The Brief
Raise awareness. Drive enrolments.
De La Salle College Malvern is one of Victoria's premier Catholic secondary schools — a school with deep tradition, genuine academic rigour, and a community forged over generations. Their challenge was one shared by independent schools across Melbourne: how do you communicate that culture to a prospective parent scrolling through their phone, or driving past a billboard on the freeway?
The brief was clear in ambition and demanding in execution: build a campaign that raises awareness across Greater Melbourne, distinguishes De La Salle from competitors, and converts visibility into tangible enrolment inquiries.
"His potential, our commitment." — six words that anchored every frame across billboard, station, screen, and print.
The Approach
Two campaign threads. One consistent truth.
The strategy centred on the two emotional pillars that consistently drive enrolment decisions in the independent school market: the lived experience of students in action, and the conviction of parents who've already made the choice.
Rather than manufacturing a version of school life, Shannon's approach was documentary in instinct — cameras inside the real rhythm of De La Salle: boys on the oval, in the science lab, on the music stage, in conversation. Alongside this, a parents' voice strand gave the campaign its credibility layer — real families, genuine conviction, filmed with the same care as the student content.
The Photography
Sport, science, performance — the full life of the school.
The photography brief covered every dimension of what makes a De La Salle education distinctive. Shannon photographed the athletic program — boys competing on the oval with visible energy and intent. The academic side: a student deep in a science experiment, the kind of curious, focused image that speaks to a parent's aspirations. And the arts: a student performing clarinet on stage, spotlit and confident.
Each image was shot to serve double duty — strong enough to anchor a full-page prospectus spread, sharp enough to hold detail at billboard scale.
The Video
Student life and parents' voice — two films, one story.
Video was central to the digital campaign. Shannon's team produced two distinct video threads for Facebook and Instagram: student life (boys in action — the cricket nets, the oval, the stage) and parents' voice (real De La Salle families speaking to what the school gave their sons). Both streams were shot and edited for social-native formats — built to play without sound, to hold attention in a feed.
Social Media
Two ad streams. One campaign tagline.
The Facebook and Instagram campaign ran two parallel content streams, each serving a different audience in the enrolment decision. The student life thread — boys competing, creating, connecting — spoke directly to prospective students. The parents' voice thread, featuring real De La Salle families sharing their experience, gave parents the peer validation that drives school choice decisions.
Both streams carried the campaign line: His potential, our commitment. Both drove traffic to De La Salle's enrolment landing page.
The Process
Brief to billboard in four phases.
Listen — Discovery & Strategy
Deep-dive into De La Salle's community, competitive landscape, and enrolment pressure points. Understanding what prospective families were actually weighing, and where the school's story wasn't being told effectively.
Architect — Narrative & Asset Blueprint
Defined the two campaign threads — student life and parents' voice — and mapped each across the channel mix: social video for digital, stills for outdoor and print, formatted assets for every placement across the campaign.
Create — Full Production
Multi-day shoot across the De La Salle campus: photography and video captured simultaneously from the same sessions. Directed talent — students, teachers, and parent testimonials — and built a complete asset library adaptable across every format from Instagram to JCDecaux billboard.
Activate — Campaign Deployment
Assets distributed across Facebook/Instagram ads, Google display, JCDecaux billboards, 12 key Melbourne train stations, and school prospectus and print collateral. Campaign tracked against enrolment inquiry metrics throughout.
Outdoor & Print
From JCDecaux to the school prospectus.
The outdoor campaign placed De La Salle's campaign imagery on JCDecaux billboards in high-traffic Melbourne locations and across 12 targeted train stations — the school's primary catchment of commuting parents. The same photography that powered the social campaign was formatted for these larger surfaces, maintaining visual consistency across every touchpoint.
Print collateral — the school prospectus, brochures, and recruitment materials — completed the ecosystem. Every asset, from the Instagram feed to the train station platform, spoke with the same voice, the same visual language, the same six-word line.
Deliverables
A complete asset ecosystem, channel by channel.
Results
15.5 million reasons the brief was met.
The campaign ran across social, digital, outdoor, and print simultaneously — each channel amplifying the others. The metrics reflect not just reach, but conversion: families taking the next step toward De La Salle.
Reflection
What made it work.
The campaign succeeded because it treated prospective parents as intelligent people making one of the most consequential decisions of their family's life. It didn't sell De La Salle — it showed De La Salle. The documentary instinct that drives Shannon's best work was what gave these images their authority at every scale, from a phone screen to a Melbourne street corner.
When a campaign built around six words reaches 15.5 million impressions and converts at 25%, the story was the right one.
"Across 12 train stations and hundreds of thousands of social impressions, the tagline held. His potential, our commitment."