Putting the Conversation
Before the Credit Card
How Varsity Tutors went from sales-first to human-first, and became the #1 live online tutoring platform in the U.S.
The Problem
We didn't have a brand.
We had a sales pitch.
Varsity Tutors had a brand awareness problem. Less than 19% of people knew who we were. But the bigger issue was how we talked to the people who did know us. Everything sounded like a sales pitch. "Sign up now." "Limited time offer."
And because we didn’t have a defined brand voice, every team and channel had its own way of describing who we were. It was chaos.
Brand Attributes
Manifesto
The Approach
Listen first.
Then build something true.
I ran brand perception surveys and customer interviews to understand what people actually wanted. The insights were clear: parents were looking for real help from someone who gets their kid. Deals are great, but a quality tutor matters more.
I facilitated internal workshops to align on what VT should feel like. Not what it should say. That distinction mattered. From there, I defined the core brand attributes and wrote a manifesto that reframed the narrative around the learner instead of the service.
The Work
Let the new voice tell our story.
After getting leadership buy-in, we built brand guidelines covering voice, tone, messaging, and style, then applied them everywhere. While the old voice was transactional, the new voice spoke to parents like people, addressing their very real concerns. It still drove conversion, but it started with connection.
We built out comprehensive guidelines (full site) and conducted training so internal teams and agency partners could craft copy that aligned with the brand.
Web copy went from hard-sell to benefit-driven. During the pandemic, our model and our messaging changed to focus on helping parents navigate learning from home.
With the new brand in place, we developed a series of 30-sec spots to promote online camps and classes.
The Result
Varsity Tutors went from less than 19% brand awareness to becoming the #1 live online tutoring platform in the U.S.
Content consistency improved across every channel. Teams that used to wing it now had a shared language and a shared standard.
But the result I’m most proud of is the cultural shift. The company moved from a mindset of sales-first to customer-first. People started asking, “How does this help a student learn?” before they asked, “Will this convert?” That’s not a metric you can put on a dashboard, but it changed everything about how VT communicated.