WorldStrides, one of the largest educational student travel organizations in the nation, is rebranding its primary programs and divisions into three cohesive brands.
Since 1967, WorldStrides has provided four million students the opportunity to learn beyond classroom walls. Now, it is introducing new brand names that will help unite its broad-ranging offerings of educational programs.
“We are excited about what these new brands mean for our organization,” said Jim Hall, CEO of WorldStrides. “They will enable us to better represent our commitment to education across all learning paths for students from grade school to the graduate level, and more effectively communicate our mission of enriching students’ lives through experiential travel.”
The rebranding initiative is the culmination of months of research and testing among educators, parents, and administrators. The research combined in-depth interviews and feedback surveys from more than 2,000 individuals, uncovering their perspectives on the new naming proposed for WorldStrides’ programs. Following the results of the research, WorldStrides has grouped its programs under three brand names: WorldStrides DiscoverNow!, WorldStrides Heritage Performance, and WorldStrides Capstone programs. Above all other options, individuals felt the aforementioned names best represented the personality of each division.
WorldStrides DiscoverNow! programs include exciting history, science, and career-focused programs designed specifically for students from elementary through high school. WorldStrides DiscoverNow! programs range from history- and science-themed explorations of places like Washington, D.C., Florida, and Costa Rica, to Christian-focused tours of our nation’s capital, and career-focused itineraries through Field Studies Center of New York programs. Specific WorldStrides DiscoverNow! programs offer opportunities for high school students to earn college credit through travel.
WorldStrides Heritage Performance programs offer middle- and high-school-aged choirs, orchestras, concert bands, marching bands, dance teams, and cheer squads the highest quality performance opportunities at renowned domestic and international venues. These opportunities include regional music festivals, college bowl game halftime performances, and personalized New York City dance clinics. The offerings of Heritage Festivals, Bowl Games of America, BGA Performance, Festival of Gold, Festival at Carnegie Hall, and Sky’s the Limit combine to form WorldStrides Heritage Performance programs, a name that better conveys the wide variety of performance opportunities available.
WorldStrides Capstone programs, formerly known as Accent and TravelMBA, support global immersion experiences for the nation’s top universities, including over half of the top 30 MBA programs in the US. In 2011, graduate- and undergraduate-level students will travel to more than 60 countries across six continents on WorldStrides Capstone programs, each customized to fit the university’s educational needs and budget.
Wayne Williams, Vice President of Marketing, concluded, “While the name may have changed, the passionate and professional team members supporting all of our customers are still the same. We’re now better positioned to let everyone know that we offer a breadth of educational programs focusing on history, science, music, dance, cheer, and even global curriculum at the university level. We’ve got a great story to tell about the positive transformations that take place in students’ lives, no matter the age, when they travel on a WorldStrides program.”