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BOC × Fusion Collegiate

From idea
to 300 students.

How Business on Camera helped take a new public charter school in Calgary from a founding concept to a recognized institution — with a brand, a marketing engine, and an AI-powered admissions platform built to scale.

300+
Student Pipeline
5
Career Pathways
6+
Post-Secondary Partners
Not Your Typical High School
A school built around real careers.
Fusion Collegiate Calgary, AB · Public Charter
Free To Attend
Brand
Marketing
Automation
Public Relations
Objective

A school, built from scratch.

Business on Camera worked with Fusion Collegiate as a strategic branding, communications, and digital infrastructure partner — taking the school from a founding idea to a recognized Calgary institution with a brand, a marketing engine, and an admissions system built to scale.

Fusion's vision was bold: redesign high school around career pathways instead of academic streams, partner directly with universities and trades organizations, and let students earn university credits, apprenticeship hours, and real industry experience before graduation. What they needed was someone who could build the rest of the institution around that vision — the brand, the messaging, the awareness, and the operational backbone for admissions.

Together, Fusion has built partnerships with the University of Calgary, SAIT, Olds College, JA Southern Alberta, the Educational Partnership Foundation, and Ironworkers Local 725. The school has hosted Prime Minister Mark Carney to showcase its skilled trades programming, and its student pipeline has grown from zero to over 300 — with a roadmap to 600+ students. We're proud to have walked alongside Fusion's leadership team, aligning brand, technology, and credibility at every stage.

The Challenge

Launching a charter is not a marketing problem. It's an everything problem.

A new charter school doesn't compete on tuition. It competes on awareness, trust, and the operational ability to handle volume the moment families decide to apply. Fusion needed all three at once.

— 01

No existing brand identity

Fusion needed a name, voice, visual system, and a positioning that could earn parent trust on first impression — in a city full of established schools.

— 02

Awareness in a crowded market

Calgary families have dozens of options. Fusion needed to be discovered by the right students and parents — and understood quickly.

— 03

Parents drive the decision

Roughly 80% of enrollment decisions are influenced by parents. Messaging had to translate "career pathways" into one parent question: will my kid be ready?

— 04

Manual admissions don't scale

Paper forms and inbox-driven admissions break the moment volume hits. Lost applications, missed documents, and no visibility into the funnel.

— 05

Five pathways, five stories

Animal Health, Aviation, Business, Discovery, Skilled Trades — each pathway had its own audience, its own message, its own creative asks.

— 06

Built to scale to 600+ students

Whatever we built for year one had to hold up at 4× the volume. Brand, marketing, and infrastructure all had to be ready.

The Strategy

Three layers, built to work together.

We treated brand, marketing, and admissions infrastructure as one system — because they are. A campaign that drives applications is wasted if the admissions system can't capture them. A great enrollment portal is wasted if no one knows the school exists.

— 01

Brand Strategy

BOC ran a Creative Intelligence Lab with Fusion's founding team to build the school's positioning, voice, and identity from scratch.

  • Career-ready education
  • Real industry pathways
  • Mentorship and internships
  • Hands-on, work-integrated learning
  • Entrepreneurial thinking
— 02

Pathway Marketing

Five pathways became five marketing surfaces — each with its own creative, audience, and conversion path. Abstract "new school" became five visualizable futures.

  • Animal & Health Sciences
  • Aviation Ground School
  • Business & Entrepreneurship
  • Discovery & Exploration
  • Skilled Trades
— 03

BOC-AI Enrollment

An AI-driven admissions platform built on Microsoft's enterprise stack — replacing manual document tracking with a single portal for families and administrators.

  • SharePoint data infrastructure
  • PowerApps user interface
  • Power Automate workflows
  • Compliance-grade student data
  • Built to scale to 600+ students
Pathway-Based Curriculum

Five pathways. Five futures.

Instead of generic academic streams, students choose a career-aligned pathway. Each pathway became its own marketing surface — and its own visualizable future for the families who walk through the door.

— 01 Animal & Health Sciences
— 02 Aviation Ground School
— 03 Business & Entrepreneurship
— 04 Discovery & Exploration
— 05 Skilled Trades
— Service 01

Brand Strategy

A new school launching into a competitive market doesn't get a second chance at a first impression. BOC facilitated a Creative Intelligence Lab with Fusion's founding team to define the school's positioning, voice, and visual identity from the ground up.

The brand pillars we landed on — career-ready education, real industry pathways, mentorship and internships, hands-on learning, entrepreneurial thinking — became the spine of every piece of marketing and every parent conversation. Messaging led with the parent's primary concern: future employability. Visual identity leaned modern, optimistic, and grounded — closer to a tech startup than a traditional school crest.

"Not Your Typical High School" — a tagline that does the work of a paragraph.

The result: founders, recruiters, and admissions staff could all speak Fusion in the same voice — on day one.

— Service 02

Digital Marketing

Awareness was the first hurdle. Fusion was a brand-new name in a market full of established schools, charters, and alternatives. BOC built a multi-platform awareness engine designed to put Fusion in front of both students and parents — on the platforms each audience actually uses.

Students were reached through Instagram and TikTok with short-form video built around the pathways, student voices, and the school's mission. Parents were reached through Facebook and Google search campaigns, with messaging that emphasized credentials, employability, and the founders' vision. Open house events, founder interviews, and parent information sessions turned digital interest into in-person commitment.

Every campaign drove prospective families to dedicated landing pages with program information, open house registration, and downloadable program guides — and from there, into the BOC-AI application pipeline.

Click Here To Contact Us
— Service 03

Content Creation

Content for a new school can't just sell — it has to teach the market that the school exists, then teach the market what the school is. We treated Fusion's content as an ongoing stream rather than a one-shot campaign, with output tuned for each platform.

Output included pathway highlight videos, founder interviews, parent information sessions, student testimonials, open house promotional content, and ongoing program-specific creative. Every piece reinforced the same brand pillars while serving a different stage of the parent and student decision journey.

"Calgary is Our Classroom" — Fusion's signature concept of using the city itself as the learning environment — became a content franchise of its own, with episodic field-trip content showcasing students learning in partnership with industry and post-secondary organizations.

— Service 04

BOC-AI Enrollment

The single biggest operational risk for a new school is admissions chaos. Manual document tracking, lost applications, missed follow-ups, and inconsistent parent communication will sink an enrollment season faster than weak marketing ever will. Fusion couldn't afford that — so BOC built the BOC-AI Enrollment Platform.

The platform runs on Microsoft's enterprise stack — SharePoint for data infrastructure, PowerApps for the user interface, and Power Automate for workflow orchestration — with student data compliance and security designed in from day one. It sits naturally alongside the tools Fusion already uses: PowerSchool, Canvas, and Microsoft 365.

For families, one portal. For administrators, one dashboard. For Fusion's growth plan, the backbone.

Families are walked through a structured multi-step application: student information, guardian details, pathway selection, document uploads, and submission. A parent dashboard shows checklist progress, and automated reminders recover incomplete applications that would otherwise be lost. Administrators evaluate applicants through a single dashboard with applicant pipelines, document status, geographic and pathway-level interest data, and clean exports into the school's enrollment systems.

Click Here To Contact Us
— Service 05

Public Relations

A new school's biggest credibility lever isn't an ad — it's a third party vouching for it. BOC managed Fusion's relationships with media, partners, and government, building a press cadence that signaled this institution is real, it's working, and it matters.

The high-water mark came in December 2025, when Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Fusion to meet students in the skilled trades programming run in partnership with the Educational Partnership Foundation and Ironworkers Local 725. The Prime Minister shook every student's hand and spoke about the value of careers in the trades — a moment that reframed Fusion in the public conversation from "new charter" to "national example."

BOC also built ongoing PR around partnerships with the University of Calgary (free dual-credit CPSC 217 Computer Science), SAIT, Olds College, and JA Southern Alberta — turning each partnership into a credibility moment that fed back into admissions interest.

— Service 06

Web Design

Fusion's website had to do three things at once: reassure parents, excite students, and route applicants into the BOC-AI portal without friction. We built a structure organized around the five pathways, the Gap Year program, and the admissions journey — with dedicated funnels for events, applications, and dual-credit course inquiries.

Logged-in experiences for students and parents (PowerSchool, Canvas, Outlook, the Student Handbook, Spirit Wear) live in clear navigation, while marketing pages stay focused on what prospective families need: what is this school, what will my kid do here, and how do I apply?

Click Here To Contact Us
AI-Powered Registration

Manual process. Digital pipeline.

The BOC-AI system replaced fragmented paper-and-inbox admissions with a single guided journey — from first touch to enrollment.

01

Interest

Family discovers Fusion via social, search, or events.

02

Lead Capture

Website collects initial interest data and routes to the right pathway.

03

Application

Multi-step student and guardian intake with progress tracking.

04

Documents

Automated tracking and reminders for missing items.

05

Review

Staff evaluate applicants through a single dashboard.

06

Onboarding

Approved students flow directly into the enrollment system.

Results

Zero to a 300+ student pipeline.

A brand, a marketing engine, and an admissions platform — measured the only way that matters in education: students.

100+

Students Registered

Initial enrollment exceeded expectations for a brand-new institution.

150+

Year-One Target Met

Fusion successfully approached its first-year enrollment goals.

300+

Active Pipeline

A scalable recruitment system supporting hundreds of applications annually.

Reduced administrative workload

Automation replaced manual document tracking, freeing administrators to focus on students rather than paperwork.

Improved parent experience

One portal for applications, status updates, document uploads, and reminders — replacing email chains and lost forms.

Data insights for growth

Administrators can analyze geographic interest, pathway demand, and conversion rates — informing next-year strategy in real time.

Partnerships & Credibility

Real partners. Real proof.

A career-pathway school is only as credible as the institutions standing alongside it. Fusion's partner roster — built and amplified through ongoing PR, content, and event work — turns every classroom moment into a story worth telling.

From dual-credit university courses to ironworker apprenticeships, Fusion students don't just hear about future careers — they walk into them while still in high school.

University of Calgary
SAIT
Olds College
JA Southern Alberta
Educational Partnership Foundation
Ironworkers Local 725
December 2025 · Press Moment

The Prime Minister, the trades, and a national example.

Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Fusion Collegiate to meet students enrolled in the school's skilled trades programming, run in partnership with the Educational Partnership Foundation and Ironworkers Local 725.

The Prime Minister shook every student's hand and spoke about the value of a career in the trades. For a young charter school, the visit was more than a photo opportunity — it was a public signal that what Fusion is doing is worth the country's attention.

PM
Mark Carney Visited Fusion · Dec 2025
BOC-AI Platform Impact

From a school engagement to a productized platform.

What started as an internal tool for one school has become the foundation of BOC-AI's broader education automation product — a platform now capable of supporting any institution scaling enrollment.

01
Automated admissions

Replace paper, inbox chaos, and manual document tracking.

02
Parent communication

Streamline status updates, reminders, and onboarding flows.

03
Marketing analytics

Track which campaigns drive applications, by pathway and region.

04
LMS integrations

Plug directly into PowerSchool, Canvas, and Microsoft 365.

"BOC helped us take an idea for a school and turn it into a real institution — with a brand, students, and a scalable enrollment system."

Fusion Collegiate Leadership Calgary, Alberta
Build Yours Next

Build your school's brand and enrollment system.

If you're launching a new educational program or institution — or scaling an existing one — Business on Camera can help you build the brand, attract students, automate admissions, and grow.