Brand building communications campaign

Increased local presence, statewide recognition of strengths, positive feedback for students

Roma Mitchell Secondary College was established in 2011 as one of the South Australian Government’s ‘super schools’ – an amalgamation of four schools in the Gepps Cross area.

The school’s 1300 students have access to a broad curriculum offered across RMSC’s co-educational, girls’ and special education campuses.

Being just four years old RMSC is relatively unknown in the market – particularly for offering a girls only school.

The Principal and Governing Council appointed McCo Group in 2014 to devise a profile raising media campaign to build the school’s reputation and create more exposure for its all-girls campus.

The campaign created by McCo Group focused strongly on the school’s strengths and highlighted a series of recent achievements, positively profiling RMSC’s approach to education and teaching innovation.

For example, significant media coverage in print, radio and television media was generated around the increasingly strong student results in maths, science, technology and engineering subjects.

As a result of McCo Group’s communications strategy implemented in the first year of our partnership, RMSC’s reputation has begun shift.

The school is now recognised for its ability to develop empowered students with a strong education and for its focus on raising academic expectations and performance – an image different from that before our involvement.

Feedback from Department of Education and Child Development (DECD) staff has been positive, applauding the steady stream of positive education stories produced by our team, supporting the school’s strong working relationship with departmental staff.

Further anecdotal feedback shows that results of McCo Group’s communications strategy has positively affected students, their behaviour and aspirations.

Our team has also been involved with crisis and issues management strategies for the school, including providing communications support to key staff to manage and minimise the impact of external events.