02 / Integrated campaign
Kindergarten Enrollment
An integrated marketing campaign for Perry Township Schools kindergarten enrollment: strategy, creative, photography, video, digital, print, and project ownership in one effort.
- The ask
- Drive earlier enrollment.
- The audience
- Families of incoming kindergarten students.
- My role
- Strategy / Creative / Photo / Video / Digital
- The result
- 1,036 enrolled. 99.9% of prior-year enrollment retained.
Here’s where it got interesting.
The work, by channel
Same campaign. Different surfaces.
Print, video and social all had to answer the same family questions, just in the format that fit the place.
01 What I was trying to solve
Enrollment needed to start earlier.
Drive awareness that kindergarten enrollment was open, and get eligible families to act earlier in the season instead of waiting until summer or the first day of school.
As enrollment was expected to decline, the campaign aimed to reach families earlier, keep kindergarten visible, and help the district perform better than the projected trajectory.
Early enrollment also opened the door to Jump Start, a program that introduces children to school before the first day, including riding the bus and learning the rhythm of a school day.
- Declining enrollment: identify the real obstacles, not just the messaging.
- Language access: a highly multilingual community, including refugee and newcomer families.
- System disruption: a Skyward upgrade temporarily interrupted online enrollment. Calls to action were adjusted so families were not sent toward a process they could not complete.
02 How it came together
Meet families where they already are.
The campaign moved through the channels families already used, from social and the website to yard signs, postcards, and community spaces.
- Organic social
- Paid social
- Website + FAQ
- Digital marquees
- Postcards
- Yard signs
- ParentSquare
- Community flyers
03 The idea
Answer the questions families were not necessarily asking out loud.
A multi-channel video and social campaign used real students, teachers, and family experiences to ease common worries and help parents picture what kindergarten would actually feel like.
- What if I'm the one who's nervous?A first-day drop-off story moved from an emotional goodbye to an excited pickup. Goal: reduce parent anxiety.
- Why should I trust the experience?A kindergarten teacher spoke to specialized training and what makes the academies unique. Goal: credibility.
- What if my child is nervous?A former student talked about first-day nerves turning into friendships. That video generated 601 Facebook engagements and nearly 17 hours of watch time.
04 Video + storytelling
Replace uncertainty with a real school day.
Parents were invited into a typical kindergarten day: arrival to dismissal, learning, play, lunch, friendships, and a kindergarten-only environment.
78.3K
YouTube views on the day-in-the-life video
937
YouTube likes
6.6K
Facebook views
Markie got a few sentence starters and took it from there. Unscripted answers about her teacher, school, and advice for incoming kindergartners. Purpose: build excitement, trust, and action through an authentic student voice.
9.1K+
Facebook and Instagram views on Markie's video
39%
Views from non-followers
171
Clicks
05 Print + language access
Print, in the languages families actually use.
These are the posters and flyers. We sent them home and passed them out in the community, in English, Hakha Chin, and Spanish. We also had yard signs in those same languages.
The creative was homegrown. I developed the concept and photographed Perry Township students preparing to enter kindergarten, then digitally added academy logos to their shirts in Photoshop and built the designs from each academy's colors.
Dates and other time-sensitive details were left off so flyers, posters, and yard signs could last the season and be reused, stretching the budget.
06 What happened next
What the numbers can say, and what they cannot.
Despite beginning the campaign significantly behind the previous year's pace, kindergarten enrollment reached 1,036 students, one student below the prior year's 1,037.
Enrollment is influenced by many factors, so I don't attribute the result to communications alone. The year-over-year outcome was evaluated alongside campaign engagement and enrollment growth during the campaign period.
Performance reflects documented campaign content across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Some platform metrics were unavailable, so totals are conservative.
The result?
138K+
Documented cross-platform content views
3,255+
Facebook engagements
761
Additional enrollments during the campaign
1,036
Kindergarten enrollment at the end of the tracked period
99.9%
Of prior-year enrollment retained
07 What I did
Strategy through production, and the timeline in between.
- StrategyCampaign planning, audience messaging, channel strategy, performance monitoring.
- CreativeConcept, photography, video production, graphic design, photo editing, video editing.
- DigitalSocial media, web, ParentSquare, digital signage.
- Project ownershipCross-functional coordination, timeline management, adaptation when systems went down.