School of Rock

Key Responsibilities

What is School of Rock?

School of Rock is the world’s most revolutionary music education franchise. As of 2025, School of Rock has over 70,000 enrolled students attending more than 400 schools in 15 countries around the globe – and their commitment to expansion is unwavering. They were recently named the Global Grand Champion, 2023 by Global Franchise. And I celebrate the community dedicated to inclusivity, diversity and safety they have built. My role as Creative Director was not only to produce world-class marketing creative but to also ensure creative brand standards are upheld across the global School of Rock franchise system.

Creation and maintenance of the brand guide. More than a style guide, the brand guide sets the tone for all aspects of the School of Rock brand. Their mission, manifesto, voice, art element usage, fonts and typography, iconography, photography and more is detailed in this 46 page brand bible. Below is a small selection of the full document.

Maintaining Brand Standards

Having a robust Brand Guide is great, but ensuring that it’s being read, used and followed was another thing. I hosted periodic webinars for the School of Rock system where I talked in depth about the Brand Guide, why it was written and the importance of following it’s rules. Additionally, it was my responsibility to review and give explicit approval for anything that mentioned the School of Rock brand. This included seasonal show posters and printed collateral created by schools. I also worked with local new stations, reality TV shows and documentary film makers wanting to use the School of Rock name in their productions.

The goal was to make sure School of Rock was always on brand and working with productions and creators that aligned with our core values of positivity, inclusivity and integrity.

School of Rock runs several campaigns every year. There are campaigns for general enrollment, summer camp programs, franchise development and more. I oversaw the creative ideation, concept testing, performance analysis, copywriting and creative execution for all campaigns. The suite of campaign assets produced for each one could be upwards of over 400 assets and included: digital ads – static and animated, video ads in multiple aspect ratios for web and social, a suite of promotional print collateral and campaign specific photoshoots.

In addition to the ideation and creation of campaigns I worked closely with our digital ad agencies reviewing the data from all platforms to approve spend, assess performance and modify as necessary to optimize reach and lead generation.

Franchise Development Campaigns

Attracting new students is very important, but making sure there are enough schools to accommodate them was equally important. I created and refreshed franchise development campaigns throughout the year. As with all other campaigns, I worked with our digital ad agencies to review and assess the placement, engagement data and spend.

I scripted, cast, directed, produced and oversaw post production for dozens of high-quality videos each year. Productions included short high impact ads, professional music videos, scripted productions and short documentaries. See School of Rock’s official YouTube channel for the over 80 music, 28 student original song, 18 educational, 15 brand, 11 program and dozens if other videos I produced during my time at School of Rock.

Becoming an AllStar is the highest level of achievement for a School of Rock student. The School of Rock AllStars tour takes the very best students from around the world and sends them on a nationwide summer tour across the United States. Less than 1% of School of Rock students are selected each year after an intensive, multi-stage audition process. In 2023, I took a small film crew and hit the road with one of the tours. We filmed rehearsals, performances, time on the tour bus and captured the transformative experience that is the School of Rock AllStars. I conducted all the interviews, storyboarded the film, directed, produced and scored this short documentary.

The AllStars documentary premiered in the spring of 2024 in Nashville at School of Rock’s biannual convention, Overdrive. Overdrive is where franchise owners, their top staff, company owned school staff and music industry partners come together for three days of comradery and learning. The documentary was shown to this 600 person group on the last morning of Overdrive. Everyone in that room intimately knew how powerful the AllStars program can be. There were almost no dry eyes in the crowd when the credits began to roll. The overwhelmingly positive, enthusiastic and emotional reception far exceeded my expectations.

Photographs are critical to marketing the School of Rock brand to parents of potential new students. They need to tell the story that kids of all ages can become proficient musicians. That they’ll have fun doing it. That they’ll be accepted for who they are and make life long friends along the way. And that they’ll take the stage to play epic shows in iconic Rock ‘n’ Roll venues. School of Rock photos need to tell this entire story.

In my time at School of Rock I cast, scheduled and coordinated over 50 photos shoots around the world. The result was delivering about 400 high-quality, professional photos to the School of Rock system every year. These were used in digital marketing, print collateral, email marketing, social media and more. We shot pre, post and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ensuring safety was always a strong consideration. Encouraging kids to look genuinely happy wasn’t always easy so lot’s of encouragement and positive reinforcement was key to a successful shoot. Locations varied from in-school to professional performance venues like the House of Blues to major festivals such as Lalapalooza, Rock ‘n’ Rio and more.

Using the Brand Guide, I created hundreds of pieces of print collateral for use within the School of Rock system. These included informational collateral for each of our core programs, campaign specific collateral and large educational music posters for lesson rooms.

Another important initiative was the maintenance and expansion of our sync song catalog. The sync songs in the catalog allowed every school in the School of Rock system to learn, perform and post online many of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s most recognizable tunes. This was another strong consideration factor for potential new students and added weight to our legitimacy as a music education franchise that delivered results. Some of the publishers I built and maintained relationships with are:

21 Entertainment Group, Blue Mountain Music, Experience Hendrix LLC, Hipgnosis Songs, Kobalt, Peer Music, Real World Music, Round Hill, RZO, Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Group, Warner Chappell Music.