The SchneiderB Virtual School Marketing Conference has become one of the premier opportunities for school marketers to learn about school marketing in a CONFERENCE format without having to leave home! Think of the costs savings for your school – no hotel, no flight, no Uber/Lyft/rentals and not near as much wasted downtime.
On Monday, August 21, much of the United States will have a view of the next solar eclipse, varying on where you live (here in Texas, we are going to see 75%-85% I think).
I do have past clients along the TOTALITY pathway. St. Joseph Christian School north of Kansas City is selling T-shirts that blend the eclipse and their school logo together (here’s a link to their Facebook page about the shirts). Another school is having an eclipse-related outdoor party for the kids celebrating this unique event of this school year.
In terms of marketing, I look at special events like this with an angle of doing something different than everyone else. Most schools will be in fall session and if they are, they will likely take a few minutes out of their day and go outside to view the eclipse through the special required safety goggles or through the pinhole projectors best used for young kids who may not yet be trusted to keep their goggles on when looking at the eclipse!
But if you are a private school in a competitive marketplace, you have to think out of the box! Your question should be, when approaching an event everyone around you is also celebrating or recognizing, is this: “how we do it differently?” In addition, on any special day, the local news media is looking for ways that different people in their community recognize the day. In some ways, this is one of your target audiences: the media. And the point, of course, is to use their mass reach to reach masses of people, some of whom are your ideal audience.
To get your creative juices going this week, here is a random list of ideas you can do to celebrate the 2017 Solar Eclipse:
View the “Planning Your Eclipse Party” on NASA’s website – get lots of practical hands-on learning activities to use with your students, watch animations and videos describing the celestial phenomenon, etc.
Get up there – whether or not you actually get on your school’s roof or not, the idea is to create the feeling of getting closer to the sky. Host a brief dance party so you can legitimately share with all your students your amazing ability to lip sync Bonnie Tyler’s 1983 classic, “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (just don’t show them the creepy video 🙂
Make a video – speaking of Bonnie Tyler’s song, perhaps you can grab some creative students or staff and do a parody of that video with words about the 2017 eclipse. As crazy as it sounds, that’s the stuff that goes viral on social media! Here’s a humorous video parodying the Bonnie Tyler video itself (it’s been viewed over 3 million times!)
Monday “Night” Lights – for a short while, some of you will be experiencing varying degrees of darkness, so turn on the football field lights and have some fun! Most field days are reserved for the spring, but there’s no rule in an exceptional year that you can have some fun outdoors for a few minutes “under the lights”.
Monday “Night” Lights (Part 2) – while it may not fit your normal weekly schedule, have an early outdoor pep rally for your upcoming football or fall sports. Have a coaches 3-on-3 football game and let the kids pick the side they are cheering for.
Band formation – this is beyond my ability, but perhaps you have a band director or creative thinker who can organize a moving “human eclipse” with your students. Capturing this with a drone camera would certainly offer some viral video that your parents and news media would love to get their hands on!
Viewing party – put the word out on social media that you would like to invite the entire community to your sports stadium to watch the eclipse. In some towns, your stadium may be one of the largest outdoor venues, so use it strategically and treat guests like honor guests!
Eclipse Eats – you can go crazy with food ideas with an eclipse theme: Moon pie, Eclipse brand gum and Sun chips are easy to pick up at your local store and pass out to students in goodie bags or to take around to various churches, fire and police stations and other community offices. Or you can have a bake off with a fun contest with creative eclipse pancakes, eclipse cookies (sugar cookies and Oreo cookies), etc. The sky’s the limit (pun intended!)
You can do any one of these things and have some fun and possibly create some intentional publicity and buzz about your school . . . or you can just do whatever one else is doing.
SInce Father’s Day happens in the U.S. in the summer month of June, it often gets overlooked in terms of marketing schools. But there are so many things you can do . . . and SHOULD be doing. Most notably, summertime often leaves you with a very slow drip of content because there are no students on campus. So why not take advantage of a high-emotion holiday and create some marketing around good ol’ Dad! Here are few ideas to get your creative juices flowin’!
Here are few ideas to get your creative juices flowin’!
NO MORE TIES: if you are doing a building campaign, invite students and alumni to “buy a brick” in honor/memory of their Dad, Grandfather or special Father-Figure in their life.
DONUTS WITH DAD: just about every school has a “Donuts with Dad” day during the school year – but what about the Saturday of Father’s Day weekend? Use this as a promotional event open to the community. Have a lot of crazy games (host a donut-eating contest, create a miniature golf course around campus, play donut ring toss, create Guinness book of world’s records donut tower, etc.) and get your current school dads involved in hosting the event. Maybe invite a funny but invitational speaker or a fun Dad-band (instead of “boy band”) that would make the event a lot of fun. You get a reason to invite people on to your campus during the summer months
ANIMA-ZING DAD: inexpensive tools like Animoto give you a Father’s Day video template where you just plug in a few pictures and . . . voila! Here’s an example from Christian School in Clearwater, FL on their Facebook page from 2016.
MEMOREASY: one of the easiest productions is to invite students to do a small clip of themselves answer a few basic questions like, “What’s your favorite thing to do with your Dad?”, “What’s the funniest memory you have with your Dad?” or “What’s the one piece of advice you always hear your Dad saying?” Then put these into a simple movie using iMovie or Windows MovieMaker. You can add some fun by including funny questions like, “What’s the grossest thing your Dad likes to eat?” or “When you are on vacation, what’s the one thing Dad says in the car that drives everyone crazy?” Since most students are out of school in June, invite students to text in their videos. Offer an incentive to get them to participate (free dress day, spirit wear coupon, parking pass, etc.) Here’s a great example of hearing kids talking about their dads.
COMPOSITION CONTEST: get extra creative and invite students to compose original songs, poems or other dramatic presentations about their fathers, the role of Dads, or a song that honors influential men in their lives. Ask for submissions and then assign some judges or ask social media to rate the performances. You might be surprised with what kind of hidden talent there is out there – and some possible video content that could go viral!
HE-LARIOUS: have fun with dads on video by asking them to do funny things. Have students compose a text message completely from emojis and ask dads to interpret it. Or even better, ask dads to act out emojis. It’s really funny stuff!
LEGA-SEE: wouldn’t it be cool for prospective parents to see a legacy of dads at your school? It shows great continuity and how your school continues to attract generation after generation. Perhaps you have a son, his dad, a grandfather and even a great-grandfather talking about their favorite memories (it would be cool to have pictures and video of each generation of man speaking, let’s say, about your school’s great basketball program). Dick’s Sporting Goods did a nice multi-generational tribute to Father’s Day.
DADS-SPEAK: a great way to feature the male leadership at your school is to feature them on video. Ask them to share advice they received from their fathers. Ask them to tell stories of influential men. Not every male figure will be great on video, but it might be a chance for prospective families to hear of the depth and maturity of men on your campus. In the media, strong males are often depicted as mean and uncaring. Or TV portrays them as bumbling idiots who cannot manage their household with strength. Showcase your dads who also lead your school! Here’s a Cheerios commercial that went viral all about #howtodad.
If you also need help this summer with knowing how to market your school, we can help!
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