Storefront Academy Harlem (formerly The Children’s Storefront)

Services: Strategy, Messaging, Naming, Logo, Website, Collateral Material, Communications Planning, Digital Media

www.storefrontacademy.org

Uncovering the Story of Excellence Hidden in Plain Sight

Challenge: Founded in 1966 as The Children’s Storefront, this self-funding pre-K – 8th grade school in Harlem had very low awareness, and was losing funding to well-marketed, newcomer charter schools. Sustainability was questioned. They needed to engage all internal and external stakeholders and the new strategic plan showed they needed a differentiating brand.

Insights: The internal perception was strong in “academics” and also “nurturing” but external communications focused only on its “nurturing” nature, not “academics”. The “nurturing” was actually a strategic way to engage . No metrics existed on student performance but when calculated they exposed an academic powerhouse. Also, the Board was not operating at the same high level of performance as the students.

Solution: Identified hidden differentiating elements which we combined into a replicable “national model for urban education” and created hard academic metrics, a new lexicon, new name, tagline, logo, messaging and materials all to reinforce its significance and strong academics.

Results: Expanded into a second school in another New York City borough. New awareness, mindset, and excitement internally and with the Board via a unifying vision and training sessions.

“Muse Consulting Group was different from the start. We evaluated five or six companies... Muse was the only one to come to the school before we even engaged them. Their initial pitch reflected their insights from the visit.

They have been a very important partner for Storefront Academy Harlem. Muse “got us”, and even surprised us with unknown strengths and pitfalls. They helped us create the message for our organization that we simply could not have done alone.”