All Adventist schools in the South Queensland Conference will soon have “Adventist” back in their names.
Jack Ryan, director of Adventist Education for South Queensland schools, said there are seven schools in the Conference—some already include “Adventist” in their names, while others will be expected to comply by the beginning of 2026. Branding for the schools will also be updated to align with the South Pacific Division style.
“A significant review of the Adventist brand in the early 2000s, when I was principal at Brisbane Adventist College, was a big moment for me because it provided a statistic that there were more Adventist churches in the Brisbane area than there were KFC outlets,” Mr Ryan said.
“In saying that however, we were totally invisible and the reason being is around branding. As a result, that whole concept gave us some real awakenings and we made the decision to put ‘Adventist’ back in the names of all our schools. We’re very hopeful that the rebranding will raise our profile and it will normalise us [Adventists] in our community.”
According to Mr Ryan, many in the community remain confused about Adventists.
“It seems that we’ve done a really good job of mystifying Seventh-day Adventism, so people don’t know who we are; people have all sorts of peculiar ideas about who Adventists are. Addressing this has been one of our main goals,” he said.
A Church Perceptions Study conducted in 2022 confirmed these concerns. It found that the Adventist Church—despite the positive work in education, health and community service—has a significant identity issue in Australia and New Zealand.
Mr Ryan said one of the other challenges has been a lack of understanding about effective marketing.
“I think that we have previously misinterpreted marketing as promotion and so we’ve poured literally hundreds of thousands into glossy brochures, banners and bus wraps, but we’ve missed the opportunity to actually control the narrative,” he explained.
“So we’re now working much more intentionally in that space, so our branding is the same everywhere you go. At one point in time, we had the seven schools in our patch that had completely different names.
“So, now we’ve taken on the mantra ‘One school, seven campuses’; we’ve now got a unified learning framework across all our schools. We call it coherence.”
South Pacific Division communication director Tracey Bridcutt welcomed the decision.
“Our schools are doing incredible things, and having a consistent Adventist identity will help raise awareness of that,” she said. “A unified brand not only strengthens our visibility but also highlights the positive contribution Adventist education is making in our communities.”
