Founded in 1641, Hutchesons' Grammar School is a co-educational, independent school in the southside of Glasgow. Maguires were tasked with creating a creative campaign for the school’s annual Open Day and Entrance Assessment events, to help drive new entrants for August 2026 entry.
The campaign needed to be recognisable and authentic. The Independent school market in Glasgow is highly competitive. With so many schools vying for attention from the same target market, differentiation is key.
We were provided with a comprehensive bank of photography and video content from the school. It beautifully captured the pupils, facilities and activities on offer at the school. However, we needed a unifying concept that could also be highly adaptable. With a wide-ranging media spend across digital spaces and prominent outdoor placements throughout the city, the campaigns assets had to be varied. A single poster execution and brand film simply wouldn’t cut it.
Armed with this bank of imagery, we set to work on how we could utilise this wealth of content within a cohesive and distinct creative campaign, one that was particular to the offering at the school.
The school’s vision is to empower their pupils to learn, lead and live with integrity; to ‘Belong, Flourish and Achieve’. These three words were already deeply embedded within the school and the sentiment strongly resonated with us. We felt there was a great opportunity to build upon this vision, but to expand upon it.
We wanted the focus of our campaign to be on the individual pupil, and how the school provided a range of opportunities for all kinds of personalities and talents. It wasn’t just about exam results. From ‘All-rounders’ to ‘Team Players’, ‘Performers’ to ‘Adventurers’ – this was a place where all sorts of pupils could ‘Belong, Flourish and Achieve’.
With this adaptive headline style, we developed a fresh campaign look-and-feel and created a range of ads highlighting the many ways that each individual could belong, flourish, and ultimately, achieve.
We ran separate campaigns for the Open Day in November 2025 and the Entrance Assessments in Jan 2026. The Open Day campaign was a mix of outdoor and paid-for social media advertising, with the entrance assessment campaign run solely on social channels.
On both campaigns, we augmented the top-level creative assets with a highly targeted remarketing campaign that served more focussed content to those that interacted with the top-level campaign content. This took the form of short animations highlighting key school stats as well as geo-targeted ads on availability of a private bus service that runs throughout the greater Glasgow area.
Open Day Campaign 2025/26 (2 October – 8 November 2025)
This campaign delivered exceptional results, significantly outperforming industry benchmarks across all key metrics. The campaign achieved a 2.81% click-through rate (versus the education sector median of 1.66%) at a cost per click of just £0.15 (versus the all-industry average of £1.36).
Key Stats
Total Reach: 111,697
Total Impressions: 205,955
Total Link Clicks: 5,779
Landing Page Views: 2,853
Video significantly outperformed static images on CTR (+92%) and CPC (-18%), though static had better Landing Page View rates, showing static ads still have a important part to play in the overall campaign.
Entrance Assessment Campaign 2025/26 (17 December 2025 – 16 January 2026)
This campaign also outperforming industry benchmarks across all key metrics. The campaign achieved a 2.51% click-through rate (versus the education sector median of 1.66%) at a cost per click of just £0.15 (versus the all-industry average of £1.36).
Key Stats
Total Reach: 90,397
Total Impressions: 159,916
Total Link Clicks: 4,009
Landing Page Views: 3,266
The industry benchmarks cited in this report are sourced from:
Superads.ai Facebook Ads CTR Benchmarks for Education (2025) – Based on $3B in Facebook advertising data. Education sector median CTR of 1.66% (Jan 2025–Jan 2026). https://www.superads.ai/facebook-ads-costs/ctr-click-through-rate/education
WordStream Facebook Ads Benchmarks 2025 (September 2025) – All-industry average CPC of $1.72; traffic campaign average CPC of $0.70.https://www.wordstream.com/blog/facebook-ads-benchmarks-2025
The Entrance Assessment campaign digital spend was 31% less but delivered 14% more landing page views than the Assessment — a significant improvement in efficiency.
This improvement is a great example of how a strong creative concept can continue to evolve. When this is coupled with the ongoing monitoring of a digital campaign, future strategic and creative decision can be informed by past data and performance, ultimately improving subsequent campaign efficiencies.
