• Adweek, Monday, February 11, 2008 10:46 AM

In an attempt to show that tutoring isn't just for troubled kids, Sylvan Learning is rolling out a new national ad campaign, dubbed "Celebrate Sylvan Success," this week. The effort, from Publicis in Mid-America, is timed to the spring academic season--and moves from a message about the help tutoring companies provide to struggling students to one that emphasizes individual scholastic achievement.

In one execution, a teenage girl walks into a faculty lounge where she sees a party going on, complete with a banner congratulating her for high marks in English. "Tutoring in the past has been thought of as something you need if you're a struggling student, and now it's being seen for an increasingly wide range of kids who really want to fulfill their potential and achieve some goals," says Joseph Adams, CMO of Sylvan, Baltimore. To ram that point home, the company has upped its ad spending 10% to more than $71 million for the new campaign.

"We're repositioning our brand to become a place where you can fulfill your goals and feel success," Adams says. All of this comes amid heavy pressure on school kids to do well on standardized tests, and as college admission becomes ever more competitive. As a result, the supplemental education and test preparatory is now a $5 billion to $7 billion annual business, according to data from the Education Industry Association.

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