A place to learn.
Ann and Nate Levine Academy has been a celebrated home for Jewish education in Dallas since its inception in 1979. Over the decades, Levine has produced incredible leaders, professionals, and changemakers by fostering creativity, critical thinking, and social responsibility and empowering its students with integrity, self-confidence, and intellectual curiosity.
As they prepared to step into a new era of growth and expansion, Levine needed a comprehensive marketing roadmap to reach current and prospective students and to better communicate their story, mission, and vision as an institution.
Tegan jumped in to lead a 14-month brand and marketing evaluation to help Levine understand the motivation and mentality of their target audiences, fine-tune their brand identity and presence, and develop messaging that would resonate with current and future generations of students and their families.
A Foundation for Success
The scope of work for the project was segmented into three key phases, each with its own set of milestones and deliverables. The goal of the Foundation phase was to immerse ourselves in the world of current and prospective parents of Levine students. Our team conducted surveys, interviews, brand analysis, market research, messaging development, and strategic planning in order to pinpoint the needs and desires of families and communicate Levine’s unique role in their child’s educational journey.
A Framework to Follow
The second phase, Framework, focused on providing Levine’s team with tangibles from our research findings. Tegan provided comprehensive audience profiles along with detailed messaging and language guidelines to serve as jumping off points for content development across all channels of communication.
A branding refresh was also in order. Our design team provided Levine with several strategic approaches, ultimately landing on Warm and Welcoming Academy, which highlights Levine’s unique balance of sophistication and approachability — a place where students are engaged, curious, and joyful. To do this, we updated the color palette, fonts, and logo and provided additional styling recommendations.
Applications in the Wild
At the end of the day, we wanted the baton hand-off to Levine’s team to be seamless and empowering on every level. With a fresh look and feel and a roadmap for execution, we got to work implementing design and messaging recommendations to the school’s existing collateral. Our recommendations came into play for everything from website updates and capital campaign initiatives to print ad and email copy for D Magazine’s school issue. In true Leslie Knope style, we wrapped up over a year of work by presenting Levine’s team with a binder that included all of our completed research and work.
