From idea
to 300 students.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?