We built a practical storytelling playbook to help the British international school group turn everyday student life into more than 300 social media videos.
International school marketing has a sameness problem.
Across Southeast Asia and India, schools often rely on the same polished ingredients: beautiful campuses, smiling students, academic results, facilities, performances, sports days and leadership quotes.
None of that is wrong. But when every school is saying similar things in a similar way, it becomes harder for parents to see what really makes a school different and worth the additional investment.
Our schools have never been short of good stories. What we lacked was a reliable way to turn those everyday moments into content that felt distinctive rather than interchangeable."
Howie Phung
Regional Communications Manager, Nord Anglia Education
Nord Anglia Education wanted to help its schools tell better stories. Stories that felt more authentic, more emotionally resonant and more useful for families when confidently choosing a trusted education.
So WCC helped them build a practical editorial framework for school storytelling across the region.
The challenge
The challenge was not a lack of activity, achievement or student experience. The challenge was turning those everyday moments into repeatable content formats that schools could actually produce themselves.
School teams are busy. Events happen every week. Teachers and marketing teams often capture what happened, but not always the story behind it: the preparation, the emotion, the student voice, the ups, the downs, the parent perspective, the small moments of student transformation.
Nord Anglia needed a system that could help schools move beyond generic content and create stories with more feeling, structure and purpose."
Ian Paynton
Co-Founder, WeCreateContent
What we did
Using findings from a body of work in research, landscape audits and cross-sector mapping, WCC developed a set of repeatable social and video formats designed to help schools capture authentic and differentiated stories at scale.
The formats were built around a few simple but differentiating principles:
Make students the storytellers
Instead of speaking about students, create formats where students can speak for themselves.
Keep production realistic
The formats had to be achievable for school teams, not dependent on large crews, complex shoots or heavy-lift production. Nord Anglia wanted it nimble.
Capture emotion, not just information
Parents do not only choose schools based on facts. They respond to confidence, care, belonging, pride and personal growth.
Show the process, not just the outcome
The most interesting story is often not the final performance, match, exhibition or result. It is the effort, nerves, practice, mistakes and growth that happen before, during or after.
The storytelling formats
We crafted a bank of editorial formats that schools could adapt across markets, age groups, campuses and calendar moments.
These included:
Diaries
Unscripted student-led snapshots of school life, designed to feel personal, immediate and authentic; each episode builds towards a colourful mosaic that illustrates how Nord Anglia students think.
Watch a selection of the Diaries series below.
Leo - British International School Hanoi
Sky - Oakridge International School Gachibowli
Student Masterclass
Students teach adults something they know well, showing confidence, passion and expertise in a place where learning never stops.
The making of…
A simple storytelling structure that follows a student or group from preparation through to the final moment.
Meaningful Moments
A light-touch format that shows intimate moments of growth from the early years classroom that parents at home might otherwise miss.
Are You Proud of Me?
An unexpected parent-child format to replace the tired parent testimonial, built around surprise, reflection, pride and emotional proof of growth.
The playbook
To make the work practical and scalable across Nord Anglia schools in Southeast Asia and India, we turned the formats into a playbook including storytelling levers, format explanations, example episodes, production guidance, interview prompts, shot lists, adaptation notes and channel considerations.
The playbook was sent to Nord Anglia schools all across Southeast Asia and India
The goal was not just to give Nord Anglia creative ideas, it was to provide a repeatable editorial system.
Howie Phung, Regional Communications Manager at Nord Anglia adds, "WCC helped us build formats that school teams across nearly twenty schools can produce themselves and repeat throughout the year, across different markets and calendar moments, while still looking and feeling like Nord Anglia."
The outcome
The project gave Nord Anglia a clearer way to turn everyday school life into distinctive, emotionally engaging content.
Instead of relying only on polished admissions messaging, schools could show families what education actually feels like: the confidence built over time, the relationships between students and teachers, the pride of parents, and the small moments that make a school community meaningful.
When we measured Arc content against our own ordinary content, it engaged at a higher rate and was shared more often, proof that families notice the difference when a story feels real."
Howie Phung
Regional Communications Manager, Nord Anglia Education
Are You Proud of Me? results
Are You Proud of Me? turned the storytelling approach into a successful and scalable video series, with 15 episodes published across seven different schools in five different markets.
Performance of the Are you proud of me? series
The series has generated over 3.2 million total views across Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Beyond the numbers, the series resonated strongly with the audience, prompting positive comments and conversations across social media.
A few words from the people who watched
Are you proud of me shows the impact of putting real people and real stories at the heart of content.
The series has not only resonated with audiences but also earned external recognition through a Best Video Series nomination at the International Content Marketing Awards.
Why our work mattered
For international schools, the strongest proof is not always a claim, a statistic or a campaign message.
Sometimes it is a student explaining what they love. A parent seeing how much their child has grown. A teacher creating a moment of confidence. A rehearsal before the performance. A small conversation that says more than a prospectus ever could.
It was a privilege for WCC to help Nord Anglia tell better stories as part of an ongoing and valued partnership.
