Transforming safety in schools

SchoolDude and New Kind create a campaign to introduce the software company’s new mobile safety platform that empowers staff and students in times of crisis

Background

SchoolDude helps schools create and maintain safe, productive learning environments.

The North Carolina-based company SchoolDude (now under the company name Dude Solutions) serves over 6,000 educational institutions around the country. Their cloud-based solutions keep school operations running smoothly, so schools can eliminate costs and improve productivity for just about everyone within their walls.

With an established customer base in educational operations management, SchoolDude was ready to launch into a new segment: school safety. Their team partnered with New Kind to help launch a new product called CrisisManager—a comprehensive mobile solution that transforms the nature of safety in schools, from K-12 to Higher Education.

Industries: Technology

Services: Campaigns, Storytelling

Why New Kind?

“

New Kind was a great partner helping us launch CrisisManager. They crafted a story and visuals to frame the solution in a way that was both simple and powerful. We had them present it to our entire sales team so everyone could learn the story and grow comfortable telling it. New Kind then worked with us to develop customer-facing communications based on the same messages and visuals. The result was a unified, compelling message that introduced CrisisManager into the market.

Nick Mirisis

VP of Marketing, Dude Solutions

Seeing possibilities

First, we needed to clarify the campaign concept and understand our audiences.

So we hosted a kick-off workshop with the SchoolDude team. We brought together sales and marketing teams with product developers to clarify campaign goals and better understand target customers. We facilitated exercises to build out personas—we looked at the positions key customers held within schools and the pain points specific to each role.

With the details of these people in mind, we crafted a strategy to explain the value of CrisisManager. The key value of the tool rested in the fact that although most schools have safety plans in place, they rarely use them. The plans live in binders and on posters on the wall. Current plans are static, hard to find, and can’t adapt as emergencies evolve in real-time.

Choosing pathways

We then designed the visual elements to articulate the campaign concept. We also developed the internal messaging tools for marketing and sales teams to use to communicate the value of CrisisManager to current and prospective customers.

Bringing the story to life

We worked with the SchoolDude team to finalize the CrisisManager story and messaging. Then we started rolling out the campaign.

We designed campaign assets including: physical mail, targeted email, banner and print ads, data sheets, and tradeshow banners. And we created a new landing page to tell the story of CrisisManager on the SchoolDude website. We also designed sets of icons that the SchoolDude team could use to maintain a cohesive brand experience across touch points.