Hi TBC,
You’ve clearly made an effort to show the breadth of your offer — from EYFS to older prep, classroom moments to teacher interaction. The tone is warm, nurturing, and carefully aligned with the values that many parents are actively seeking.
But here’s the test…
Imagine a parent scrolling at speed — phone in one hand, school tabs open in the other, head full of deadlines, diaries, and dinner plans. Would they see this ad and know it was St John’s? Would they get a sense of what only you offer? Or would it blur into the same reassuring-but-generic noise we’ve seen from dozens of schools?
To a parent scrolling Facebook with a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and school search tabs open in the other, your ad might look... like everyone else’s.
That’s not a dig, it’s a pattern. We’ve analysed over 100 school ads running right now in the UK, and most sound eerily similar. Same phrases. Same format. Same promises.
So we built a simple test, just a mirror. A moment of reflection. If you passed your ad in the wild, would you know it was St John’s School? Would a parent?
St John's School in the Wild
This is your current Meta ad. Let’s look at it through a parent’s eyes.
What’s Working
✅Tone is warm and accessible: Phrases like “nurturing environment,” “curiosity,” and “lifelong love of learning” strike a tone that appeals emotionally to parents of younger children, especially for EYFS and Prep years.
✅Visual age balance: You’ve been intentional about showing range — one image with a reception-aged child and one with an older classroom scene. That helps ground the 2.5–16 age range and shows natural progression.
✅Educational values clearly articulated: Words like “character development,” “resilience,” and “confidence” are buzzwords for many parents today. You’re speaking to long-term outcomes, not just test results.
What’s Getting Lost:
🔁 Same old script: “Small class sizes.” “Broad curriculum.” “Academic success.” Over 250 ads across the UK are using these exact phrases. Not because they’re wrong — but because they’re worn. It’s safe, expected, and doesn’t differentiate.
❌No sense of ‘St John’s-ness’: What does your version of character development look like? What does curiosity feel like at St John’s? At the moment, these words float in the abstract. If we removed your school’s name and logo, would there be anything left that parents could recognise as uniquely you?
🗣️TPassive structure = low attention: Sentences like “we inspire students to achieve academic success” or “preparing students for success in a changing world” don’t pack a punch. They feel written for brochures, not for attention-grabbing, thumb-stopping social ads.
👉 When we searched Meta’s Ad Library, we found over 250 other ads using “small class sizes” verbatim.
Without being too cringy - this causes something called paradox of choice. When every option looks the same, people don’t feel empowered. They feel overwhelmed. So they scroll past, not because they didn’t like what they saw, but because nothing stood out. If you're not subverting the pattern, you’re at risk of getting skipped over.