HOW might Herff jones unify around an evolved purpose capable of guiding the organization forward?

Herff Jones is an American company that manufactures and sells educational recognition and achievement products and motivational materials, and has been in continuous operation since 1920.

We proposed a growth opportunity for Herff Jones to shift towards. To exemplify the near term opportunity, we prototyped and pitched a platform called, Gather, a collection of tools designed to bring everyone in your community together. It activates one of life’s earliest and most significant achievements with the power of community

Outcomes

• 87% positive feedback from first testing group

• Organic growth engagement continuation for concept execution

By broadening recognition of achievement, we can provide more diverse achievement products leading to increased sales, growth in existing account retention, and growth in account penetration. Extending the core to serve more diverse communities and achievements will begin to broaden their presence along the academic journey. By building ongoing community engagement, we can provide more connected and enduing experiences leading to rise in new accounts, decline in customer effort score and a decline in individualized service plan (ISP) engagement time per school district.

Activating all communities, amplifying big and small achievements, and expanding access to celebration lead to building ongoing community engagement which will broaden and deepen Herff Jones’ role in schools as they offer more connected and enduring experiences.

We adopted a phased approach to building and delivering value that would encompass both concepts and created a growth plan for activating the purpose in tangible and commercially successful ways.

Graduation remained the natural first step on the journey as it presented the most immediate and sizable opportunity.

• 3x more high school and college graduations happened just last year, than weddings that took place between 2020 and 2021.

• 2.8B views were recorded on #tiktokgraduation by the class of 2020 where schools were forced to conduct ceremonies online.

• $1.2k is the average spend on graduation parties across high school and college nationally

Notably, the market had failed to consolidate graduation gifting, forcing consumers to piece celebrations together.

03. Within the graduation space, there is an unmet need relating to strengthening communities

More people deserve to be included on the big day than schools can accommodate and graduates face economic hurdles to getting off on the right foot, no matter what path they take. The average college student spends a yearly average of $1.3k on books/ supplies and the average college freshman spends an average of $836 on clothing, electronics, and dorm furnishings. We strived to enable a student’s entire community to participate in graduation and community-source the things a student needs to take the next step.

Our proposed solution, Gather, aims to activate one of life’s earliest and most significant achievements with the power of community. Gather is a collection of tools designed to bring everyone in your community together, so that achievements get the celebration they deserve— starting with graduation.

Three key features for the platform are live streaming to remove the barrier of ticket limits and location to attend graduation, curated registries to set up any student from any school to get just what they need for their next big step, and personalized mementos to reflect individual journeys to success with everything from unique graduation websites to custom yearbooks.