On Saturday, Jan. 7, the KO marketing team launched the newly designed website, promoting the rebranding concept: “What a Difference a Day Makes.” The change was inspired by a series of focus groups and KO-affiliated constituents who mainly advocated for marketing the KO’s strengths as a day school.
The new website highlights the cohesiveness of the school with many upgrades. One of the first changes the marketing team made was to centralize the new website around videos. The hope is to provide prospective families with informative testimonials from members of the community’s experiences at KO efficiently, in short, engaging clips.
“It’s those perspectives from students, from teachers, from parents that I think captures the essence of the school better,” Director of Communications Jacqueline Pisani said. “For an external audience, it is the first view of the school, and it speaks to the school, about what distinguishes it from other schools in the area.”
Another change made to the KO site was getting rid of the “hamburger menu,” three stacked horizontal lines in the corner of the page, which featured dropdowns in categories like Admissions, Academics, Arts, and Athletics. The new website features a bar at the top of the screen that displays more focused links when hovering over each topic.
“The last time we did the menu, we were trying to do something new and more cutting-edge, which was this hamburger menu,” Ms. Pisani said, “but people just like a basic menu where it’s easier to find information.”
With the rebranding came more of a focus on the benefits of the KO experience. “Right on the home page, you’ll see the attributes that we think speak to our school,” Ms. Pisani said. These include “The Advising Advantage,” “Be a Leader You Admire,” and “Express Yourself.”
The rebranding brought the focus back to KO being a day school, just as the original families at Kingswood and Oxford preferred for their children. “Going back to that heritage of the school, that it is a day school, sets us apart,” Ms. Pisani said. “It is a uniquely different experience for a school to be a day school. It’s a team, and we have a 360-degree perspective on the students.”
All in all, it was time for an upgrade, and modeling the new website with the rebranding statement “What a Difference a Day Makes” brings the marketing theme full circle. “We work together, making the school experience the best experience for the student,” Ms. Pisani said. “The fact that it’s a day school, and embracing the fact that it is a day school, is clearly a differentiator.”
