Okay. Hello everybody, I am Emily Cooke, I am from The Pingry school which is a K 12 school in Basking Ridge and Short Hills and Pottersville, New Jersey, which is yes that's that's three separate locations because we have three separate campuses that are all But we, we are excited to talk with you today about a rebrand that we recently rolled out we did this project with with generation branding and communication so Tom sternal is here, and I will let him say a little bit about generation. Great. Hi Emily, and hi folks, Tom Sternal from Generation Branding and Communication. This is my 31st year working in the nonprofit sector. In all of those years we've worked with independent schools colleges universities on questions regarding research strategy and branding, and I'm delighted to be doing this with Emily. All right, let's talk a little bit about the, the sensational headline that we came up with, which is innuendo rumors and outright lies. When we started thinking about this presentation we were focused on the rebranding itself. But what started to evolve was the way that Emily and her team at Pring Pingree really managed the rollout of the of the rebranding so we call that it was sort of Emily's judo practice where we sort of took the energy of the community, and we used it to help and benefit the school at this really pivotal moment so this will be a story of how Emily and her team really used forces in a positive way to make the successful. And let's talk about what rebranding represents, which is change for a school and for an individual, and it can be a cliche to say that change is hard. And it depends a lot on the perspective and the vantage point, and the impact that that change has you has on you. So what we often like to say at least internally is that change actually is easy, but it's easy when it's a positive change when you benefit from it, or when it doesn't really affect you, you can sort of observe it over there, you can notice it, you might The change gets hard when it is in some way misunderstood, or it's unwelcome, or of course if the change in your mind has a negative impact. So, change isn't always it can be exciting. It can also be scary and we have to take that into account. The same comes in the way in which we approach it. Do we like to surprise people with the change. We like to say that there are sometimes two kinds of people in the world, those who love surprise parties and those who don't. I'm one of those people that don't like surprise parties. I basically say to my wife, I like surprises when they're good surprises, I don't like them when they're bad. And so, we just need to also take that into account of how do we prepare people, so they don't in any way feel blindsided with what's about to happen, as we've been spending weeks, months in some cases even years, leading up to the moment when we get to reposition and rebrand ourselves. So, the solution that we like to talk about is make sure that you have data and you use that data to explain the decisions that you make. So, then you can make a case for why we're doing this and the positive impact it'll have. And at the end of the day, prepare them, but keep a little bit of suspense, right? We just don't want people, let's change the word surprise, don't blindside them, right? We can pleasantly surprise them. We don't want to make it sudden or unexpected or unwanted. So, just a little bit about the psychology of what we're into. And at the end of the day, the rebranding effort is a way to express institutional pride and momentum. Even if your school is facing some significant challenges, the rebranding is an attempt to sort of bring the most authentic version of yourself forward in a memorable and compelling way. It should energize people. It should, to a certain extent, be unexpected, but again, in a very pleasant way. In the case of Pingree, this was absolutely what we describe as an evolutionary, not revolutionary moment. The idea was in the rich and very powerful history of Pingree was to affirm the key tenants of the school's identity. And as we go forward, to make sure that those stakeholders that are very loyal, very well-informed, very engaged, see this as an opportunity to expand the brand and to bring more people into the community. And it's important to notice that schools are unique organisms. They are communities. They're made up of many people. They represent many things. But they're not commercial in the sense that they're producing products, that they report to the bottom line, although the bottom line does, of course, matter. So, don't think of the rebranding as it would be if Tesla were to rebrand or Apple were to launch a new product or a new service of some sort. We have to make sure we preserve our identity and take it forward in a way that's recognizable, but also, again, in a feeling of fresh currency at the same time. So, you know, in all of this, you might be starting to pick up this idea, this kind of delicate balancing act between those people who know us well and those people we wish knew us better in some way. So, for those who know us well, we want this to be celebratory. This is Pingree at its absolute best. When everything is going well, on the sunniest of days, we want to capture that feeling and that moment, and we want to sort of take a moment to really relish it. We also want it to be an invitation for those people who are engaged, yes, but especially for those people who would be beneficial contributors to our community and to the strength of our school. We want to make sure that they feel like they can start to see themselves in the school identity. So we want to sort of expand it and be attuned to those who know it well, as well as those who don't, and to sort of create a healthy, sustainable pipeline and continuum of community engagement. So that's what the work is. I remember this moment, Emily, and I'm going to turn it over to you in just a minute. The moment of extreme joy when you called to tell us that we'd gotten the work. I think one of our team members actually shrieked in that moment. And as we dug a little deeper, you know, we were happy just to get the news. But I think at some point I said, like, what was the deciding factor? And you sort of jokingly told this anecdote that you have a very powerful member of your school community, not the head of school, but somebody who has a very, very tight filter for determining who fits or not. And you said to me, we were able to convince him that you were, or he was convinced that we were the right person, because in my entire presentation, he didn't sense that I used the word, um, in my sort of in my talking. And he saw that as a sign of intelligence. Maybe it is, it might just be a comforting sort of technique when you sort of stumble for words. But when you said that I passed the um test, you said we could get started at the same time. Exactly. And he makes that decision process look much easier than it really was. Tom did pass the um test. And now every time that I say um in conversation, I kind of think of that moment and I try to stop myself. And I just said um. So actually what the sort of vetting process looked like when we were deciding which agency we wanted to partner with in this project was a pretty intense process where we sent out a request for proposals and we received many, many proposals back and ultimately talked to 17 different agencies that we had a conversation with to kind of understand them a little bit better, have them understand Pingree a little bit better and where we are at this moment in time. And what was important in our decision making was having a partner who, as you mentioned Tom a little bit earlier, who understands schools really well and specifically K-12 schools which have a very unique culture. There's a lot of politics with the different constituent groups. There's a lot of pride that exists with community members that, you know, alums that go back decades ago with employees who have been here for 20, 30 years in some cases, past parents and students and everybody is invested in this place on an emotional level. So the idea of change becomes a little bit scary. So you need to have a partner who understands the unique dynamics of a K-12 school so that you can really have it be a positive process and have it be something that really invites people in and lets people know that this is evolutionary. It's not this like unveiling of a new product the way Apple wants to drum up all of this interest and then say here, you know, we're changing completely and here's this new thing. It's really not like that. It has to be a graceful evolution and one in which there's enough newness, but then there's also, you know, this place that people still recognize and hold dear and hold true. It's that balance of having enough excitement for people to say, ooh, you know, this is exciting, this direction is exciting, but I still recognize that place. So, and that's a really unique balance that you need to strike when you do this work in a K-12 school. I also, it was really important and I remember the specific moment when I was calling references for different agencies as we were trying to understand who was the right partner for us in this work. And a reference for Generation actually said one of the great things about working with Generation and Tom in particular is that in front of the Board of Trustees, you're absolutely swimming in familiar waters. I put that in quotes because that's exactly what this reference said. And that is really key for me because we have, our Board of Trustees is incredible and we have people from, you know, all, span all different types of industries and are obviously leaders in all of those industries and really, really talented and smart people and outspoken people who are not going to be afraid to ask questions and really kind of push on different issues and try to be engaged with the work as much as possible. So I needed a partner who was going to be able to be really influential and be able to garner the support of our Board of Trustees and be able to garner the respect of our Board of Trustees. So that piece was huge also. But again, back to this idea of balance, of knowing when, having the right emotional intelligence, I might say, to understand when's the right time to push for some newness and some fresh, you know, like I really think we need to push on this. You know, go this direction or, but also being able to sense when, okay, this is too far. You know, we've gone a little too far. I think that there's discomfort to the point where this might not work and being able to get that calibration just right of, you know, being able to push things and being able to get into maybe some territory that feels different in an exciting way, but not go too far to the point where people say, I don't recognize that anymore. This is too different. And really to get that calibration right. And I think, Tom, we were on version 37 of our positioning when we finally got that positioning right and got all constituents kind of on board with getting the right balance of who we, what we are known for, but then also kind of the direction that we want to head. And it does sometimes take 37 back and forth to get that calibration right. And having a partner who, who understands that balance and, and is willing to know when to push back and, and to fight for, you know, a certain place we want to get to, but then also knowing when to say, okay, we need to compromise here. And also just this, this work should be fun, even though it is very challenging work. It's hard work, but it can still be fun. And you should have a partner who, who can find the levity in the moments and can, and can find the fun in the moments. Because ultimately while this, while this project was one of the most challenging things I've ever done professionally, it was also one of the most fun things I've ever done, which, which is, you know, that was so key. And I think you can sense in the final work product, which we'll show kind of briefly towards the end that that comes through, that this was a fun project to have worked on. And you sense that when you look at the imagery and the language, and it definitely is something that you can sense and you can't, you can't fake that. So, so that's, that is these, this is kind of my informal criteria of what we took into account when we chose the right partner. Of course, I had a very more formalized criteria that where we scored people, but these are sort of some of the things we took into consideration. I think Emily, if I'd known that you were talking to 17 firms, I probably would have said, um, a little bit more because like when I realized how strenuous and extensive the process was. And I wanted to real quickly to say like Emily's being super generous and how and talking about how she went about the process and trusting us. Emily also held this work with the level of importance. It was, you know, it was important to her, it was important to the new head of school. I think at one point, Tim Lear said, this is maybe the most important thing we might be undertaking this year together. And so having, it really is the fullest, I would say our work together, Emily, is as close to a partnership as I've ever experienced in 30 years of with a client make, because you were doing all of the hard work on site as we were doing the other work. You kept us making sure that we were doing the highest quality work, and you ran a lot of interference as well so that I just can't overstate the importance of trust and partnership in the success of this, and you were great in that regard and continue to be great. So, I think that that's so important for the success of the project. So to give a little bit of context around around Pingree in particular is that, so we actually engaged in this work I think you know Tom you can attest to this that schools kind of come to you or from like yours and sort of in there in two places they're either struggling with enrollment, or they're in a position of strength and, and that's cyclical for schools and you know that we are one place or another and I've worked on projects where we, you know, where we're really in a place where we're really needing to, to, to increase enrollment and and the situation it you know it's it's a pretty immediate. We want immediate results. The Pingree situation was a little bit different in that we actually had it we're coming off of the best admission cycle that we had ever seen. And we were not struggling with enrollments we were in a position of strength in the marketplace this is about a year and a half ago when when we began the engagement. And so we really wanted to we were lucky because we were at a moment in time where we were looking at kind of our reputation and sort of saying yes, our enrollment numbers are great applications are great we're you know we're in a position of strength in the market but we really need to start to think about what what is our reputation and what does that mean for us in five years or in 10 years. And how do we take a little bit more control over the narrative of who we are because we hadn't done this work since 2007, it had been a very long time, and we never come up with really you know kind of language messaging that actually really encapsulated who we were. So in an absence of that we allowed the market to kind of control that narrative for us and in some cases as, as we know can happen in very competitive markets we we allowed other schools to kind of control that narrative and and Pingree happens to be one of those schools where standards are very high and you know our students work really hard expectations are very high we. It's one of the schools that operates at a very high level and because of that, that we have this overly simplified reputation the marketplace is being the pressure cooker school, and I always kind of go back to this anecdote I moved here two and a half years ago and I was looking at houses and I asked the real estate agent, you know, kind of clueless about all the school options I asked my real estate agent you know what are the private school options in New Jersey. And her response was well if you want to pick up a happy kid don't send them to Pingree. So that was kind of my first like whoa and I had already I you know I was taking this job I hadn't started yet and she didn't know that. And I'm like okay we you know so we started to dissect like why does this reputation exist and how do we, how do we bring to light all of the truth about what what Pingree really is to these students and what our students are like and how this this pervasive happiness and joy here and we just are not that we're not controlling our own narrative in the marketplace. So we were coming in as a position of strength but being being in a place where we wanted to take a pause and understand what is our reputation. And are we okay with that, or what is the direction that we want to head, or how do we want to take control of this narrative to really make people make sure people understand what is what the real Pingree is. So this is just kind of to paint that that in a quote we have on the left here is kind of this perception of this is a prospective parent who was in the application process but didn't ultimately enroll kind of which speaks to this idea of this pressure and you can I won't, I won't read through it but it's sort of, it brings to life what we're talking about here that this is how people thought about Pingree, but then the reality and this is a student quote that that talks about you know teachers and how you know on top of learning about transcendentalism in the labor market and macroeconomics Pingree has taught me to walk to class and smile simultaneously. And I've taught you know the groundskeepers are always willing to strike up a conversation or substitutes or, you know, anybody throughout the day. So it's just this idea of okay this perception exists but the reality is so different. So how do we bring that to light. So this is a quick summary of the process that we undertook, we call it. There were these sort of these four phases, I won't go into each one of these in depth but the first thing is it's important to immerse yourself as best you can in the culture of school and get that outsiders perspective, but have it be an informed outside perspective. And so, a lot of one on one interviews a lot of focus group interviews, really a chance to really understand the school from the inside out, then conducting research both qualitative as well as quantitative to understand, or to develop some strategies, test those through the research, bring those results back to be as inclusive, and as expansive, and as comprehensive as possible, and then find a way to report it. Because one thing we have definitely learned in these decades is board members tend to love statistics more than they love focus groups, more than they like impressions. They like hard data. And then the messaging was developed based on the research and the trust that we had built with different stakeholder groups. And that really became the beating heart of all the expression that then came forward. So then you needed visual language that complements the written and spoken language. You need new tools that carry it forward and really lock in the new positioning and the new messaging. And then you start to figure out what's realistic in terms of your bandwidth and your budget to develop the tools and the initiatives to carry it forward in new and exciting ways, from the website all the way into the signature at the bottom of an email, thinking about all of those different applications. So it becomes as extensive, and as comprehensive, and as consistent as possible. And this was our short-form positioning. So when we write a positioning, we start something much longer. It's often a page long. It's too long, really. But we need to establish context to make the argument and to craft the narrative that we can then seek to shorten. So we took that page. We boiled it down into this mid-sized sentence. And it says, at Pingree, we love school. We love the joy and the purpose, the shared values and the singular voices, the heroic achievements, and the human connection. School, our school, a Pingree education, asks us to embrace life in its fullness and complexity. This plenitude, this abundance, is the wellspring of our excellence and the source of a life that is honorable, fulfilling, and endlessly expansive. Wherever our goals and education take us, Pingree is home. There's a lot packed in there, a lot of words, some of which are sort of legacy words around things like honor and other things like that. But I know also, as Tim Lear came on as head of school, making Pingree really feeling like something of a home for the people that are employees, as well as those people who are there as students or their parents, was also very important. So this is still too long. So let's take it a step further and make it even shorter. It's really simple. It's something that we really could lean into. And it creates a platform for all of our storytelling and all of our branding. And it's really simple. At Pingree, we love school. It's students, it's faculty, it's staff, it's parents. It's the idea that school is this transformative moment in one's lives that can take you to so many different directions, and that you have the greatest number of opportunities to achieve the life that you want for your child or that you, as a student or as a child, want for yourself. And so it's a school community made up of people who want to be there, who want to be at Pingree, but really want to be in school because it's one of the most enlivening environments that they've encountered and probably will ever encounter. So that was the line, and everything flowed from there. And I love that. And also, this was a different sort of, I think this is misunderstood. Sometimes this, we love school, was misunderstood as our new tagline. So excellence and honor has always been our tagline for as long as the Pingree School has been around, and it still is. But this idea of we love school is not a tagline, but the way I described it to students, and actually they helped me with this verbiage, they said, oh, it's a vibe. Don't worry, we're not gonna put it on every wall and on every logo and on every, it's not gonna say Pingree School, we love school as a tagline. It's a vibe, and they love that. They're like, oh, now I understand that we still have excellence and honor. We still have, again, this sort of legacy, this legacy of these words that really resonate with people. We're not, we're leaving that. So don't worry, but we're creating this vibe that allows us to, that encourages us to bring to life some stories about why we love school and to talk kind of informally about why we love school. So it was fun clarifying this with students, and this is where it gets really interesting. So there was that misunderstanding of the rebrand, which actually started to leak last spring, where students started to hear about, there was gonna be this rebrand and our colors were gonna change, our mascot was gonna change from the bear to some other animal, and our new colors were going to be, any ridiculous assortment of colors that were hideous, they were like, those are gonna be our new colors, they're gonna paint everything those colors. Everything's changing, they're getting rid of our seal, they're getting rid of everything we know and love. And it was, we sort of, and the reason why those rumors kind of took off that way is because we, it started off small, and then we sort of added some gas to the flames by sort of creating, by, I'll get to the videos, but kind of fueling this misinformation to create buzz around the rebrand brand, because we, it's funny because at my old school, when we did a rebrand rollout, the same sort of thing happened where we were introducing some additional colors, secondary tertiary colors to help with design, but still gonna keep the main color. But there was this buzz, oh my gosh, they're changing the colors, and we very quickly got our head of school in front of everyone and said, don't worry, we're still keeping the same color. And then everybody kind of lost interest again, and we're like, okay, we don't really care. So this time, when that sort of happened at the school where there's this buzz about like, wait, they're changing our colors, they're changing everything, what's happening, instead of sending out a clarifying email or getting a head of school to sort of say, don't worry everyone, we're still gonna be the same color, we messed with everybody and made it so much more ridiculous and pretended like everything was gonna change in these ridiculous things that people really got interested in like, but wait, but what is happening? And we got everybody's attention. So it was actually really kind of a fun process. And we went back to the any news is good news. It was a little stressful when everybody, I couldn't even walk in the hallways without students stopping me and saying, Ms. Cook, what are you doing? Are we really painting the wall pink? Like, what is going on? And I'd be like, you know, maybe we might do that. And it sort of became this joke where all the students, the buzz among students was really like, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen? They couldn't wait for us. Myself and the director of enrollment management did a assembly presentation where we set the record straight on everything. And it was really fun. Students were super engaged. They were kind of cheering and shouting and booing at all the stuff that we were putting up, joke slides, and it was very interactive and fun and kind of unpingery. And I think that's what the students liked about it is they were like, whoa, this is kind of different, but we like this. So- I love your creative use of clip art there too, by the way, Emily. I like that. I like that. This is from the template, and I had to find a good use for this outer space slide. So we created, so Bella Goodwin, who graduated, she's at Duke now, she graduated last year, but she was a super dynamic, fun upper school student. And we actually kind of got her on our side with this rebrand. She's super influential. She holds a lot of influence with students and we got her on our side and sort of, we said, Bella, it would be really funny if you kind of went out on the street and sort of talked to students and sort of stoked the flames about like what this rebrand means. And she'd made some hilarious videos on social media that we put out to, again, to kind of generate interest around this rebrand. And it really worked. So I'll show a quick clip of one of the videos, which where she talks to, this is Mr. Keating, and he is very well-loved. He's been at Pinkrey for many, many years, well-loved with alums and current students, everybody. So it's an example, and there's many more videos. So if you want to check out more, you could go to the Pinkrey School Instagram and kind of look back in our archives. But this is an example of how we got some interest going. Welcome to the first episode of Who Am I Here With. Today, we are going to make an announcement regarding the rebrand. I know everybody's freaking out, but today is the day you get to hear the truth. Mr. Keating. What are your thoughts on the Pinkrey rebrand? Mixed. What have you heard? I've heard that learning is fun. Do you think learning is fun? I think certain aspects of it can be fun, but I think ultimately it's a serious undertaking with serious objectives. Did you hear that they're painting the clock tower orange? I hadn't heard that, orange. It's true, yeah, and the stairs green. Did you not hear about the new colors? No, what stairs? The senior stairs. Green. Yeah, and they're getting rid of the seal. The seal outside of the school? Yeah. Oh, no, that bothers me. Yeah, that to me, that's a kind of a tradition. That's a kind of a tradition that I think should be preserved. And there's not a bear as a mascot anymore. It's a kangaroo. Emily, I just have to, when you sent me those, one, the idea of just leaning into the rumors and just kind of being playful with it, but how quickly did you turn those around? So we turned these around in two days, actually, because we knew that interest, we had interest, and if we waited too long, then we would lose student interest. So we drummed up, it was over the course of two days, which allowed enough time for the buzz to kind of reach a crescendo, and then we had our assembly. And people were very excited for the assembly because they were like, what are they going to announce? And then when we did announce what our rebrand was, which was, of course, we're staying the same color blue, but we had this beautiful new logo and we're keeping the seal, and excellence and honor is still in there, but look at the way we're gonna bring to life this idea of we love school. We did it in such a creative way that students could really get behind it. Welcome. Sorry. Well, I'll let you, sorry. No, we should probably keep showing the other tool just in the interest of time, but you're right, these are on your Instagram feed, right? These are terrific. So back to the student assembly, I'll just show some slides that we, we kind of did a very student-specific version of this presentation where we left all of, there was so much research and data and conversations that went into the rebrand, but the students, we knew our audience here. The students don't really know about that. They just want to know, why are we changing? What are we trying to, what story are we trying to tell? So we did it in a very creative way where we talked about the Pingree has a reputation for pressure. And we all know that pressure creates diamonds. Like you, you know, you are the diamonds that this creates. So there's good pressure and we're proud of that. But sometimes that gets misconstrued with pressure cookers. So we put some pressure cookers with our logo on there, got some laughs and you know, this makes you unhappy. We added some tears here. So then we got some laughs out of it just to give it students. Then we said, this is fake news that, you know, people think that Pingree students are not happy. Then we made a joke about some of our air, our building is not air conditioned and that's a big kind of thing students talk about. So we added that joke in here. But we kind of let them know, you know, we need to tell people what the real Pingree is. And that, you know, we all have to do this together. And this idea of we love school allows us to take, you know, take control of the narrative and be able to make sure that, make sure that people outside of our own community understand that about us. So that we're able to bring the right people in that the next people who may enroll here, we want to find those people and make sure that we, you know, they understand who they really are. So I'm just gonna show kind of a suite of materials that came out of this. So we did our annual magazine, which is the Pingree Review. We did a whole article about the rebrand, which showed it had four different colors or covers with different students to kind of show a different side, you know, students laughing and you feel like, you know, we used a photographer who really is able to capture sort of their personality. So that's what our annual magazine looks like. Generation did this amazing view book, admissions view book, which just came out. It's absolutely stunning. The photography is incredible, the messaging. So I wish I could kind of pass it out to everybody, but I know, you know, at a virtual event, that's impossible, but it's just such a beautiful book. And you can kind of see how this we love school vibe comes to life and in printed materials. And we launched an entire new website, which again, all was kind of based on this idea of we love school and then found interesting ways to display our identity and our core messages, which is what we came out of the messaging that came out of the project. But it was a beautiful kind of way, the website was a beautiful way to kind of bring that messaging to life. And then we created a video also, which was our director of enrollment management, Edwin Nunez and I taught a spring intensive, which is a class that meets for two weeks at the end of the year with upper school students. And you're with them all day long for two weeks. And we worked with a film group called the Film Guys. And we made a student, the students kind of came up with this incredible idea of how we would show people in a creative way, storytell around a way that proves that Pingree students love school. So it's this, I encourage you to check out pingree.org. It's at the top of our homepage, but I encourage people to look at this video and kind of see how our students were able to bring this idea of We Love School to life through this idea that they came up with and script writing and the imagery. And it's really funny. It's a kind of creative and funny take on We Love School, but we're very proud of it, especially because it allowed our students, again, similar with the Bella videos, it allows our students to kind of be, to be at the basis of this rebrand and allowed them to kind of in their own way to talk about We Love School and what this means for them. So this is just the time we could watch the video, but this gives you an idea of the video. It's a little bit silly and ridiculous, but it makes us laugh. Oops, don't have time for that. But this is what the video ends on in the final. So you can kind of feel that We Love School vibe come to life. And if you know anything about the Pingree School, it's an incredible school, but it has traditionally been known to be very serious. And a lot of our materials that we put out have been very serious and been very, we have had, I think it's understandable why this kind of pressure cooker and high achievement culture has been our reputation because a lot of what we put out there kind of perpetuates that. And we didn't want to turn our back from that, but we wanted to be able to keep that sort of high standards and high achieving reputation, but then also make room for this fun part. I mean, you see this photo, this is part of the filming, but just to shine the light on some of the fun, kids need to have fun. Kids are kids and yes, they can be incredible and multidimensional and high achieving and all of those incredible things, but they should also be kids and they should also have fun. And we knew that that would be the recipe, that's two sides of the same coin. And that would be the recipe that really gets the kind of families that we want here to go on a tour, to ultimately apply, to join our community. So this project was more than a rebrand because it allowed us to have a moment in time where we could be intentional about understanding through data who we are right now, and then having intentional conversations about, okay, but is that who we want to be? Or how can we take control of that reputation or narrative to be able to then shape who we are evolving into and ultimately how that affects the kind of people that are listening to what we're saying and ultimately end up applying and joining our community. So this project, the importance of this project cannot be understated because I do think that it ultimately is what affects kind of who we become and the institution that we grow into. So Tom, I'll kind of let you close because I know we're short on time, but this was so fun kind of quickly walking through this. I wish we had more time. And we can always, if anybody has questions, please track us down or not even track us down, just send out some kind of signal and we would love to sort of talk about it more. Two things I want to end with is how do we measure the success of this work? And something that you shared with me this morning, I'm like, as of today, that applications are up if 75% over this time last year. So that's a remarkable sort of expression of the difference it might be making out in the marketplace and the hard work that people at Pingree have been doing. And the thing I just wanted to close with what I'm so impressed about, having done this work for so many years with so many different people, is like when there was some turbulence, that Emily, like you leaned into it and actually had fun with it. Like I could imagine when like the rumors and the sort of gossip in the hallways around the rebranding, like there would be some people who would be annoyed, almost like angry and defensive, but you cleared two days and you turned out these videos that completely turned the thing around. You thought about it intelligently. You got the right person. Those videos don't have to be fancy or super high end. They can just be kind of authentic and real. And you turn, like you had fun with it instead of feeling protective or defensive or annoyed in some way. And I see that all the time in the work that you do and in the work of folks in admissions, like with Edwin and with Tim. And that video, it's really worth watching. I would encourage anybody to go and check it out on pingree.org. It's probably the edgiest, most original school video that I've seen. And I know you were like living until from eight until 10 o'clock, eight in the morning till like 10 o'clock at night for like, it seemed like weeks pulling that together. So congratulations. I think it's great. And thank you all for listening and indulging the story. I think it's a good one. And so we hope it's helpful and we'd love to talk more if anything comes up. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you, Tom. Thanks. Bye.

rebranding project

perception change

joy of learning

extensive research

messaging

authenticity and inclusivity

rumors and misinformation