Design and build for a virtual Open Day visiting experience for Colfe's School; developed for prospective families during the Covid 19 pandemic and as an additional marketing resource post-lockdown.
Insight:
Colfe’s School is one of London’s most respected and established schools, and has consistently placed itself at the forefront of embracing the new and the innovative throughout its proud 360 year history. In April 2020, as the world entered the challenging period of Coronavirus, the School management recognised that the school’s historical process of Open Day tours and new pupil recruitment would need to change.
“COVID-19 restrictions pose real challenges for school admissions teams. Not being able to visit a school when deciding on application for your child is extremely difficult. We worked with Wild Dog to create a virtual solution which would allow parents to experience everything they would on a normal open day – online. This was a unique brief that required creative thinking and a very quick turnaround.Kate Bridgman, Director of Admissions & Communications Colfes School
Wild Dog rose to the challenge and were able to respond – and adapt accordingly – to create a bespoke product for us. To do this during lockdown was an achievement in itself. We are thrilled with the result, ‘Virtual Colfe’s’ has quickly become the lynchpin of our admissions process and the feedback from prospective parents has been universally positive. We look forward to developing the site further and continuing to work with Michael and his team.
Our approach:
Working with the school, we swiftly identified the need to design and build a complete virtual tour experience – one that showed the school in its entirety. This included walk-throughs and drone footage of the grounds; talking head interviews with key department staff; an introduction from the Head and additionally key areas of interest for prospective parents being addressed, such as pastoral care.
From the outset it was understood that the site would have longevity. Even when lockdown was lifted, and possibly physical Open Days could be re-established, smaller family groups visiting would now be the norm. This meant that a prospective parent and pupil would want to show other key members of their family the visiting experience.
A key design objective from the outset was to replicate the Senior and Junior School open day experience; in particular how the positive interactions with pupils on the day are a major selling point of the school. This would include entering the school hall, and using panorama functionality have the opportunity to listen to a welcome address, view subject specific video introductions (sixth form, pastoral etc), and then take the tour (visiting the departments – clearly signposted using iconography additionally developed by Wild Dog); finally an introduction to the Admissions process and an opportunity to register and apply, with strong calls to action throughout.
