Showcasing School and Student Values

Choosing a preparatory school isn’t always an easy task. It’s difficult to get to know the culture, faculty, and mission of a place from just a few lines of copy. To share their values, and make that emotional connection with parents and prospective students, Concord Academy opted for a video on their About page.

Concord Academy is a college preparatory boarding and day school. According to the school’s Director of Marketing and Communications, Ben Carmichael, they wanted to give prospective students and families an authentic glimpse into life on campus and profile some of their extraordinary students.

In their own words:

“We wanted to give people who don’t know us a sense, not only of the quality of our student body, but of our core values. To do so, we wanted to feature student voices. They speak authentically to the experience here better than any administrator could. We are proud of the way that this video does that. The video was unscripted and features only students speaking about the Concord Academy experience and community. There is so much video out there now that people can tell when something is staged and when it is authentic. When people watch it, we want them to believe the people on the screen, not wonder as to how they were prepared or scripted. With this video, I think we accomplished that: these students spoke their minds, and shared their true experience. One alum who watched it cried, saying how proud it made her of this place. Additionally, I’ve heard from some people who didn’t go here, and who have no affiliation with the school, that the video gave them goosebumps. If there are better forms of feedback, I don’t know them.”

Ben Carmichael
Director of Marketing & Communications, Concord Academy