Brand and communication agency for education
From brand strategy and positioning to concept, campaign, website and online marketing.
Schwung is a Dutch brand and communication agency based in Tilburg, working with education organisations across the Netherlands. Schools borrow each other’s words. Parents and students choose on what they see. An open day lasts two hours, a school choice lasts a lifetime. In those two hours, and in the clicks before them, parents, pupils and students decide whether a school suits them. We make the brand, the concept and the creative work that makes schools, boards, vocational colleges and universities recognisable.
Concept, campaign and everything that follows from it
A positioning that only exists in a policy document does not change enrolments. The work begins once there is an idea you can see: a concept that makes the open day, the banner on the fence, the prospectus and the TikTok all look like the same school. We make that ourselves, from first sketch to print-ready file.
Concept
The idea that holds everything together. Not a slogan added afterwards, but the thought that campaign, identity and website follow from.
Campaign
Pupil, student and teacher recruitment, online and offline. Open days, information evenings, neighbourhood campaigns, social, advertising and DOOH.
Identity and design
Logo, colour, typography, imagery and illustration, for the board and for the schools beneath it. A style that still works when a teacher makes a poster.
Materials
Prospectus, brochures and leaflets, banners and flags, decoration and wayfinding inside the building, posters, billboards and giveaways.
Production
Photography and film inside the school, illustration, animation and print supervision. Your own pupils and teachers in the picture, not stock photos.
Online
Website, careers environment, social templates and advertising. The same concept, translated to the screen where parents orient themselves.
Five things we help education organisations with
What the school stands for, before anything is designed
A strategic plan is not yet a brand. The foundation is the question of what this school or board genuinely does differently for pupils, parents and staff, and why anyone should believe it. We gather that from the board, school leadership, teachers and pupils, not from the policy plan alone.
- Brand research, inside and out, with the sector as a mirror
- Core values a teacher can explain, not decoration
- Brand story for parents, pupils, staff and partners
Putting your educational concept up front, not on page three
Together, future and opportunity are shared ground. What parents and pupils actually choose on is more concrete: the educational concept, the school type, the atmosphere and the distance from home. Positioning means daring to make that choice and putting it up front. For boards there is the added question of how the board brand relates to the schools beneath it.
- Baseline: where do you stand relative to the schools around you?
- Brand promise and audience choice, with evidence underneath
- Brand architecture for board, schools, locations and labels
Concept, campaign, design, materials and production
This is where the work happens that people recognise you by. A concept that makes the positioning visible, worked out into open-day campaign, identity, photography, prospectus, building decoration and online materials. For Insidr we built the brand and the platform explaining how Dutch education works, plus the campaign materials around it.
- Creative concept and campaign platform
- Visual identity, imagery, illustration and photography
- Every material, from open day to building decoration, online and offline
A site where a parent sees within two minutes whether it fits
A school site serves parents orienting themselves, pupils already enrolled, staff looking something up and candidates applying. That calls for a structure built around their questions rather than around the board’s org chart. We build bespoke, not from a template, and accessible to WCAG, which in education can also be a requirement from the inspectorate and from funders.
- Question-led structure for parents, pupils and staff
- Board site and school sites in one system, each school with its own face
- A CMS school leaders can maintain themselves, with integrations
Being found during the orientation season, and by AI
School choice has a season: the months before the open days and the enrolment deadline. In that period parents search hyperlocally and increasingly ask an AI system for advice rather than Google. That sets different requirements for what your site says and how well it is backed up.
- Local findability per school and location
- Findability in AI answers, with your own research as a source
- Recruitment campaigns for pupils, students and teachers
Work that sits next to education
Honestly: we have not yet had a school board as a client. We have worked on brands with exactly the same challenge, making knowledge and development understandable for an audience that chooses for itself. For Insidr we built the platform that explains the Dutch education system to internationals, from pre-school to school choice. For Bibliotheek Midden-Brabant we repositioned a knowledge institution into two labels.
We do not guess about education, we have read it
For the Schwung Brand Landscape (Merkbeeld) Education we read the websites of 34 education organisations across primary, secondary, vocational and higher education on brand promise, theme, audience and evidence. That research is not a product we sell, it is the material we start a concept with: it shows which ground is still free. The research itself is published in Dutch: Schwung Merkbeeld Onderwijs 2026.
name no educational concept in their positioning profile, while 23 of 34 do name one somewhere on the site. The very thing parents choose on is not up front.
write at language level C1 or higher, well above the level most parents read comfortably. For 23 of 34 the tone also shifts across the site.
The full research, with every count, source and the dataset (Dutch) → Whitepaper: how 34 education organisations position themselves (Dutch) →
Frequently asked questions about brand and communication in education
What does a brand agency do for a school or school board?
Make sure the school you are is also the school people see. Concretely: establish the brand foundation and the positioning, build a creative concept on top of that, and carry it through into visual identity, open-day campaign, materials, website and online marketing. For pupil recruitment, for student recruitment and for finding teachers.
Why do school websites look so similar?
Because most schools do not put their own choice into their positioning. In the 34 education organisations we read for the Schwung Merkbeeld Education 2026, 23 of 34 name an educational concept somewhere on the site, but in the positioning profile 29 of 34 do not. It is there, it just is not up front. While the concept is exactly what parents and pupils choose on.
Do you produce the campaign and the materials yourselves?
Yes. Concept, campaign, design and production are all in house: from visual identity and photography to open days, information evenings, prospectuses, banners on the fence, billboards in the neighbourhood and the advertising that goes with it. Online and offline from the same idea.
Do you also help with recruiting teachers?
Yes, and it is often the most urgent question. Strikingly, 31 of the 34 organisations we researched do run an employer promise on the site, but for 1 of 34 the employer theme appears in the first brand message. The promise exists, just not where candidates see it first. We gather the employer brand from teachers and support staff themselves and carry it through into the application.
Do you work for primary, secondary, vocational or higher education?
All four, and the research covers all four: the group includes 5 organisations from primary education, 9 from secondary, 8 from vocational and 9 from higher education. The challenge differs: of the 34 organisations researched, 10 run a single school and 24 govern several at once.
How does the board brand relate to the schools?
That is a question of brand architecture, and in education it comes up almost everywhere. Of the 34 organisations researched, 28 work with an endorsed structure, where schools keep their own name and face under a board brand, and 6 with a single brand for everything. Which one fits depends on how much autonomy the schools have and who the board brand is actually meant for.
Which region does Schwung work for?
From Tilburg we work for education organisations across Noord-Brabant and beyond, including Breda, Eindhoven and 's-Hertogenbosch. The organisations in our research come from all over the Netherlands.
Ask Nick.
A brand, campaign or website question in education? Give us a call and we will look at what fits, with the research on the table.