Campaign details
Brand: Jiva
Brand owner: Jiva Institute Of Vedic Sciences And Culture
Entrant Company: Open Strategy & Design, India
Idea creation: Open Strategy & Design Mumbai
Market: India
Sector: Educational, universities
Media channels: Social media, Word of mouth, Influencers, KOLs, Packaging & design, Competitions & contests
Executive summary
Jiva Public School (JPS) believed that the future of a society rests on its educational institutions. It had developed its unique educational approach based on Indian indigenous knowledge but had not framed its intentions impactfully.
The school was seen as an ‘idealist school focused on moral values’ by lower-middle-class parents who enrolled their children there. For them, academic excellence was the only escape towards greener pastures, given the realities of the struggling industrial city of Faridabad.
The school realised that the true impact of its approach went beyond ‘moral development’. Jiva’s learning system unlocked inner growth and led to academic, emotional and social excellence for each child. It was critical to communicate this link between students’ inner growth and their success beyond school. The Jiva Growth Compass and Growth Competencies were outcomes of rearticulating this education model. ‘Passive goodness’ was reframed to ‘active ingredients for the future’: a unique promise in Faridabad.
JPS reorganised itself around the idea of nurturing and empowering changemakers, from initiatives within the school to parent outreach.
This new frame doubled admission enquiries in the next admission cycle, increased social media engagement by 130% and reach by 114%.
Why the entry is relevant for this category
In Faridabad there were two types of schools. One equated academic rigour equivalent with student success, the other offered holistic development through the angle of access: a chance to avail world-class facilities and impressive extracurriculars.
However, no school spoke about empowering the child: internal transformation to win in the world. This was a space that JPS had always championed, but never communicated effectively.
The JPS learning system boiled down to two key values that worked together to unlock the child’s potential: nurturance and empowerment. The strategy was to make tangible the outcomes of the tools and frameworks used to deliver these values, encapsulated as the Jiva Growth Compass.
The Growth Compass provided a counterpoint to the conventional educational model by nurturing each student according to their inherent nature (as identified by the Multiple Intelligences-Multiple Natures tool). It created a system that personalised learning to build the right growth path for students.
It also allowed them to develop agency over their inner growth, broadening the canvas beyond academics to incorporate holistic development, lifelong success and the capability to become changemakers in society.
By making these tools tangible, the school educated a wider audience on how powerful education can be. JPS became the counterpoint to the dominant narrative and gave parents and students a new lens with which to to reframe the impact of education
Market background & objectives
Jiva Public School was one of the oldest educational institutions in the city of Faridabad. It began in 1994 in a basement with less than 10 students and has since grown into a 1500-plus institution.
From its early days, its management emphasized holistic development by developing a set of tools, frameworks, and practices to ensure the social, emotional, cultural and spiritual growth of its students. The starting points for these were Indian belief systems and philosophies that the school believed provided value to the lives of its students by reinterpreting and contextualising them for the present day.
JPS is based in Faridabad, a city in the Delhi NCR region of India. Once poised to be the industrial capital of India, it has been in decline since the 1990s. It has rough edges, with inadequate infrastructure and overall quality of life. Most residents are from the lower-middle class of society, though pockets of upper middle class households had emerged in the city over the last decade.
There are 25 government schools in the city and 153 private schools.
The school consideration set was dictated by the tuition fees and locality.
There were three main fee buckets:
Below INR 7000 (84 USD) per month
Between INR 7000 – 11000 (84 – 131 USD)
Above INR 11000 (above 131 USD)
There were two types of schools: those who championed academic excellence and made the rigor of studies their calling card. Another group of premium schools promised access to better facilities, extracurriculars and all-round development.
JPS was in the first bracket of below INR 7000. Students in this fee bracket belonged to the lower middle class families who could not hope for admission into the premium schools and for whom holistic development was a distant dream. Success was limited to academics and they never understood the true potential of education. JPS was fighting this psychological frame of the parents who believed academic intelligence to be the only outcome of schools.
Most of the popular schools are part of franchises who use their brand to draw in parents. They used mainstream media for communication, especially out of home and print ads. However, JPS didn’t have the budget for traditional advertising.
The target audience for an educational institute such as JPS was not restricted to parents of the locality who would potentially enrol their children. Since the school was tied so closely to Faridabad, it was a mainstay in the city’s social fabric, trying to influence all of its citizens through its educational efforts.
JPS set itself a vision of three-to-five years during which, it strived to accomplish the following:
Consolidate and structure its unique offering and uplift the position of the school in the eyes of the community as an educational thought leader.
Create a system that empowers the students to positively impact the city of Faridabad.
Insight & strategic thinking
JPS was firmly rooted in indigenous knowledge systems, however it was better known for producing ‘decent’ students. A ‘decent’ student did as they were told, fared well academically, deferred to the wisdom of elders, was disciplined and avoided problematic elements. While this was an important factor for the lower-middle class parents whose children studied there, the school was boxed in as a reformatory institute where ‘problem kids’ were sent.
After extensive classroom observations and interviews, it was clear this perception was skewed. The public discourse around school’s philosophy was being limited by ‘passive goodness’ and decency.
In Faridabad, ideas like ‘holistic development’ were the territory of progressive schools that provided access to world-class facilities and extracurricular activities. They were cocoons that insulated students from Faridabad’s social realities and focused on exploration of personal interests. These were out of reach for the lower-middle class students.
The second set of schools tied personal success to academic performance. These were highly competitive and focused on the stellar marks scored by students. Their reputation was built on the ability to produce many such ‘toppers’. Becoming a topper meant a chance to escape the confines of Faridabad.
JPS did not believe in creating a cocoon for students nor act as a reformatory to ‘improve’ them, rather it showed that it was within the students’ power to identify the challenges in their personal, familial and social lives and act on them. They were the changemakers. It needed to spotlight the school’s ability to empower its students to take charge of their own growth; and aspire for personal fulfilment and contribute to society. JPS had to own its role as an institution that was responsible for ‘nurturing and empowering the changemakers of tomorrow’.
JPS had developed five core tools (Appendix 1) over the years but did not have a consolidated framework to talk about their interdependence and impact.
It reframed and mapped them to focus on the demonstrable outcomes they achieved: Growth Competencies that bring focus to capabilities beyond the academic. These were consolidated as the Jiva Growth Compass and shifted perception from the passive ‘decent student’ to a stronger image of a JPS student as a ‘changemaker’. The four needles of the compass: Attitudes, Skills, Vedic values, and Knowledge are meant to provide direction and guidance while navigating the five core foundational growth areas for every student: Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Social and Spiritual.
This process led to developing the Four Growth Competencies:
Self-Awareness: being aware of one’s strengths/weaknesses and inherent nature and personality
Self-Mastery: the process of consciously designing habits that helps one master their full potential
Social Empathy and Intelligence: creating harmony in the world around them
Decision-making and ownership: taking ownership of one’s goals through clarity of purpose
These were aligned to contemporary discourse on growth coaching and formed the basis of what separates the extraordinary from the average.
JPS wanted to shift the mindset of parents and create a new audience by making students evangelists for the school’s model. This allowed parents to comprehend the extent to which the school was involved in making a difference to children, creating belief in the school’s approach.
Implementation
JPS was positioned as an institution committed to ‘nurturing and empowering the changemakers of tomorrow’ with the Growth Compass at its core.
Since it didn’t have the financial resources for the communication campaigns through mainstream advertising, it had to find different ways for this expression to come alive and spread.
The first step was to bring alive the expression within the school. A new visual language was created as a creative expression of the positioning.
While the school faced infrastructural constraints with respect to redoing spaces and classrooms, there was plenty of scope to bring alive this new thinking using colours and visuals.
A fresh colour palette was developed: warm earthy tones balanced with complementary accents. A contemporary and organic illustration style was developed, taking inspiration from regional folk art. These visual elements found a home on corridor walls, revitalising spaces that were dull and lacked energy. Some collaterals were reframed to better fit the new context. For example, the ‘Progress Report’ became the ‘Growth Card’ since the school found value in mapping the term-to-term growth in all aspects of the growth compass, rather than focusing on just the marks obtained.
By making the school the canvas for creative expression, all 1500 students became ambassadors. For them, it was the continuous catalyst in their process to become proud changemakers in their life paths.
Parents were through social media channels. The social media strategy of the school was consolidated and sharpened. Facebook and Instagram had been used as noticeboards for announcements and sharing images of events. As a result, they failed to provide any reason for engagement for prospective parents and the Faridabad community at large.
A significant change was made so the voice of the school online became a bridge between the school and the community of parents and Faridabad residents. Content was reworked through the lens of the Growth Compass. It showcased the school’s stance on education, and provided a glimpse into the world of JPS. Posts and stories were designed to be more interactive, nudging the audience to engage. More quizzes, conversational prompts and topical posts were added to the mix.
Parents were no longer mere spectators, unsure of a child’s progress and JPS’ approach. Instead of reporting the happenings, JPS made them participants.
Business Effects
Within a year, the number of admission enquiries doubled. This interest in the school is poised to grow in the next three-to-five years, as more parts of the intervention get activated.
JPS’s social media handles also saw a jump in engagement and reach. Without any paid media, it increased engagement by 130% and reach by 110% (Dec 2022 vs Nov 2023).
The Jiva Growth Compass and Growth Competencies reached a wider audience by being featured in local daily newspapers, where the director of the school wrote a column. Some of the unique practices at JPS were also featured in leading Hindi newspapers, with a daily circulation of more than 1m.
It is common for parents to enrol their children in a different school if there are any issues in the first few months (April-May/June-July) of the new academic year. To make this happen, parents may defer the payment of school fees until they feel their child has settled. JPS noticed a sharp drop in fee defaulters (parents who do not pay the school fees within the stipulated duration), after this strategic exercise. In the period from April-July, fee defaults decreased by 90% from the previous year.
JPS had made it a practice for teachers to closely observe students and changes in their behaviours, preferences, routines, both positive and negative. This also involved flagging disruptive behaviour or dereliction of responsibilities. In the three months after the strategic exercise, in middle school, the number of issues observed dropped by 64%, while in high school the drop was 59%.
Lessons learned
1. Though JPS didn’t have a budget for traditional media, it was still effective in communicating its philosophy because it was supported by the best possible advertisements a school can have: its students. The students became living proof of the impact of the Growth Compass and ambassadors for the model.
2. JPS had been competing with other schools on the terms set by the category. That is why, despite having such a powerful philosophy, it was left behind. Only by escaping this trap and advocating what it believed in did it start seeing results. It found a gap and created its own par for excellence.
3. This came by understanding the audience . The competition was focussed on the parent’s needs, as they were the decision makers. JPS understood the importance of the core stakeholder: the student. So it made sure to speak the students’ language and target their needs.
4. JPS also made the parents an active participant in its social media strategy. Being a bystander only has limited use so JPS sought to unlock the potential of participation. Social media became an effective, engaging and continuous orientation process for the parents.
Questions:
How did Jiva Public School differentiate itself from other educational institutions in Faridabad, and what role did the Jiva Growth Compass play in reframing the school’s educational approach?
What is the significance of the ‘Growth Card’ in the Jiva Public School strategy?
What educational philosophy did Jiva Public School aim to communicate through its Growth Compass framework?
How did Jiva Public School reposition itself to appeal to lower-middle-class families in Faridabad?
What impact did Jiva Public School’s social media strategy have on increasing admissions inquiries and parent engagement?
How did the Jiva Growth Compass reposition the school to compete against other schools in the Faridabad region, and what factors made this model stand out in the highly competitive educational sector?
Analyze the effectiveness of Jiva Public School’s approach to holistic education, particularly in a market where parents prioritize academic achievement as the sole measure of success.
How does Jiva’s Growth Compass balance traditional Indian values with modern educational demands, and how is this balance reflected in the school’s communication strategy?
What were the specific social challenges in Faridabad that Jiva Public School had to address in its campaign, and how did these challenges influence the design of the school’s educational philosophy?
Discuss the role of indigenous knowledge systems in shaping Jiva Public School’s pedagogical approach and how these systems were modernized for today’s context.
How did Jiva’s repositioning strategy address the perception of the school as a ‘reformatory’ institution for problem students, and what were the key challenges in altering this public perception?
How did Jiva Public School utilize its students as ambassadors to drive engagement and influence local community perception without relying on traditional advertising methods?
What potential long-term cultural and societal impacts might arise from Jiva’s emphasis on empowering students to be “changemakers,” especially in the context of Faridabad’s industrial decline?
How does the Jiva Growth Compass align with contemporary global trends in personalized learning, and what unique challenges does this pose in India’s educational framework?
How did Jiva Public School’s campaign balance the need for social media engagement with the educational goals of nurturing and empowerment, and what metrics were used to measure its success?
What was the name of the framework introduced by Jiva Public School to guide student growth?
Which group was highlighted as ambassadors for Jiva Public School during the campaign?