London | Ubiq X On Tour London

In too many schools, marketing waits for the brief. A poster for the school play. A newsletter. A last-minute push before open day. Meanwhile, the decisions that shape admissions get made without it.

Ellen Bushell has seen both sides. She built brands at Ella’s Kitchen, Le Creuset and B&Q, then spent a decade leading marketing across some of Hampshire’s most respected education organisations. Her view is clear: marketing drives growth when it understands the whole pipeline and has the confidence to lead it.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Earn a seat at the table where strategy gets decided
• Connect marketing, admissions and leadership around one shared pipeline
• Turn insight into action that drives high-quality conversions

Stop taking orders. Start driving growth.

Today’s modern parents operate in a pressure cooker of constant noise. They no longer engage with schools along a neat, predictable path. Instead, they interact across a vast web of channels, checking websites, consuming content, and making monumental educational decisions at unconventional times of day.

The reality for school marketers is simple: the linear marketing funnel is dead. To connect with families today, we must embrace The Research Playground, a conceptual framework that reflects the true, non-linear journey modern parents take.

Rather than moving sequentially from awareness to admission, prospective parents jump, explore, hesitate, and flip back and forth between touchpoints on their own terms.

This presentation offers a fresh approach to reimagining your school’s marketing tactics. Instead of treating channels as rigid conversion steps, you will discover how to transform them into engaging, open-ended spaces where parents can explore your brand, digest your ethos, and make decisions with as little friction as possible.

Playing it safe feels safe. It isn’t.

When every school promises “outstanding pastoral care” and “a love of learning”, families stop hearing any of it. The schools that stand out take the risk: a campaign that divides opinion, a tone of voice that sounds human, an idea nobody else dared to try.

In this panel, school marketing leaders share the bold moves that paid off, the ones that didn’t, and how they won the internal buy-in to try them in the first place. Expect honest stories, practical lessons and full permission to stop blending in.

Blend in and you disappear.

Parents have stopped scrolling through search results. They ask ChatGPT, “What’s the best school for sport in London?” and get a single answer. Is it you?

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews are fast becoming the first stop for families researching schools. These tools don’t rank pages. They recommend schools. And they build that recommendation from everything written about you, on your website and far beyond it.

Bora breaks down Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and shows what it takes for your school to show up in those answers.

You’ll learn:

• How GEO differs from traditional SEO, and why you need both
• How to track the traffic AI already sends your way
• How to write clear, confident content that AI trusts and cites
• Why reviews, directories and articles about your school now shape your visibility

Be the answer, not an afterthought.

Retail learned this years ago: the customer relationship is the most valuable asset a business owns. Loyalty schemes, personalised offers and retail media turned everyday shopping habits into serious commercial growth.

Schools hold the same asset. Every family brings a relationship that can last more than a decade, built on high trust and high value. But most of that data sits in silos, barely used.

Tara Carroll has spent more than 15 years in retail and e-commerce, at brands including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Delivery Hero, turning customer data into revenue.

In this session, she shares three lessons your school can put to work straight away:

• Own it: bring your parent data out of silos and into one clear picture.
• Use it: turn what you know into more personal and more timely moments with each family.
• Grow with it: build long-term commercial value without losing the trust that makes the relationship work.

Walk away knowing where your data is hiding and what it could be worth.

When you look at innovative marketing in other sectors, it’s easy to ask: “That works everywhere else—so why aren’t we doing it?” Yet in independent school admissions, the fear of missing out (FOMO) often leads to play-it-safe strategies instead of creative, stand-out campaigns.

The reality is that by the time a prospective family steps onto your campus for a tour, their emotional decision has already been made online. To win them over early, admissions teams must be brave enough to step outside traditional playbooks, maximise the assets they already have, and engage in honest, transparent conversations.

In this practical, high-impact session, Lindi Smit shares real-world strategies for breaking through admissions inertia. You’ll explore how to harness FOMO effectively, embrace creative storytelling, and build the confidence needed to navigate difficult, open dialogue with prospective parents.

Key Takeaways:

• Leverage Existing Assets: Practical tips to squeeze maximum value out of your current media, stories, and touchpoints without inflating your budget.
• Win Before the Visit: How to build an authentic digital footprint so families are already sold on your community before their first tour.
• Master Honest Conversations: Frameworks for holding open, transparent, and high-trust dialogue with parents when stakes and expectations are high.
• Overcome Admission FOMO: How to confidently embrace trends working in other industries without losing your school’s unique identity.

AI is driving the fastest wave of disruption we have ever seen, reshaping industries, organisations, and parental expectations. As independent schools navigate this shift, the key to building an enduring brand isn't standing still—it's learning how to adapt continuously while keeping prospective families at the absolute heart of your story.

Drawing on his experience leading global digital, content, and brand marketing for powerhouse names like LEGO, MTV, the Olympic Games, and Nokia, as well as his current work transforming businesses for an AI world at Goldman Sachs, Lars Silberbauer breaks down why leaders and organisations resist change, how to overcome those barriers, and what it takes to turn brand values into lasting relationships.

What you will take away:

• Move from Change Ready to Change Driver: Understand the psychological friction behind organisational change and build the muscle to lead proactive transformation.
• Put Families at the Heart of Change: Transition from a static brand symbol to an interactive relationship—learning from LEGO’s core brand truths.
• Lead Boldly in the Age of AI: Drive authentic engagement, break through conformity, and keep human connection at the centre of your school's vision.