What You Taught Us in 2025: What Our Campaign Engagement Revealed
At the end of 2025, we didn’t feel like schools needed more advice.
They were looking for language.
Language for why things felt harder than they should.
Language for why doing more wasn’t producing better results.
Language for the tension many teams were feeling but struggling to articulate.
So we tried something simple.
In November and December, we shared Dux Unwrapped–12 short reflections drawn from what we’d seen across schools, education service providers, leadership teams, and partners throughout the year. They weren’t designed to go viral. They weren’t built as lead generation. They were intentionally reflective, sometimes uncomfortable, and very honest.
Then we paid close attention to how you responded.
Here’s what your engagement taught us.
1. The Posts That Performed Best Named Gaps Not the Answers
The strongest-performing content in the campaign wasn’t tactical. It wasn’t instructional. And it wasn’t framed as “here’s what to do next.”
The posts with the highest engagement efficiency, measured through click-through rates and sustained interaction, were the ones that named structural gaps schools already feel:
the absence of clear ownership over brand, experience, and culture
the tension between marketing expectations and organisational reality
the growing disconnect between effort and impact
In fact, posts that directly addressed leadership structure and responsibility consistently outperformed more general marketing commentary, even when total impressions were lower.
That tells us something important: Schools aren’t looking for more solutions right now. They’re looking for clearer diagnosis.
2. Reach and Resonance Are Not the Same Thing
One of the most revealing patterns from the campaign was the difference between reach and resonance.
Some posts reached thousands more people than others. But those same posts often drove significantly lower action, with click-through rates sitting well below 1%.
Meanwhile, posts that challenged assumptions or reframed responsibility regularly delivered 5–10× higher engagement rates, despite reaching smaller audiences.
The distinction matters.
High-reach content tends to affirm what people already know.
High-resonance content challenges how they’re currently operating.
Your engagement made it clear: leaders may act on resonance, not visibility.
This is a critical lesson for 2026. Awareness has value but trust is built elsewhere.
3. Systems Consistently Outperformed Tactics
Across the campaign, posts focused on systems repeatedly outperformed those focused on tools or trends.
The strongest engagement clustered around themes like:
experience architecture
emotional and operational friction
segmentation by need, not demographics
infrastructure behind trust
ownership across the parent journey
These posts not only generated higher click-through rates, but also longer dwell time and follow-on conversations; a signal that readers were reflecting.
This reinforces something we’ve seen all year in our work: schools aren’t struggling because they lack tools, they’re struggling because their systems weren’t designed for the complexity they now carry.
More platforms, more content, and more activity can’t compensate for misaligned architecture.
4. The Most Consistent Signal: Effort Isn’t the Issue
Perhaps the most important thing your engagement revealed was this:
The challenge schools are facing right now is not a lack of effort.
Marketing teams are working hard.
Admissions teams are stretched.
Leadership teams are trying to balance competing demands.
And the data reflected that reality.
Posts that explicitly acknowledged this, removing blame and naming structure instead, consistently saw stronger engagement and lower drop-off than posts framed around optimisation or efficiency alone.
What’s missing isn’t commitment, it’s structure.
When roles are blurred, when experience ownership is unclear, and when systems grow faster than alignment, even excellent teams end up firefighting instead of building.
Your engagement told us this message resonated because it felt true. And it is true.
What This Signals for 2026
If 2025 was the year schools finally named the issues–blurred responsibilities, fragmented experiences, tech overload, emotional drop-offs–then 2026 needs to be the year those issues are addressed at the root.
Not with more content.
Not with more tools.
Not with louder messaging.
But with:
clearer ownership
stronger internal alignment
fewer, better-designed systems
and experiences built around how families and teams actually behave
The data from this campaign didn’t point toward quick wins. It pointed toward architectural work.
And while that work is slower and less visible, it’s the kind that builds confidence, trust, and sustainability over time.
Our Final Banter on the Matter
Dux Unwrapped wasn’t meant to tell anyone what to do. It was meant to pause, reflect, and listen.
What you taught us through your engagement is that schools aren’t looking for the next tactic. They’re looking for permission, and support, to step back, simplify, and rebuild with intention.
That insight will shape how we approach our work in 2026.
Thank you for engaging, reflecting, and thinking alongside us.