Scrolling through my Instagram, I noticed a post from my school, ISL. A very polished, staged but ‘candid’ shot showing a ‘diverse’ group of students from the school. I could feel my eyes roll before it even started. Yet again another example of the stereotypical international school  marketing techniques. Marketing policies at the school have recently come under fire and there is a negative perception of them from some members of the student body and wider community alike. Complaints and concerns have been raised about: incorrectly formatted posters in the school corridors, ordering the wrong sports team hoodies, or even how ISL is marketed on social media. To better understand the rules marketing has to follow and how this may apply to students, we interviewed the marketing team in hopes of reducing further misunderstandings. What exactly are the strategies used by marketing?

Firstly, one of the main questions to the marketing team consisted of how they go about advertising one of the main school values of diversity, equality and inclusion. When questioned about this, the marketing team mentioned that they turn to the team of DEI coordinators, as a means of setting the standard of diversity in school. They believe the team try on a regular basis to advertise the diversity of the school. However, they failed to mention exactly what diversity means at ISL. It appears that to some, the image of the school portrayed, is not a true reflection of the reality of the student demographics. ‘It’s like they are showing a false image of the school, since we don’t always see this in school,’ says a year 12 student.  So, what are the objectives of the marketing team? Are they just showing off the diversity of some students or are they trying to value it in their publication? A clear example of diversity in our school is the Culture Club, however, this is not advertised enough. Marketing also said that they post anything given to them, but honestly, the sheer amount of guidelines given, just puts many students off and as a result, some don’t even bother asking.

There are now new guidelines for school hoodie orders. Every sports team used to handle their own orders, but these days the marketing department has demanded to be involved. Students have found this change to be frustrating. When students expected the standard ordering procedure for Y13 hoodies, they were shocked when the marketing team intervened, offering a more expensive website with fewer colour options and connecting the year group photo to orders. This caused a lot of controversy.A compromise was reached after discussions: students can place their own orders, but they have to include the ISL logo.

So why was the old method replaced when it seemed to work perfectly well? Based on our conversation with the marketing team, this was narrowed down to three main reasons. Firstly, by centralising the orders marketing is able to make a deal with the company the hoodies are ordered from, and thus have a cheaper price when a larger number of hoodies are ordered at once. Another reason shared was: sustainability. The company the marketing team orders the hoodies from mostly makes and prints the hoodies locally, which has a better environmental footprint overall. They also mentioned that there were instances of ‘inappropriate names’ on the hoodies, but I believe that students should have the ability to choose. ‘Teachers use an urban dictionary to double check the appropriateness of the name’, says a Year 13 student. Therefore, “moving forward, (the Y13 hoodies) will have to be centralised” according to marketing.

There have also been many concerns that the school has shifted their focus from the ISL community to become more corporate. One of the main events that sparked this discussion was the logo change from our school colours to the new formal logo. The change had students very shocked, since it basically took away part of the students’ identity. Nathalie Meier stated that the logo was changed in attempts to look “different” from the other international schools in the area. However, it seems their focus was more on the ‘style of the logo and colour scheme of logo being blue, red and white’ being similar to other schools, but failed to mention the change which was an integral part of the school’s identity.

‘As we can see all schools have a brand image’, according to Alex Boucher. The logo change was essential to the brand shift. However, when comparing ISL to schools like Le Rosey in terms of branding, Le Rosey is known worldwide and is much more likely to need branding. I think that comparing ISL is not fair, nor helpful. Le Rosey is an internationally well known school worldwide. We are a smaller community and this is not our identity. We do not need this level of branding, which strips the students and the school of their close knit, welcoming community identity. As they mentioned, they believed ISL was not as professional in the past, and there were not enough guidelines that allowed for the alignment of the community they wanted to portray to the public. But, many students, who are the main body at ISL, feel unhappy with this change in branding. ‘I don’t think the change was necessary, it is so business and corporate-like’, says Ksenia, Year 12. 

In general, the concerns discussed in this article likely arose from a lack of transparency between the school and the student body, leading to either miscommunication or a lack of clarity about why certain rules are in place. The marketing side of ISL has also changed as they have begun to focus more on the branding and professional side of ISL, rather than maintaining the original school identity that has been present for years. We can only hope the marketing team allows us students to have more freedom, and to express our opinions while still keeping our school identity intact, in its new more professional marketing strategies.