St. Joseph’s Academy, a private, all girls high school in St. Louis, called on Casey Communications for marketing and communications support aimed at bolstering the school’s image in the community and the size of incoming freshman classes. Through key message development, brochure creation, a targeted media relations effort and video production, Casey Communications helped the school far exceed application and enrollment goals. Applications rose 17.5 percent – a goal set at 5 percent – and yielded a 6.9 increase in enrollment for the class of 2013.

Goals achievement was reinforced with news coverage that emphasized themes identified for recruitment messages. On April 8, 2009, when nearly 20 percent of the student body fulfilled a pledge to donate their hair to the national charity, Locks of Love, Casey team member Diane Poelker was on site for quick-turn video production and media coordination with two local television stations. Footage aired in five local news casts and was seen by an estimated 500,000 viewers. Additionally, Poelker produced a video of the event, circulated it to local reporters and ultimately secured a blog posting on the STLtoday education blog, The Grade. Posting the video on YouTube boosted mission-focused awareness with more than 2,100 views to date.

Click here (or on the image above) to see the video.

Try Some Sleep for Success
by Marie A. Casey

Growing up as the fourth of eight children, I was the oldest of “the little kids” and despised required afternoon naps – sensing that I was missing fun and adventure with my two older sisters and only brother.  Sleep wasn’t a priority in my young mind!

So I was fascinated to read in The Scientist recently that our activities while awake cause a disorganized multiplication of the synapses in our brain that eventually taxes our ability to think and remember.  The study, inspired by Chiara Cirelli and Giulio Tononi, reported that during sleep, our brains identify the strongest synapses for reinforcement and eliminate the weaker ones.  By doing this, our brains drop the unnecessary connections and sharpen the important ones.

This could explain why we can awaken with solutions to issues that perplexed us the day before and why it’s good to “sleep on” major issues and challenges.  Here’s wishing you happy sleep, knowing you’ll awaken smarter and more creative than you were the day before!

More than 40 marketing professionals discovered new ways to promote their businesses at Heritage Marketing – Using History to Differentiate Your Firm, a presentation by Marie Casey at the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) – Missouri Valley Regional Conference on April 3, 2009.

Casey worked with participants in an interactive session to discover the potential power of an organization’s history to its marketing efforts, whether aimed at growing the business, attracting great people or enhancing reputation. Many companies and organizations possess historic resources that can be mined for the insights and clarity they bring to current decision-making, marketing, culture-sharing and corporate planning.

For a quarter-century, Casey has worked with more than 100 businesses to tell the stories of the past to inform and inspire the future.