“Truly absurd?” The case for marketing in public education

You may already know that helping schools build better relationships with their communities is a special passion for Kate and me.  So we’re thrilled to have been interviewed for this article in the Wall Street Journal.

Like many issues surrounding public education, this subject brings out some strong feelings.  (Scroll through the ‘comments’ to get a taste.)   Many ask the question: Why are we spending taxpayer money on marketing when our schools have so many other problems?  For the most part, we’ll let the politicians argue the details.  But it’s a legitimate question – schools have intense budget pressures right now, and every penny has about ten different places it could be spent.  So why marketing (or communications)?

The way we see it is that there are great things going on in every public school.  There are also problems in every public school.  Whether or not you send your kids to your local public school, the quality of your schools affects every aspect of your community — from property values to public safety.  We are depending on this next generation of kids to care for us as we age, solve some pretty messy problems, and work for us in our businesses.  And bad press to the contrary, we think most of the time  public schools do a pretty darn good job.

When we work with Superintendents and school boards, we hear the same things:

“We’re a great school district…but no one knows it.”

“We know we need to communicate better, but we don’t know how to do it.”

“Everyone only hears the bad things…not the good.”

“We’re always feeling defensive and like we’re apologizing.”

Advertising may be the right solution for some situations, but spending big dollars on a TV or billboard campaign is not the only thing schools can do to retain (or attract) students.  It may be easy…but it’s expensive, and in many cases, not very effective.

Our work with school districts focuses on building community support and positive word of mouth.  We identify what is important to communities, help schools use the right messages, and develop plans to share these messages in a way that makes sense, both logistically and economically.  By building support we build solutions – and in our book, that’s money well spent.

What do you think?