The Oxbow School

In collaboration with MacFadden & Thorpe

Scope

Art & Creative Direction

Advertising

Content

Copywriting

Films

Print

Social

Partners

Client: Jennifer Jordan

Reputation: Brent Foster Jones

Brand: MacFadden & Thorpe

Cinematography: Whitney Legge

In 2021 we worked together with the Head of School to freshly position and elevate the Oxbow School in Napa, California: a semester-long boarding program for high school students interested in exploring the visual arts. At Oxbow, students learn in outdoor, Socratic style conversations with established practicing artists like the late painter Wayne Thiebaud and multidisciplinary artist Beatriz Cortez.

A scripted and produced video for The Oxbow School

Following a research and discovery process that included structured conversations and interviews with alumni, staff, and board members, we proposed and scripted a narrative strategy platform that centered around the school’s location in Northern California and its enviable landscape and climate. “Nested amidst vast, open spaces of rare beauty and grandeur that have inspired countless artists, writers, and thinkers,” and “perched above the tidal Napa River–a 73-mile long rich ecological reserve home to osprey, heron, and steelhead trout… itself an outdoor environmental science and ecology classroom.”

A scripted and produced video for The Oxbow School

The narrative contextualized the school’s often misunderstood locale, placing it in accurate social and economic contexts. “A great deal of Napa is rural and agricultural, home to people and communities of character, diversity, and ingenuity, and today is a world-class model of sustainable agriculture and holistic, organic wine farming.” It also celebrated the school’s light-flooded 18-foot high artist studios, explaining that “the South African architect Stanley Saitowitz, who sees buildings as instruments for human expression, built our painting, sculpture, printmaking, and new media studios to slide open, literally—bringing the outdoors in and inspiring all of us to take chances and become ourselves.” To activate the new narrative, we produced a series of immersive, atmospheric short films that we scripted, art directed, and edited with socially concerned Bay Area cinematographer Whitney Legge. The films were shot on location and debuted on oxbowschool.org and on the school’s social channels, including a unique edition for Instagram.

Working closely with the Head of School, the expanded narrative, including fresh interviews and student quotes, was then woven into a new, striking 68-page viewbook designed by MacFadden & Thorpe. A series of spreads, pictured, emphasize “the journey of self discovery” as students learn “who they are and what they want” through their experiential interdisciplinary study and practice of the visual arts in this unique California setting that has inspired countless artists and writers.

We used color film stills and quotes, for example “going far off from where you started is encouraged,” excerpted from the films to depict the journey of two Oxbow students, creating a sense of energy, excitement, and a visual and thematic tie-in to the viral social media marketing executed by the school’s marketing manager.

To date, the films have received a combined more than 600,000 views on oxbowschool.org and on YouTube @OxbowSchool. To kick off the series, two flights of on air radio spots in a key target market were arranged. Traffic to oxbowschool.org surged on the first day of advertising by 89.9% with 73.2% of those visits made by new visitors.