Should a School Brand Ever Be Polarizing?
A teacher at the school where I serve as Chief Product Officer recently approached me, expressing concern about two posts she had seen on our company's account.
A teacher at the school where I serve as Chief Product Officer recently approached me, expressing concern about two posts she had seen on our company's account. One was a clip of Elon Musk discussing how people can learn independently and how college is mainly a place to make friends. The other post was one of many where I’m describing what The Socratic Experience, our high-touch virtual school, is not, rather than what it is.
Her feedback is an opportunity to explain my approach to branding and marketing, at least how I make it work, having directed projects for more than sixty U.S. companies with revenues ranging from $1 million to $350 million a year.
When I think about brand, I borrow the way many scholars understand “character” in Greek literature: a moral compass you can pin to a person. Acting in line with that compass signals who you are in those books. Plenty of people read The Iliad and call Achilles heroic because his actions project heroism; others point to specific speeches and call him petty or vengeful. Because every act hints at someone’s character, you can have more than two readers reaching similar judgments about one person.
In my work helping companies establish a unique identity, I ask less, “What’s the right perception to build?” and more, “What associations created the perception people already have?” If someone calls Achilles impulsive and I don’t see that way, I ask the person to point me to passages that support their view. Applied to a company, I like to ask employees, prospects, and my own friends what they think of a brand and why, so I can pinpoint what’s building a specific perception.
For The Socratic Experience, my compass on how to act is this: “We are the only high-touch virtual school that equips grades 3-12 for lifelong happiness and success through Socratic dialogue, one-on-one mentoring, and creative and entrepreneurial projects.”
Every partnership, message, curriculum tweak, or classroom concern is filtered through that phrase. Does this reinforce the perception that the statement is trying to build, or make it harder?
My goal is to be so consistent in aligning with the perception I want to build that, if I were to ask anyone what they thought about the school, people would cite similiar associations—“warm environment,” “intellectual,” “agency,” “care for human beings,” “personalized,” “experienced.” Even if their exact words differ, I want the essence of what they convey to be similar. Since I joined the school in December 2024, we’ve published 120 to 240 pieces of content each month to embed those ideas in people’s minds.
Being Understood Is Sometimes Better Than Being Liked
Since heading marketing and product at The Socratic Experience, I have aimed to build both a positive perception and…a perception. In September 2024, while supporting fundraising, I realized that after four years in operation, investors, parents, and media still asked basic questions: Are you an enrichment program? What’s a guide? Why choose you over others? Is this paid?
Regardless of what we believed the perception was or should be, or what people close to us believed, the external cues indicated that many prospective families had no association with us beyond confusion. So I joined officially in December to shape a market perception and ensure it was right.
No one can read every mind, yet several cues say we’re on track. Michael Strong (founder) and Misty (TSE mom and head of admissions)—who speak with prospective parents most—report that callers already understand what The Socratic Experience is, what it entails, and why it’s worth considering on a functional, social, and emotional level. Hence, sales calls more often jump straight to objection-handling instead of basic explanations. Many guides (our teachers) see the same shift: recent enrollees simply fit.
External signals reinforce the hypothesis that we’ve established a market perception over the last six months. We’re cited in discussions of happiness, high achievement, and intellectual dialogue; a Forbes article linked us to concepts such as “intellectual autonomy,” “critical thinking,” and “self-directed exploration.” Parents and peers now praise our work publicly (unsolicited), and those colliding cues tell me the perception we aim for is taking hold.
Greater visibility inevitably attracts people who don’t like The Socratic Experience, and I’m okay with that. Being specific about the families we are most suited to serve and enjoy working with inevitably turns away the families who read who we are for and realize we might not be for them.
Going back to the recent Elon Musk clip I posted, the question I ask myself isn’t whether Musk is polarizing; it’s whether an association with him deters or attracts the families we want. Many creative, entrepreneurial parents admire him, so courting that group could be worth alienating others. Conversely, if our ideal families hate Musk, the trade-off flips. Because I’ve published over 1,000 pieces of content that've anchored our perception over the last six months, one clip is unlikely to override all that work.
To expand on the idea that it’s okay to polarize as long as you’re not pushing the “right” people away, I’ll say that The Socratic Experience and every other alternative education institution account for less than 1 percent of the global education market. Many people think we’re nuts. Our curriculum, school day, philosophies, and learning model are incomprehensible to them. We believe the opposite of what most people believe about education, and we believe we’re right. And, because of that, our very existence is polarizing. Yet, I hope that my entire team (and every team out there that is also pushing forward alternative education models) believes it’s worth polarizing in favor of making families question themselves and trying our learning environment.
Building a company’s particular perception goes beyond communications, which is why I wear two hats at The Socratic Experience: the marketing one, where I amplify messages that reinforce the perception that I want to build, and the product one, where I work together with our head of school and staff to ensure that we deliver on the experience that we are promising internally and externally. If we claim a warm, inclusive atmosphere with one-on-one mentorship and emotional support, I’m concerned by any guide who, for example, repeatedly misses tutoring calls, and I will seek to collaborate with the head of school on a fix. A single lapse won’t tank our reputation. But recurring failures will undercut everything we’re building, which makes me treat them less as “watch out” and more as “needs immediate solution to maintain the perception we are trying to build.” Remember, every person who interacts with your brand will build a perception about it, and it’s everyone’s job to ensure it’s one you’re happy with.
As years and decades pass, I hope all of us within alternative education become less polarizing and more broadly accepted. Until then, and even once we reach that point, I’m perfectly fine if some people decide we aren’t for them.
Why ‘What We’re Not’ Now Matters
Early on, your company will have little to no market perception. The Socratic Experience was no different. People saw content from a few public ambassadors like our entrepreneurial guide João Mateus and maybe thought, “Sounds cool, but what is it?” Some even saw our founder’s account and shared the same sentiment. Over the last six months, though, we’ve published 20–60 pieces of content each week, all reinforcing a single (and still in the works) perception, so the media, investors, and parents increasingly know what we are, who we serve, and why they should care.
Because that baseline now exists, we can add nuance by talking about what we are not to attract further the families we’re most suited to serve and, inevitably, polarize those who don’t align with who we are and what we stand for. I don’t have an exact figure, but I’d guess roughly 1-5 percent of weekly posts explain what we’re not, letting people grasp what we are by contrast. Six months ago, that would have backfired, because “what we’re not” would have been their only image of us. That’s no longer the case.
Today, an interested family might see 10, 20, or even 40 pieces of content before they book an open house or shadow day. On the week of the Elon Musk clip, they saw the clip about (1) not needing college and (2) learning anything for free, but then could also notice other posts from the same week: graduates going to Stanford or diving into entrepreneurship, Michael saying 80 percent of education is done if a child is a reader, a student on track to earn $200 K, a reminder that art needn’t be a starving career, and snapshots of our 1:1 mentorships. The mix nudges parents to think, “They resonate with autodidactism and yet still back college paths…but they also help kids accelerate math with 1:1 tutoring and offer strong emotional support…maybe I can’t boil down what they think to Elon Musk—I’m curious,” and then click through to the pages I’ve built that explain us in depth.
Since I arrived, we’ve been attracting more of the right families at the lowest cost, so I’m consciously accepting the price of polarizing some who once engaged with us to gain families we can truly serve. My job is to keep the school profitable so my own children can share the experience our staff provides, which means relentlessly refining how to draw more of the right people and inevitably excluding more of the wrong ones.