Cluey Learning brand strategy aims for top of the tutoring class

Edtech startup, Cluey Learning, kicked off 2020 with a brand refresh, new website and a new campaign, 2020 Vision, exploring the future of education and new research and expert predictions for the decade ahead.

Company CEO, Mark Rohald, said the online tutoring business’ first brand tagline, ‘Let’s solve this’, recognises the way schools are currently designed for mass consumption and instead aims to orient conversations towards each individual child’s learning journey through its tutoring and education support services.

Rohald is a partner in Quartet Ventures, a venture capital firm with a focus on investing in edtech businesses. He has served on the board of more than 25 education organisations, and sees Cluey complementing school-based learning by partnering with parents and assisting with their children’s educational needs. 

“The new tagline reflects our collaborative approach and how we see ourselves – as education problem solvers,” Rohald told CMO.

The brand refresh includes updating the visual identity to reflect Cluey's approach of putting the student at the centre of their unique learning journey. This translates in branding showing students as a key feature of everything the brand does, including campaigns which champion them. 

“We’ve introduced warmth into much of our visual identity, including a vibrant colour palette and playful imagery choices, all of which are a nod to our optimism for the future,” Rohald said.

Another plank of the brand refresh has been an updated website, both visually and functionally, which focuses on helping parents and students find the appropriate learning program. It includes a new recommendation feature, based on a series of questions to understand the needs and learning traits of the student, which then suggests a tailored program. 

It’s no coincidence Cluey Learning is working hard on its philosophy. The initiative was triggered by work to better understand its target customer market: Parents looking for education support for their children.

Cluey Learning chief customer officer, Matteo Trinca, came on-board in mid-2018 to lead the way. One of his first appointments was a voice of customer manager. He explained to CMO this new role was charged with responsibility to go deeper into understanding the customer, understanding the market and the dynamics in decision making for services like tutoring or education supports in general.

“The rebranding is really the result of all the insights and understanding we now have about the market, about the customers about our competitors. And we've been reshaping the brand in a way that mixes more unique and different from the rest,” he explained.

Trinca said he wanted to make sure Cluey's platform delivers on the customer needs, and is informed by the right data.

“It is an equation with teaching on one side and learning on the other side. It’s why when I came on-board I introduced the customer perspective into the conversation, it becomes more balanced with the teaching and learning focus,” he said.

Among other things, Cluey’s consumer research showed it was hard to navigate tutoring websites. “We understood, for example, the customer could quickly relate to the age of their child and their own situation,"
Trinca said.

"So when they access a website like Cluey, they want the message and communication on the website to be talking to their problems and to their situations.”

The site now has an enrolment process with questions to personalise its response with a highly relevant, recommended program. Again, this fits with the overall marketing strategy of centring the student in its approach.

Looking ahead, the plan is to grow the brand, not just the numbers, but with a meaning, Trinca said.

“We want to have a purpose that customers understand. We want to have a purpose that internally people understand, and become the main ambassadors for,” he said. “So even though we're small and we’ve just started, we find ourselves to have a competitive edge because all these alternatives cannot spend as much as we spend and cannot have the skill set in digital marketing and brand management.”

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