Campaign uses media blitz to promote St. Mary’s

LYNN – You don’t often hear “edgy” and “Catholic school” in the same sentence but St. Mary’s Headmistress Grace Cotter Regan is blazing a branding trail to change that.”We’re trying to be creative,” said Regan. “I like to be big and bold and this is big and bold.”See also: St. Mary’s curriculum going digitalThe school has embarked on what its calling a “strategic comprehensive effort to engage students” who have been accepted to the school to actually come. The effort includes using social media, cable television, lawn signs and radio to try and catch and hold the attention of students and their parents.”We did radio ads with KISS 108 and four web page takeovers,” Regan said.Regan said when she heard another school advertise on radio a light bulb went off. As part of the deal St. Mary’s was able to redesign the popular Boston radio station’s website for four days, add its banner and athletic and academic brands, which include a Spartan helmet and a cross respectively and held a contest where participants could win an iPad.She called the initiative edgy and said the second day it ran the radio station reportedly had calls from six other Catholic schools asking, “How did they do that?”For Regan, whose background is in enrollment, future sustainability and doing things differently, the campaign is all about attaining students. St. Mary’s has accepted 250 students, the majority of whom would be incoming freshmen in the fall. Applications are up 10 percent for the Tremont Street private Catholic school and competition among Catholic schools is fierce, Regan admitted.”People are consumers now and parents are looking at comparative education, what they are getting here versus another school,” she said. “You have to be edgy and out there and show parents a product they want to buy.”Regan said St. Mary’s has not always done a strong job promoting itself despite having a great product.This year, in addition to receiving a traditional acceptance letter, prospective students were sent a brief video, via email, featuring Regan and five St. Mary’s students. The theme of the video is “I chose St. Mary’s,” with the current students expressing what attracted them to the school and Regan urging accepted students to make the same choice.The “I chose St. Mary’s” theme also carried over to the radio ads as well as the 30-second commercials airing locally on various national cable networks.The school also has web presence with Twitter and Facebook.Regan said putting together the media blitz has also allowed them to see areas where they don’t present themselves well.”I have heard that our arts and humanities programs are not strong enough when, in fact, they are but we just don’t promote that well,” she said.St. Mary’s is also one of the least expensive Catholic schools in the area and Regan said they need to work at showing parents what kind of return they will get on their investment.”We need to set the tone and direct the course,” she said.Whether this new media blitz works remains to be seen. Regan said they are collecting statistics from all the markets they’re investing in and will analyze the results. She said she already has some anecdotal as well as some real data, such as the number of applications from Marblehead is up. She attributes that to the fact that St. Mary’s is getting out there.”I think we are blazing a trail,” she said.”It’s really exciting and really new. It’s a lot more strategic.”Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].