Independent schools are very good at talking about excellence. Academic results, pastoral care, impressive facilities, broad opportunities – all important, all true, and all things that many schools can credibly claim. The harder question is: what can you say that only your school can say? For Abingdon School, the answer was already part of everyday life. Our job was to help bring it into focus.
The challenge
In an increasingly crowded independent school market, standing out is no easy task. With many schools making similar claims around academic excellence, pastoral care and co-curricular opportunities, Abingdon School approached Herd with a challenge: how do you communicate what makes your school genuinely different?
Our starting point wasn’t design. It was strategy.
Finding the insight
Through workshops and conversations with staff, pupils and leadership, we explored what made the Abingdon experience distinctive. One theme emerged time and again: the extraordinary breadth of opportunities available beyond the classroom.
Abingdon already had a name for this part of school life: The Other Half. The programme encompasses more than 150 activities, from sport, music and drama to chess, engineering, creative writing, the Combined Cadet Force and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. It is a defining part of the school’s culture and a major contributor to the confidence, character and skills pupils develop during their time at the school.
Recognising the strength of this existing idea, we developed a campaign platform that built upon it: Discover the Other Half.
The campaign invited prospective families to look beyond academic results and discover the experiences, passions and opportunities that help shape life at Abingdon.
Bringing the idea to life
To support the campaign, we created a distinctive visual world featuring pupils immersed in a wide range of activities. Traditionally, producing this breadth of imagery would have required an extensive photography programme involving multiple shoots, locations and schedules.
Instead, we combined conventional photography with carefully directed AI-generated imagery. This allowed us to create a richer and more diverse visual narrative while significantly reducing production costs, saving the school thousands of pounds compared with a traditional photography-led approach.
The resulting campaign platform was flexible enough to work across prospectuses, advertising, digital channels and open events, while maintaining a consistent and highly distinctive message.
The result
Most importantly, the campaign gave Abingdon a clear and authentic point of difference in a highly competitive marketplace. Rather than competing on the same territory as every other independent school, Discover the Other Half allowed the school to build on a strength that was already deeply embedded in its culture and genuinely unique to its offer.
The work also received industry recognition, earning a nomination for an AMCIS IMPACT Awards in the Strategic Marketing category. The nomination recognised both the strength of the strategic thinking behind the campaign and its successful translation into a compelling creative platform.
It’s a reminder that the strongest brands aren’t built by inventing something new. They’re built by uncovering what is already distinctive, amplifying it, and finding innovative ways to bring that story to life.
