MidCoast Christian College had just finished its brand messaging strategy, and at the centre of it sat a new manifesto, a piece of writing that captured the heart of the school. They wanted something to launch alongside the new website, and a video made sense. What I was wary of was the generic school promo video, the polished kind that looks the part and says nothing, because that would have talked straight over everything the manifesto was actually saying.
The manifesto already had the message. It spoke to belonging, warmth, community, and faith, the things the school is built on, and it said them cleanly. What it didn’t have yet was a way to bring those words to life, in a voice that rang true.
So we built the video around the manifesto itself, with no separate script. The words that already told the MCCC story became the narration, and we worked with a student to deliver them. Hearing it read in a student’s voice, rather than a polished narrator’s, changed how it landed. The story was now coming from one of the people the school is actually for.
The production itself stayed simple and unhurried. We filmed everyday life at the school, scenes that echoed the manifesto’s own imagery, and kept the rhythm of the edit close to the rhythm of the words: small moments, real connection. It was the same approach we’d taken with the brand photography, so the school came away with stills and motion that spoke one visual language instead of two.
What the school had at the end of it was an emotional anchor for the whole strategy: a piece that now lives on the website, opens information nights, and carries into the enrolment conversations that follow. The manifesto had begun as words on a page. Now it was something a family could sit and watch.
A brand video doesn’t need a big budget or dramatic visuals. When the words are true, and the voice telling them belongs to the school, simplicity does the work on its own.
A brand video built straight from the manifesto, narrated by a student.
An emotive anchor that now lives on the website, opens information nights, and supports enrolment comms.
Still and motion imagery in one cohesive visual language, shot with the same approach as the brand photography.
We rewrote CEN’s entire services canon and re-architected their website from the school’s point of view, without rebuilding it, turning eleven ungrouped services into five clear categories and the generic pages into role-based guides.
For the launch we did some participatory design: gave the kids disposable cameras to photograph the values in action, then built those photos back into the brand.
