Moving to a greenfield site

Case study

Gateway College was a well established and popular college in the city of Leicester. The new build programme meant that the college would relocate to a northern suburb, green field site on the edge of the city. Our challenge was to:

• To raise awareness of the new college development at Hamilton
• Enhance its reputation during the transition
• To improve brand awareness – a new identity was created
• To position Gateway as a high quality establishment at the centre of the local community

How we developed their programme:
We started by developing a series of key messages that were used consistently promoting brand values of the College and the benefits of its relocation. These were used in all communication with target audiences which included:

• The wider Leicestershire community
• Parents
• Students
• Community influencers
• Education leaders / influencers
• Leicestershire and niche media

The Media Relations campaign
Gateway had many opportunities to engage with the media about the exciting new build and some excellent student achievements that demonstrated its on-going excellence and profile. During the first year of the relocation story we achieved a significant return on investment with editorial value of £176,360 by placing articles in local, regional, educational and environmental publications and securing radio and TV coverage.

Bringing it all together
We also helped the college with the design of a new logo and consultation about the re-brand with stakeholders. Illustrations of the new building were developed and used on hoardings whilst the building was underway, in advertisements in the local press, as part of new prospectuses, displays and general information that was made available to parents, the wider community and various stakeholders.

A relocation website was also created and updated every month to show how the building was talking shape.

The College opened in August 2009 with a complement of students that met their required targets.