educationwise

educationwise had been quietly falling behind. staff were raising concerns at internal conferences that the logo was unreadable on screen and actively harming client pitches. the website was slow, broken and outdated, creating the kind of digital presence that tells a prospective client you are not serious before you have said a word. social media had been largely inactive for months. and leadership were considering splitting the brand into three separate identities: educationwise recruitment, educationwise training, and educationwise corporate. a move that would have fragmented everything they had built and confused the market entirely.

the brief that became the job was a logo redesign interview. soph walked in, redesigned the logo, and ended up with significant influence over the entire brand direction. the first call was dropping the three-brand split. three identities made sense internally but created confusion externally. one brand, done properly, with personality and information doing the heavy lifting instead.

soph recommended dropping "academy" from the name entirely. educationwise is not an academy. it delivers apprenticeships and training, and the word was creating the wrong impression. the colour palette was rebuilt around shades of green, chosen not to impress procurement managers but to feel compelling to young people taking their next step. the brief was simple: make the brand feel safe, not daunting.

the owl was designed entirely by soph. every element, including the illustration, the colour, and the personality, was built from scratch. it was conceived as the logo. the client felt it was too bold and positioned it as a mascot instead. soph still thinks she was right. the owl ended up on everything anyway, and educationwise are still using the brand she built 8 months after she left.

the existing website was slow, broken, hard to navigate and visually outdated. it was actively discouraging the people it needed to convert. soph rebuilt it entirely from scratch on wordpress over six months. over 40 unique pages, the new brand implemented throughout, seo optimised, bugs fixed, and an e-commerce store added so courses could be sold passively without account manager involvement for every transaction. the team loved it. for the first time, the website was working with the business rather than against it.

educationwise serves two completely different audiences: learners looking for their next step, and employers looking to take on apprentices. the social strategy was built around that duality. instagram targeted learners, linkedin targeted employers, and the content, messaging and tone were tailored specifically to the pain points of each. from zero active presence to over 100 leads a month through paid social.

educationwise had real internal challenges that limited what the marketing could achieve in terms of raw growth numbers. the work delivered everything it could. a brand that finally matched the quality of the provision, a website that converted rather than deterred, and social numbers that moved significantly in every meaningful metric. the constraints were internal, not the work.