Lowther Hall Scores Marketing Award for New Uniform 2018 Educate Plus Award Winner: best Marketing Communications Campaign. In 1920, Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School began its long tradition of educating young women. Students at our Essendon campus in Victoria would walk the halls of the great ‘Mansion’ building from classroom to classroom in their uniform of skirts, dresses, ties and shirts, learning from passionate staff the very best in academic and personal skills to prepare them to enter the world after school with confidence, empowerment and readiness. Fast forward ninety-eight years and our ethos has remained steadfast. However our girls were still walking the halls of our school in their uniform of skirts, dresses, ties and shirts. If our mission is indeed to prepare girls for life after school, why were they still dressing in similar fashion to their 1920s counterparts? Our girls now have different needs and we want them to develop strong values, identity and opinion; ideas for which our archaic uniform no longer catered. For the first time in our school’s history, a complete review and change of the entire academic uniform was to occur. Gone would be the 98-year-old options of a ‘summer dress’ and a ‘winter skirt’. Students soon would be able to ‘mix and match’ pants, shorts, shirts, jumpers, vests, dresses, skirts, blazers - as well as hats, tights, socks and scarves! Not only this, the ‘hero’ colour of the new uniform would change from the 98-year- old navy blue to the new, light blue. But how were we going to communicate this change to our community (whose opinions and needs are important) and have them support us? This led to the development of a detailed strategy in communication of the launch of our new uniform. Ourfirststepwastoarticulatefivekeymessagesasourrationale for change, which would then provide the basis for all of our communication. These included ideas around the change of women’s role in society, the importance of exercise and ‘being active’, as well as the way in which we were paying homage to our school’s treasured past through this new uniform. From there, we decided that our uniform would be kept secret until a live launch event! We used Facebook, our website, written publications and email marketing in the months and weeks leading up to the launch to raise awareness and understanding in our community. The launch of the uniform was fourfold. In 6 6