• Shipley School
  
• Ithaca College

• Rosenbach Museum and Library
  
• Berry College

Working with the admissions and marketing teams at The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, we conducted an audit of all the school’s admissions and marketing communications.

While assessing competing admissions marketing materials in print and online, we also conducted focus groups with parents, faculty, students and alumni. We then created a comprehensive marketing communications plan to position Shipley’s distinctive offerings among its competitors, making recommendations for revamping the school’s Website, enhancing the admissions experience and tailoring alumni communications to the needs of today’s graduates.

Shipley is in the first year of incorporating our recommendations into both its internal and external communications.

Ithaca College called on Steege/Thomson for an integrated marketing communications plan, designed to create a strong image within the College’s key markets that reflects the College’s rising prestige. 

Focus group research helped us to articulate the College’s position in the marketplace and craft crisp messages. We worked collaboratively with faculty and administrators to identify marketing strategies and develop a plan, complete with recommendations on communications with key audiences, extensive redesign of the Web site, and an alternative staffing structure.  We also included recommended actions for departments that had a major impact on the student experience, such as residential life and alumni affairs. 

We completed a marketing plan for Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum and Library, which houses the original drawings of Maurice Sendak and manuscripts of James Joyce. 

The museum staff sought help in increasing their visibility and broadening their audience, despite a very limited budget. Our plan provides key messages, strategies for targeting resources to priority audiences and suggestions for steps ranging from use of the lobby space to outreach to the print media. By making changes we suggested, the Rosenbach quickly doubled attendance.

With a distinctive mission but historically low profile, Berry College sought to define its positioning and update its communications strategies. 

Steege/Thomson conducted the College’s first comprehensive alumni survey as well as focus groups with board members, alumni, donors, faculty and students.  We developed new messages for the College, worked with leaders to change the mandate and staffing of the communications office, and made extensive recommendations on specific communications tools. 

Following our recommendations to focus on developing alumni pride, Berry produced a series of award-winning publications and noted a direct relationship between the stories they told and the significant increases in alumni contributions. Berry also implemented our recommendations throughout their campaign communications and credits our work in helping them complete their "most successful campaign ever."