The new PepsiMax Bus Shelter ad…

Thought it was pretty good. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Go9rf9GmYpM

Social good is at the top of everybody's mind but sometimes good ole-fashioned funny content works to get the message passed.  How would your school district respond to something generally creative?  Would you give more leeway to a truly genuine idea?  Districts have an attractive demo that ad agencies love.  If you can come up with opportunity, ad agencies and marketers would be happy to reach your audience in a creative way.  

Look forward to hearing back from some districts on this one.  

If I knew then what I know now about Edunomics

The old saying "if I knew then..." comes to mind now that our company (www.k2mba.com) is helping school districts across the country raise new revenues through advertising programs and strategic partnerships.

I've seen and heard a lot of stories about how some districts are "Thinking Outside The Lunchbox" by creating programs from scratch and using existing personnel to sell them.  It's gritty, it's hard work, and... it's working.

There's lots of areas to explore but the old faithful rings true.  It has to pass the smell test.  It has to be logical.

When I started with the first school district (Orange County Public Schools, Orlando, FL) almost five years ago, we went after the basics (online advertising, athletics.) 

Now, what we know and what we use has grown exponentially in programs and revenues.  We are constantly revising, redesigning, rethinking, and reassessing these programs.  The important rule is:  Don't let your ego get in the way.  In the beginning it's easy to hold on to programs you created that maybe aren't working.  It's so important to have a formula that works and finding the time to constantly monitor your inventory sold vs. prices sold at.  Pricing should be structured but monitored.  If you aren't selling at 80% of your inventory you should consider a cost/benefit analysis to see if a restructure should be in the works.

It's something we like to do.  It's called Edunomics.  Contact us at www.k2mba.com if you would like to learn more.  Get gritty and good luck.

NSPRA put out our story in Orange County Public Schools. Got us a Golden Achievement award. Great synopsis of our programs. "Thinking Outside the Lunch Box" Sales & Marketing Initiative details how creativity and a proactive approach to tackling the “budget cliff” through savvy advertising and marketing strategies brought in over $400 million in revenue and in-kind sponsorships to a district willing to “think outside the lunch box.”  More detail after the jump
http://www.nspra.org/e_network/2013-06_successtory

Streamlining-
One of the things I do when a school district brings us out (as an advisor for www.k2mba.com) for a district audit (which is an asset audit where we identify the areas we think could start generating non-traditional revenue for them) is we look to find out where they can streamline their marcomm (marketing/communications) efforts.

The best way to reach your audience - if you are a school district - is to make sure you are constantly streamlining your communication channels with your audience.  You can have specific communication channels such as reaching your employees, your students, and/or your parents but if you start to inundate them with too many messages or messages that aren't pertinent to them, you'll start to lose them.  Same goes if you start sending the same message in multiple formats and then decide to use separate formats for different messaging later on.

In easy speak:  Make sure you constantly, maybe twice a year, look over how you are reaching your parents, schools, students, and employees.  In the picture below, you'll notice Orange County Public Schools homepage.  Since I work full-time in the public relations department there, I work directly with our Director of Public Relations and our media specialists to find areas where they are reaching audiences with important information and we now tie in advertising opportunities in allowing companies to purchase a web banner on this platform.

 

Even better, run some focus groups to find out how to improve on your system, i.e.,what methods work the best, what kind of messaging they respond to, how many ways do they receive your messages. 

This is vital to your marcomm efforts.  It also helps when you decide to sell advertising into these platforms since, when they are streamlined, you'll be using less of your resources to duplicate unneeded messages and increase your viewership in the platforms you select to focus on when you want to get a message out.  This will help you increase your revenues and cut down on unneccessary work.

"Thinking outside the lunch box."  It's a term I wished I'd coined but my boss (Dylan Thomas, Public Relations Director for Orange County Public Schools) actually gets the credit there. 

When you want to gain reach inside a school district that's exactly what you should do... reach inside the school district.  It's important that the product, service, or brand that you are trying to promote to that audience - be it teachers, students, or parents - somehow relates and, more importantly, adds to something relevant to them. 

If you have a cleaning product, find places that need to be cleaned and clean them.  Wrestling mats, desks, lockers, parking lots.  Obviously go through the proper channels, just don't show up and start taking graffetti down off walls but that's the general point.  Schools are real estate, curbside appeal is just as huge for a school as it is a home and they are great focal points in the community - what better way to say you are part of the community than to showcase your product, service, brand or team by getting involved in sprucing up the front of a school.

If you have serve a great dish - get it in front of them - there's hundreds of events in every school district across America that would love free food.  Free food attracts more people to events which general is very attractive to a program since they want to inform or educate an audience when holding an event.  Plus, most of the time a school district can't pay for food.  If Science teachers come at night for a quarterly meeting to discuss strategy and curriculum direction and approach, grab a partner (like Orange County Public Schools did with Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex) and create a "Science Dinner & Experiment" event.  The attendance for the event will soar and your company will look great to this audience since they relate to you and see your support.  Plus, they get to taste your food.

There are hundreds of examples to use but the important message is this:  Be relevant.  Integrate your program.  If you want to reach the audience at schools, reach out to the audience at schools.  Learn what they are doing and find out where you can help.  Sure dollars always help but you can create stronger bonds if you couple that a program that can help your company tie-in to what they are trying to accomplish.

Selling the naming rights to athletic fields and high school stadiums is not impossible and it has outstanding benefits to the school, the sponsoring company and the surrounding community.  Take a look at the video. 

There's a simple formula that revolves around the traffic at the major intersections (that you can get in most cases from the Department of Transportation) and the number of people attending events in the stadium (check with your bookkeeper for the old numbers. 

If you have any questions on how Orange County Public Schools did it, drop me an email and I can help navigate the process.  brian_siatkowski@yahoo.com

nationally televised high school games NEW television concept

There was an article in Forbes about a guy with a brilliant idea to scale out high schools sports by creating libraries of athlete footage from their high school years and broadcasting high school games on a national level.  Here's the link. 

Unfortunately, this idea is idealistic at best. Even though the intent is good, it seems as though he has not done any of the homework necessary to find out how feasible this is and it wouldn't have hurt if the writer of the piece had asked any of the hard questions.  Here's why I wouldn't put stock into

Most major high school districts have very lucrative local cable contracts - in our district, we just negotiated a three (3) year deal where we receive $18,000 per year for the rights and pay $1,000 per football game that they choose to broadcast. The cable agreement also gives the cable network ownership of the footage so when you do catch lightning in a bottle and send a kid to the pro's, they can get some of their money back by selling the footage to larger groups that own rights to those teams and leagues. 

We've also already done "made for tv" basketball for ESPN2 facilitated by Paragon Marketing out of Illinois and set up a game with Austin Rivers (now playing for Duke) got on the same court with Michael Gilchrest (now playing for Kentucky) and made another 10k off that to help support our athletic programs.  At the time, they were the #1 and #2 ranked players in the country.

Of course, ego can get into play and some people will turn on high school games but unless you are a serious die-hard and/or have a connection to the school, athlete or programs, this isn't an area where you are going to attract enough viewers to justify the outlay of costs.  For example, the ESPN2 game I referenced above (with easily two of the best high school players in the country last year) had less than 300,000 viewers nationwide.

There is also no mention on the fact how they'll pay crews to make these games watchable. We've talked about school video departments and students handling the film shoots but the quality wouldn't work for mass distribution of game footage and the truth is that mass audiences don't watch "sports" - they watch elite athletes play sports. That's why minor leagues can't attract crowds and few D3 colleges get media contracts.

The video equipment most high schools have isn't top-of-the-line equipment and many schools haven't ordered new video equipment with all the budget cuts so the footage would look second-tier anywhere outside of a local school broadcast.  Are you telling me I'd be watching ESPN's 30 for 30 series on my Hi-Def and suddenly not notice a high school girls volleyball game being shot on an iPhone? 

High school sports has it's role and we've seen many other areas turn into money-making machines.  Disney turned the League World Series into a cash cow creating an event worthy of the $3.7 million they paid to give ESPN broadcast rights in 2009 in order to air the summer event. 

I just believe, even in that situation, you are watching the best of the best.  Heck, I love the olympics but I just don't know if I'd sit through a local gymnastics competition watching 14-year olds on a pommel horse.

ticketing idea

Here's an idea to consider:  If your school or school district has always ordered your athletic tickets (or even if you have allowed an oustide company to "provide you free tickets,") try to work with other surrounding school districts to do one large order.  This will:
-Allow you the opportunity to work with larger advertising budgets since companies often can't spend more than a specific amount of money in smaller areas;
-Drive down the price of the per ticket cost.  A good cost to shoot for is about a penny and a half per ticket.

Plan now for 2012

If your school is serious about advertising by next fall, you should be planning for these things over the next two (2) months:
Parent Guides (any beginning of school publications sent home that you can sell in to)
Fall sports (most districts have fall football where 80% or more of the total paid crowd attendance for the year are found so this is where your advertisers want to be)
Establishing your online advertising program (check past blogs for the things you need to know BEFORE you start an online advertising program)

Now go bring money into your schools :)

The Extinction Burst

In Behavioral Pyschology, they call it the extinction burst.  Look for it when  you decide to get serious about what outside companies have access to your schools and students. 
For example, recently one of our high schools stopped a relationship with a company that was "doing the school a favor by providing free plastic footballs and other promotional items."  The company claimed they were doing this to support the school and provide them with giveaways. 

Here's the rub:  Companies like this don't care about your students, don't care about you, don't care about your schools. 

Companies that handle promotional items and want you to sign some poorly written fax giving them authorization to represent your school are going to start directly competing with your school fundraising.  They are going to call the local businesses in your area and ask the local business owner to pay their company to put names on the footballs and they will most likely phrase it to the prospective buyer that they will be "supporting [your school name here]" 

Companies that "provide" or claim "they are doing you a favor" are most often doing this because they make money off it.  Big money.  Don't believe me?  Here's the response from one company that had an extinction burst in the middle of her email and lashes out at the school athletic director.  I've provided her name and phone number in case you actually are looking for free promotional items to have to clean up after football games and not make any money off of....  Here is the well-played interaction of our athletic director (in order of the exchange)...

Hi

I have a client of mine that is interested in donating some souvenir footballs or squirt water bottles to the cheerleaders to throw out to the fans at the home games this fall. They're done in your school colors with your school name & mascot and the business' logo information. Please let me know ASAP if you are able to use these this fall, as we have a meeting coming up to budget for these.
Thank You,
Cheryl Stoker
Promotions Coordinator
1-800-245-6929

The athletic director is no dummy and probed her for who the prospect was....
"Do you mind sending us the name of that Client. I would like to clear that name before we ok anything like that."


The company actually tells the school without an agreement in hand (Well played by the school) and then shoots off this reply:

Yes, I think we will contact them ourselves, have the balls made, and keep the money in town.

And, now...Wait for it....  wait for it... here comes the extinction burst.  When you start bringing money back into your schools and out of the hands of misrepresenting companies, you too will get your own emails looking like this:
I have been working with xxxxx High School for numerous years, providing free spirit items and ensuring them from year to year. We handle all aspects from securing the sponsor, artwork design & layout, printing, shipping and invoicing the sponsor. We ensure continuity from year to year and when a sponsor no longer sponsors the item, we try and secure another sponsor for whatever the items the school is looking to do. I have worked hard to provide these items and secured xxxxxxxxx as the sponsor a number of years ago. I'm sorry you feel the need to be greedy and take money out of my pocket, but I will make a note in the file to not work with xxxxxx High School again.

Thank You,
Cheryl Stoker
Promotions Coordinator
1-800-245-6929

What we can learn:  Companies like this more then often do NOT put a company name in their signature line because they change company names so fast and so often when things start to go bad.  They also normally have an (800) number and a very common last name along with NO website and or accredidation from the BBB... and, for some darn reason, they normally stem out of Texas when you run the phone records.

Stop Being Overly Nice To Your Sponsors

Don't be overly nice; be responsive.  I see this situation over and over in schools and on school district levels. 

A company arranges a deal with the school district to either give the district money, product, and/or services and, in return, they ask the school to put up signage for their company.

It's done all the time and - at it's core - it's a basic advertising formula. 

All of this is fine and the school is set to benefit and then this happens and it only happens because, I think, people working in schools and school districts are genuinely very kind and thoughtful, people.... Somebody thinks, "You know what Bob.  That was really great of Bilbo Baggins Ring Repair Shop to give us $1,000 to hang that banner in the lobby.  Let's keep it up"

And then, like steam off the ground, your profits will start to disappear.  When you leave something up longer than agreed upon, you are essentially doing the following and you are telling your paying sponsor, advertiser, whatever this without saying anything.
You are devaluing your inventory.  Whatever property you are allowing them to post on, whatever medium you are providing them space in, or whatever events you are allowing them access to, you are saying to them that this wasn't worth the original price we charged you.  They catch on to this and you'll never get that same money again.  If somebody calls my company and tells me "Hey, you only paid for one month but we're going to give you the rest of the year as a thank you for free" I'm thinking... whoa, why did I ever pay anything for that.  I'm also wondering who is in charge because why didn't they just parlay my business into another month by calling and saying:Instead, be attentive and responsive.  Answer any questions truthfully.  If the banner fell on the field for half of a televised game, tell them.  Once your programs lose integrity you might as well just stop doing them. 

 "We thank you for supporting Little Elf School District this month.  Would you like us to continue posting your corporate logo and signage in our main lobby that sees 4,000 people per month.  Please let us know.  For your convenience, I'm attaching an invoice and a picture of your sign from last month."  

Follow the simple paths...  Offer to keep the partnership going (in yellow), give them a supporting statistic to show it's effective (in green), make it easy (in orange).   Sure, I know you are busy, but so are they - very busy - and, think of it this way, who is giving who money here?   Take the extra minute and put together an invoice and take a picture of the partnership.  It shows initiative.  It shows you care.  And, in the business it is a proven close.  It's called the assumptive close.  You can call it the Hallmark close or whatever you want.  It works and it's easy so try to use it when you can.



The New Year projections

In 2012, many school districts will make the jump into allowing advertising in schools.  Whether it will be something as natural as putting ads around athletics or as unnatural as putting ads around their sacred lockers and on liners of the food trays of students who are trying to eat their lunches.

I hope that greed doesn't sneak in.  There is a great saying when something is done in the wrong place ("This isn't the venue") and I worry that schools will allow charlatans to walk in and convince them that the money they can earn is worth more than their sleep at night.

I've been lucky to work with a school district that has maintained an absolute sense of balance and we have been both ethical and profitable.  I wonder if in 2012 there will be some sort of regulation pushed through by the government or a major lawsuit surrounding price discrimination or free speech protection.

There are a lot of companies claiming to have a background in how to best utilize advertising in schools.  If you ever need any questions answered or want to get an objective opinion, you can always call me on my cell phone at (410) 960-1089 or email me.... Happy New Year.

No Trapped Environments

You're school board is worried about using advertising as a non-traditional revenue maker for your school district?   Here's the fastest way to ease the mind of your school board, parents, and community groups.

Say it with me:  No Trapped Environments.  This is Edunomics 101.

The school districts putting ads up in schools where students can't leave are breaking the Cardinal rule. 

No Trapped Environments - as a general rule, follow it and it will keep you out of trouble with parents (and, frankly, you'll just sleep better at night).

Do not put up advertisements in schools where the students can not leave.  Obviously don't ever touch the inside of a classroom but also do not go inside of buses, cafeteria, and - if you are asking me - stay off lockers. 

There's plenty of ways to make money off of advertising to parents, employees of your school district, and (with care and discretion) students. 

If your district decides they want companies to reach students, explore your game nights.  This works because:

• It's outside of school hours
• Students pay to be there
• People are used to athletics having corporate sponsors

You'll find once  you establish an advertising program within your school district, you will actually pull more advertising out that bringing in the first three (3) months.  Companies found out a long time ago they could reach into classrooms providing materials, posters, "giveaways" and coloring contests.  Make sure your district addresses all of these issues upfront and, remember, No Trapped Environments.

PA announcements

While school districts are allowing for advertising to sneak into classrooms, hallways and on lockers, Orange County Public Schools has done a great job of keeping the advertising outside of those areas. 

One of my favorites:  PA announcements. 

Offering a package of two (2) PA announcements has brought in a lot of revenue with zero cost to the school district.  PA announcements can also be great added-value benefits to your other packages. 

Check out the PA announcements in the video and tell me it doesn't add to the atmosphere....  nobody likes dead air.  Not on the radio and not in a stadium:

More concessions

If you can identify your biggest games of the season, try this:

Get a measurable bassline for sales (i.e., past sales from similar games) - if you don't already do this, you should be doing it every season for every game.  An easy excel file with something like the following so you can measure what you can expect in the future (trending) like:
attendance
weather
other events that day
team record
opponent
televised? Y/N
vendors?
concession sales?

These questions will let you plan accordingly for future games.  The answers will help you do everything from staff better and not waste money on unneeded personal to be able to charge premium prices for outside companies that want access to your fans.  You can also take it to the next level and put vendors at your largest games. 

Think about this:  If you are a parent and you bring two of your children to come watch the oldest play in their home varsity game, do you want to get up out of your seat and have to coordinate a trip to the concession stands?  I mean bathrooms are tough enough.  You don't have an assigned seat and you may not want to lose your seats so it would be absolutely convenient if somebody came to you.  I bet you'll see your profits increase and you'll get positive feedback from your parents that don't want to get up and stand in the long lines.  And, admit it, it adds great atmosphere to hear the sound of somebody screaming "peanuts."

NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams

NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, story on Orange County Public Schools advertising programs for their EducationNation segment. Aired October 1, 2011

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/vp/44742428#44742428

Placing a value on naming rights to stadiums

There are some simple formulas to help you valuate the naming rights to your stadiums. 

Here's some recent local coverage in the Orlando market.

First, channel 13 ran a story on advertising programs and naming rights.  It aired every hour on the news for two straight days (September 2-3, 2011). Anchored by Kelli Cook
http://mediacenter.tveyes.com/downloadgateway.aspx?UserID=75871&MDID=762356&MDSeed=2732&Type=Media

Channel 9 story on advertising programs and naming rights, aired September 9-10, 2011.

Anchored by Q McCray
http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=1805&DateTime=9%2F10%2F2011+8%3A22%3A54+AM&Term=Orange+County+Public+Schools&PlayClip=TRUE

Proof of Perforrmance

If your school is taking sponsorships and non-traditional advertising revenue streams seriously, take heed:
Make sure you give your sponsors a "Proof of Performance," or sometimes called a "Statement of Goodwill".

Preferrably, these statements go something like this (see below) and they are signed by your principal and/or athletic director at your school level or by a district offiical.  When you can, have it notorized.  It validates your programs and gives the companies advertising with you peace-of-mind. 

It'll make a word of difference when it comes time for renewals.

Proof of Performance or your Statement of Goodwill example:

I can attest that our school has actively participated in the sales and marketing initiatives of [your school or school district]
Our athletic program appreciates your support and, in return, we have fulfilled our agreement to display all of the proper and appropriate signage at our varsity home games.

This includes, but is not limited to: goal post wraps, bulls-eye signage for the chain crews, vests for the chain crews, vendor presence, banners/signage, and PA announcements.

Thank you for trusting [your school or school district] with your advertising and marketing efforts.


School: ______________________________________________________





Athletic Director: ______________________________________________





Signature: ____________________________________________________



Date: _______________________________________________________

Forums

We are going to be doing some forums for school districts to interact and have an opportunity to discuss what's working and what is not.  The first one should be in the middle of September.  Keep checking here for additional details.

The Size Of Online Ads Can Determine Your Worth

One of the most important factors that will determine whether a company (especially a larger company or an ad agency) will advertise with your school district is size. 

The group that dictates size is the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and the reason this is important to you is this:  If "my company" is going to spend money with your school district one of the deciding factors is the "ease of use" - meaning how much do I have to do to put an ad up on your site. 

If your website ad sizes are the same as the web sizes that my creative team is already producing for online websites, the online version of local newspapers, or anywhere else....then I don't have to do anything extra.  That means you should be using the web banner ad sizes found here:  http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

You don't need all of them.  Just pick a few.  Work with your IT department to find out what sizes work and sync them up.  That way advertising agencies and major marketers won't have to pay a graphic designer $90 an hour more to design a web ad just for you...  and that should make you a buck or two.