline of the engine.

Those two things are the starting point for brand strategy. It really, it gives the framework, it, it lays things out properly for us, but then the rest of the brand strategy is very in depth. So I mentioned statements of important starting points, but then a brand strategy includes a bunch of other things like key values, personality traits competition, understanding your competition.

Understanding differentiators. So what makes you different than your competitors? Brand voice brand snapshots, you know, how do you present your brand in a quick kind of punchy way? Obviously identity is a big part of that. So how do you look, how do you appear? So comprehensive brand strategy is that it’s comprehensive.

There’s a lot of parts to it. A mission statement is. Like the cornerstone, but if that’s all you have you’re, you’re missing out on a lot of insight and you’re also missing out on an actionable ways for your team to use it. If you just have a mission statement, I guarantee no teacher is going to know what to do with it.

No faculty member is going to understand how to, how to leverage that properly so that the strategy is expanding on that and giving your team actionable things to use. 

Tara: Mm, good info. Yeah, I think mission statements are good guidelines, but they are hard. They’re hard in practice to, you know, they’re not something to work from if you’re the branding person or what are some common signs that a school’s branding strategy is not aligned with its goals or with the perception of the school?

What, what would, what would be some, some like dead giveaways? 

Madison: I would say if You know, depending on what your role is on the team, if you’re experiencing a lot of friction within the team about big picture things, that is a real sign that you’re not on the same page. So if, if the head of school is really convinced we should appear preppy and polished, and then the missions director is saying, well, actually I think we’re a very warm, personable, you know, friendly school.

There’s a disconnect there. So if you’re butting heads with the decision makers, I’d say you, you might want to, you know, start investigating if you need some brand strategy. Also, it’s really important to look at the people that actually matter, who are being influenced by your brand. So school families I see, you know, that’s a very common thing where within the school, you’re, you’re kind of in a bit of an echo chamber, right?

It’s very easy to say, Well, we have our act together. We know who we are and therefore everyone else knows who we are. But you have to really look at the broader community. Are people understanding who you are, what you offer? Why are you unique in the school down the road? All those things. If you’re not hearing that from your, from your families and from your community, then potentially there’s, there’s some, some cross wires along the way.

It could be in your marketing efforts, you know, it could be further down the road, but it also be the very start of things of your brand strategy. Oh, there’s not unity and clarity in how you present yourself. Some other things are, When it comes to the identity side of things a big reason that I encourage schools to invest in having a professional, well designed identity is that that produces trust, right?

So humans are visual people, you know, we just, we’re used to judging things based on how they look. And that’s, that’s how consumers work. We can’t get around that at all. And the same thing happens for schools, right? Even from a distance, the way a school appears will influence the perception of that school.

And if it’s not a good perception, then there’s a lack of trust. And in schools, trust is the biggest currency you have to work with. So if you’re, if you’re seeing a disconnect between. The quality of providing the inside and the perception people have of you on the outside. That is a telltale sign of you should get your strategy aligned.

You should get your identity evaluated and potentially revamped. Those are the three most common things I see with schools. Is internal friction marketing efforts that just are not working. And then there’s a disconnect between the quality of the inside and the perception of the outside.

Aubrey: That’s so intriguing and so true. I, I especially, I’d love to like talk a little bit more about prospective families, you know, as so many schools have talked about, like increased enrollment goals and stuff like that, like, how does a well thought out brand strategy kind of support that? And why is that so critical?

I mean, you did touch on the piece of trust, especially developing that trust and like people can see visually, you know, and throughout like their, the, the words, the, you know, The copy everything that everything kind of aligns. What else would you say in terms of you know, that that perspective family journey is really important for schools to think about?

Madison: Yeah, it starts with understanding what kind of family you want to attract, right? So that ideal family and understanding What are the things that they’re going to look for in, in their consumer process, right? They, they are buyers like every other consumer out there. So they go through the process of identifying a need.

The need is general that their kids need education, but then when they start to address the need. They’re presented with many options, right? We’re seeing that more and more that it’s no longer just, you go to that school because it’s the only school to go to. There are many different options that parents have to address giving their kids education.

So when you start to look into that, you’ll realize there’s different things that will, you know, will drive those families to make a choice in the end. And identifying that is what helps understand how to talk to those people. So for some schools, you know, it could be their sports program, that their, their families really care about quality athletics departments.

Well, that school has a great athletic department, but they’re not showing it off in the right ways. That’s a complete misopportunity to connect with the right families. For some schools, transparency is the biggest thing. That the books are literally open so the parents know what is being taught in the school.

For others, it’s the connections, right? Our grads go on to these colleges, and that’s where we’ll connect with the families. So, it’s understanding your target audience, your target family, and then what are those key things that will drive them to, Picking your school over their other options. And even if a school understands what we’re great for these reasons, if you’re not communicating that in a right way, it’s, it’s either not going to reach the right ears or it’s not going to resonate with the right people.

So that, that is all under the umbrella of trust, but it really does affect your marketing your entire onboarding process, your admissions, your enrollment, all those kinds of things are impacted by. Are you understanding your audience correctly? Are you understanding your school correctly? Then are you presenting the right message to the right people in the right way?

And brand strategy covers that. And then it gives you your team tools on how to actually accomplish the goal.

Tara: Thank you. Through the lens of our podcast, we talk about mindfulness. And how it applies to marketing. So, I’d like to ask you how you define mindfulness and also how you might apply that to, you know, the strategic approach, which in and of itself seems like a good starting point for that conversation.

Madison: Absolutely. Yeah, that was. I had to think about it a little bit because the temptation to say mindfulness is just being mindful. That’s obviously not a fair definition. I really view mindfulness as being ordered well, right? So living your life in an orderly way. For me, that means being ordered well in relationship with my God, with people around me, with my community, with the work I do.

That is all part of being mindful and ordering my life in the proper way. When it comes to branding, obviously order is a big part of it. That’s what I’m paid to do. What I’m paid to bring to people is helping them get in the right order of things. And that is the heart of branding. And for schools, especially I think many people who work in schools, understand it’s a bit of a environment of chaos sometimes despite your best efforts.

Sometimes the school day is hectic there’s a lot that’s put on the teachers and the faculty. So branding helps give an ordered piece to that as a compass. I quite often describe branding and brand strategy as, if you think of it as like a rowing team, your school is a rowing team, right?

Everyone has their own role to play. Everyone has to put in their effort. But if you don’t have that caller, that person that’s putting out that rhythm, your team’s not going to go anywhere fast. It’s not, maybe it won’t go in the right direction. So brand strategy is that, that rhythmic beat that says, Hey, here’s how we all get on board and how we all unify our efforts together to get to the right place.

And when you have that ordered piece behind the scenes for everyone to use it, it can help combat the chaos that is a little bit baked into school days and the hecticness of working with schools and particularly for marketing teams. I know that they tend to be a little frazzled because there’s a lot put on them, but having that, that piece of ordered strategy.

is, I think, just so fundamental in helping your entire team work effectively and then also working joyfully. It makes, like, a lot easier when you all know that you have, you have order to work within and that your efforts are actually being effective and being utilized well. 

Aubrey: Thanks so much. I really appreciate that.

And I love the rowing team example as well as I, I think what you just said reduces anxiety, right? You can breathe deeper because you know your, you know, what to do. I think that is very helpful for our busy school leaders for sure. I’d like to shift a little bit to our rapid fire questions, which are you ready?

They’re so fun. I’m ready. So much fun. All right. Okay, so if you could put one book as mandatory reading in the high school curriculum, what would it be? 

Madison: Yeah, so, I, I have no context for what is currently mandated in high schools. I’ve been out of high school for a little bit, and did not go to a public high school.

I would say I think every high schooler should read the Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis. That is my favorite books I think it sparks imagination, it provokes deep thought, and it is just a delightful read in every way. So I think all high schoolers, you know, that, that should be a journey that they should go on, for sure.

Tara: Love it. Great. We’ll put that on our Goodreads list. What is one app you could not live without? 

Madison: This is unfortunately a bit of a boring answer, but it’s, it’s the truth is the Google Calendar app. I am a little bit beholden to it. If it were not for its notifications, I would miss many a meeting.

So that is something I, I must have on my phone at all times. 

Aubrey: You’re not the first guest who has said that, and I will say I, too, live by my calendar app as well. So, yay for, you know, that calendar app. So, I’m curious, what are you reading right now? 

Madison: Yeah, I, I’ll have to pick one book, because I usually have a few, you know, that I’m in various stages with.

One that I’ve been reading that I’m very excited about is called The Mind on Fire by Blaise Pascal. He was a brilliant mathematician. I am by no means a math minded person, but he has very deep thoughts about reality, about God, about people, and it’s been an edifying, challenging read, and a unique perspective for me, someone who is not mathematical, to hear from someone who was brilliant in those ways.

So it’s, it’s stretched me in a lot of ways. 

Tara: Great. Thank you. All right. Our last rapid fire question is what is one great piece of advice you’d like to leave us with? 

Madison: Yeah, I think really, you know, as a designer something that I try to infuse in my life all the time is this idea of what can I do to spark curiosity?

And I think that to me is something that I try to impart on other people in my life. I think it is a, a good lens in which to approach your day to day is. You know, what can you do to move towards sparking curiosity for people who work in schools? I think it can be kind of hard sometimes you get you get stuck in the day to day drudge of things.

You know, just sometimes it can be a little demoralizing, but you know, what are some things you can do to spark curiosity? You know, read good books, be outside. I’m a big fan of games. I love board games and sports, all those kind of things. But I think that makes, when you have curiosity, alive and thriving within you, I think it makes everything in life a bit brighter, a bit more joyful.

So that’s something that I, I always try to encourage with people and I try to apply to myself. 

Tara: Thank you so much. We’re so glad you could join us today. Where can people find you online, Madison? 

Madison: Yes, my agency is called Creative Chameleon Studio and you can find me at creativechameleonstudio. com. And then I am also pretty active on LinkedIn at Madison Carr.

Those are the two places that you’ll find everything about what I do and what I offer for schools. 

Tara: Thank you. 

Madison: Thank you. Thanks 

Tara: for joining us. All right. Bye. Bye