Good Thinking - Catalogs

Choosing a Marketing Firm: Choose Partners, Not Vendors

By Tim Good

Hiring a marketing firm is like hiring a contractor to renovate a home. Some contractors operate as vendors, approaching the job as a set of discrete tasks. Vendors are available to discuss unexpected items—but the meter is always running, with each new issue treated a la carte. Other builders operate like partners, offering the hands to get the job done and thinking collaboratively and proactively with clients about how the completed home will serve their goals. When challenges or new ideas arise, true partners consider the whole and apply their expertise to suggest solutions that fit within the client’s budget.

Clients get the most value for their money when they hire partners, rather than vendors. Clients hire firms like ours because they seek the...

Reach Your Audience: Start With the Story

By Gabrielle Good Hoffman

The element of “story” is more powerful than most people realize. Strong stories stimulate emotion, bond communities together and set individuals apart. They stick in our memories. They fundamentally affect our beliefs and the choices we make based on those beliefs. Personal experience with the power of narrative is backed by scientific evidence: the process of storytelling feeds our innate psychological desire to create meaning by connecting experiences and information.

Storytelling as an Art and Science
While storytelling has long been a part of marketing and communications, it has a new urgency in recent years. As expanding media have increased the quantity of voices in the marketplace, companies and organizations...

When and Why a Brand Review Benefits Independent Schools

Tradition and continuity are so pivotal to the success of independent schools that it is not always clear when an organization needs to review its reputation—or in marketing lingo, its brand. Over the years, I’ve met with numerous schools that have been taken by surprise with declining admissions and fundraising, despite still offering the same high quality education as in the past. Clarifying and maintaining a school’s identity in the marketplace has resulted in dramatic turnarounds for many institutions.

This situation occurs because independent schools balance a delicate tension. Many core principles involved with a first-rate education are timeless. Yet the economic, social and technological landscape in which schools operate is constantly changing. A relatable brand identity...

Choosing a Marketing Firm: Choose Partners, Not Vendors

Reach Your Audience: Start With the Story

When and Why a Brand Review Benefits Independent Schools

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