Strategy for education brands.
Shaping brands that shape individuals and society.
chlorophyll in numbers
years of practice
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education brands defined
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new education brands built from scratch
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Perspective
What is education for, exactly?
Ken Robinson spent a career asking this question. His answer was uncomfortable: the school system was not designed to educate. It was designed to sort. Built in the 19th century to produce reliable workers for an industrial economy, it got very good at ranking children by a narrow definition of intelligence, discouraging the rest from taking risks, and producing graduates who had learned, above all, not to be wrong.
Ray Kurzweil asks a different question:what will the world look like when today’s students graduate? His answer is more uncomfortable still. If the Law of Accelerating Returns holds, the pace of technological change is already beyond human intuition. AI will, within this generation, exceed human capability across most knowledge tasks. The jobs today’s students are being trained for may not exist in the form they expect. The skills they are being ranked on may be the least useful ones.
Put the two together and you arrive at chlorophyll’s working thesis for the sector: for the sector: the future of education is not about what you know. It is about how you respond to not knowing.
Kiran Khalap, chlorophyll’s co-founder, made this argument directly to a graduating class. He turned the usual commencement speech into a quiz, using clips from Kurzweil and Robinson, and even a live response from Claude AI, to get to a single point: the one thing no professor, parent, or friend can teach you how to live without fear. Fear of being judged. Fear of your peers. Fear of AI. Fear of getting older and not having figured it out yet. Remember that the earliest influence on Kiran came from the seer J Krishnamurti, which is why he spent four years teaching in a residential school in Varanasi, run by the J.Krishnamurti Foundation.
“The one thing no professor, parent, or friend can teach you is how to live without fear.”
– Kiran Khalap, MD & Co-founder, chlorophyll
The chlorophyll approach
Proprietary frameworks, applied on over 400+ brands
chlorophyll’s work begins with the business problem. For a manufacturing or B2B company, that
means understanding the buying process, the stakeholder landscape, the competitive context, and the
single idea the company can own. The frameworks below are how we make that thinking ownable and
durable rather than dependent on a particular individual or moment.
brand identity
ideantity™
Converts the brand idea into a visual system that communicates what the institution stands for in two seconds, to a student who has never visited, a parent shortlisting on a phone screen, or a faculty member deciding whether this is somewhere they want to work.
service brand
anthrop™
Surfaces the human belief underneath the institutional offer. Every school claims quality and outcomes. anthrop™ finds the idea that makes one institution genuinely different from the next, in terms that its students, faculty, and alumni can all recognise as true.
STRATEGIC ARCHITECTURE
Brand Architecture
Maps which name carries which promise to which audience. For education groups operating across school, undergraduate, postgraduate, and ed-tech categories, this question is not theoretical. The same name doing different things for different audiences eventually means nothing to anyone.
experience design
Innovation Dash™
chlorophyll’s innovation-led design process, used to create phygital learning environments. Applied at GIIS Singapore to design a school where every corridor, window, and installation connects two disciplines in a way students can interact with.
Featured Brands
A sample of our work in
education
experience design · 2018, ongoing
GIIS Singapore
Global Indian International School
innovation Dash™ · experience design
brand redefinition · 2025
Dhirubhai Ambani University
formerly DA-IICT
brand strategy · ideantity™ · brand architecture · naming
How chlorophyll works
chlorophyll's six-step process
01
preliminary research
Primary and secondary research to build an initial understanding of the brand: category context, competitive landscape, stakeholder interviews, and existing data. For education brands, this includes conversations with leadership, faculty, current students, alumni, and the parents or employers who form judgements about the institution from the outside.
output: primary understanding of the brand.
02
brand immersion session
A structured one-day workshop with the brand’s decision-makers to develop the inside-out view. What does the brand dream of being? What are its values? What does it stand for?
output: inside-out view of the brand.
03
algorithmic analysis
chlorophyll analyses the inputs from steps one and two to arrive at possible brand directions. What can this brand credibly stand for? What in its behaviour justifies that stand?
output: Brand Construct options.
04
research design
Design of the outside-in research: defining the target, research stimuli, and methodology to test the brand directions with external stakeholders.
output: Research stimuli and methodology.
05
outside-in research
Qualitative research with external stakeholders to assess brand associations, strengths, weaknesses, and response to the Brand Construct options. chlorophyll typically speaks with students currently enrolled, students who chose not to enrol, alumni at multiple stages of their careers, faculty across departments, and parents who chose and parents who did not.
output: Final Brand Construct.
06
execution
The final Brand Construct is expressed across four streams: communication alignment, digital alignment, innovation alignment, and behaviour alignment. Each is measured against defined metrics.
output: Brand assets such as logo, brand book, website, marketing collateral and others
Other education brands chlorophyll has worked with
Brands in this space
The chlorophyll podcast
Be disproportionately happy about the smallest joys in life.
The chlorophyll podcast
Guests: Vibha Kapoor, Principal, Welham Girl’s School.
with Kiran Khalap · 2026
As we grow into leadership roles, we often become focused on productivity, purpose, and making the most of every moment. But sometimes, we forget to simply enjoy life.
Vibha Kapoor, Principal of Welham Girls School, shares one of the most valuable lessons she learned from her students, to be disproportionately happy about the smallest joys in life.
A reminder to slow down, appreciate the little things, and keep the child within us alive.
also available on
What education leaders ask most
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does brand matter for an educational institution?
Most families shortlist institutions well before they begin formal research, and that shortlist is built on brand, not on anything you sent them. A well-defined brand reaches the shortlist. It also earns premium pricing, attracts better faculty, and gives alumni a story about their institution that they will tell without being asked.
Is brand the same as admissions marketing?
No. Admissions marketing converts existing consideration into applications. Brand builds the consideration. The two operate on different timelines and different budgets. Most institutions spend heavily on the former and almost nothing on the latter, then wonder why the first year after stopping the campaign looks different from the last.
What is the difference between a school brand and a university brand?
The audience is different. At school level, the parent is usually the primary decision-maker, and the brand has to earn their confidence. At undergraduate level, student and parent both matter, often with different priorities. At postgraduate level and in ed-tech, the student is the economic decision-maker. A brand strategy that works at one level requires significant adaptation to work at another.
When is the right time for an education institution to invest in brand?
Before expanding to a new city or campus. Before launching a new programme. Before a change of name or regulatory category. And, ideally, before the institution has had to defend its position against a new competitor who has entered the market with clearer positioning. Brand work done under pressure is more expensive and produces worse outcomes than brand work done when there is time to think.
What does chlorophyll do that a standard design or communications agency does not?
chlorophyll starts with the business problem, not the brief. For education, that means primary research with multiple stakeholders before any creative work begins, a Brand Construct that is evidence-based rather than aspirational, and execution frameworks that align every touchpoint, from the admissions letter to the corridor design, to the same idea. The visual is the last thing made, not the first.
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