Conceptualised by the acclaimed Meenakshi Group of Colleges, Kodambakkam, The NEST School was envisioned to revolutionise education. In a city where ‘international education’ was viewed as being exclusive or centred solely around amenities, the school aspired to create a learning space that was grounded in the real world and rooted in the local context.
While it needed a refreshing new voice, NEST was planning to incorporate a mix of IB and Cambridge curricula while also being launched when school admissions were in full swing across Chennai. One MG was tasked with creating a go-to-market ready brand.
Kickstarting with an audit, we began by better understanding what set NEST apart from its contemporaries. We led multiple exercises to align the vision of the school’s leadership across:
As an advocate for integrated international curriculum, The NEST School believes offering a blend of Cambridge and IB curriculum would help deliver a relevant education that meets today’s learners' needs.
To integrate these perspectives into the brand’s positioning, we, in addition to the internal perspectives, spearheaded secondary research to understand the market positioning of other IB schools in the city - and the world.
Culminating in the identification of a “mindspace”, we believed that one core value emerged from our deep dive - ‘We care about what you love’. This was derived from The NEST School’s commitment to adding value for all its stakeholders, from teachers and students to parents, staff and other entities connected to it.
This was summarised better by the brand’s positioning statement:
By helping you pave a path to achieve your goals and dreams through education, we care about what you love
NEST’s passion for creating a new generation of learners by leveraging a collaboration-friendly culture was seamlessly extended to its brand language and visual identity. Its logo, for instance, was a synchronous harmony of teaching with love, collaborative culture, and a celebration of diversity in perspectives.
Along with its fluid typography, the logo’s colour palette of blue, orange and pink hues was inspired by dawn - subtly equating The NEST School as the dawn of something new in education. This was a visual philosophy that was extended across every communication from the school.
As an international school aspiring to change the rules and launch a new paradigm in learning, The NEST School’s go-to market campaign reflected the same intention. We leveraged a multi-channel strategy to gain cross-city and cross-channel visibility - From print and outdoor inventory to mall branding and BTL advertising through apartment activations to the digital space.
Realising a unique mindspace required unique storytelling, we created an interactive ad that leveraged the newspaper’s real estate in an out-of-the-box way. Requiring the reader to flip the newspaper to fully understand the school’s message, we set out to grab eyeballs.
The visual was imagined as an extension of NEST’s commitment to nurturing diversity in perspectives and a new generation of self-actualized learners - the Generation NEST. Or, Gen NEST.
Creating a unique learning space required teaming up with people who shared the same vision - Guardians of Gen NEST. A campaign was conceptualized to reach out to an audience divided by a variety of professional fields but united by their passion to work with children.
Envisioned as the digital headquarters for The NEST School, its website would address two challenges: creating an intuitive journey for its stakeholders (parents and job seekers), and inspiring trust (and action) as a relatively new entrant in the international education space.
Building a user experience that reflected the ‘new educational experience’, One MG used impactful content and vibrant visual styling across the website to narrate the NEST difference. The bespoke website we constructed on WordPress would offer their audience a glimpse of NEST’s values, culture and the school’s vision to nurture a new generation of holistic learners.
Central to all of NEST’s digital language was its vision to help nurture a new archetype of learners. Across sponsored posts, targeted campaigns and its daily social media communication, we integrated this vision.
For a niche offering like The NEST School’s, we realised discovering our target audience would be a dynamic and drawn out process. Through every campaign’s lifecycle we discovered, optimised and further fine-tuned our audience targeting.
Additionally, beyond native platform targeting across Facebook, Instagram and Google, we leveraged real-time 3rd party data to target users through programmatic advertising by analysing their online behaviour across these platforms. We discovered (and continue to discover) this fast-growing community of parents across the city.
Focused on admissions for nursery students, this campaign centred around relaying the importance of parents offering ‘the right first start’ for their children - after all, their foundation would go on to dictate the rest of their lives.
Spearheading around admissions for the Lower Secondary school, the campaign message was evolved to resonate with the mindset of students between Grade 6 - 8. Mirroring their zest for life and exploration, this campaign helped parents and their children understand the limitless opportunities they’d discover at NEST.
