High School Fundraising: Focus — High School Newspapers
Posted: Sunday, March 23, 2008
by Michael Crooks
Crooks Advertising Alliance
I was recently asked to present to a high school newspaper class. As with everything I do, I wanted to give my presentation a creative twist on the usual. While the result of my thinking is a great fundraising concept for high school newspapers, the concept applies to the adult world as well.
The concept involves cross-promoting your marketing mediums. In my original presentation, I suggested that high school newspaper sales people could be more effective if they took an idea to local businesses instead of simply asking them to place an ad in the High School newspaper.
My idea for the high school newspaper is to create a bandanna, rally or spirit towel (item) with the high school logo in the middle and sell sponsorships on the rest of the space. The newspaper then sells the item to fans at the football and basketball games.
Therein lies the creative twist. Instead of a high school student saying, "Sir. Would you like to buy an ad in our high school newspaper?," the salesperson instead, lays out a promotional program in which the business can participate.
Instead of simply buying an ad in the school newspaper, the business can advertise a "special" that can only be obtained by using the item as a coupon. This also helps build item sales.
Benefits For The Newspaper? The newspaper makes money on the newspaper ad placement, the sponsorship on the item and from selling the item outright. The high school newspaper sales team learns the value of selling programs and gains real life experience that can help land them a job.
Benefits For The Local Business? The local business gets to target a specific market (high school students) by placing an ad in the school newspaper. They then use the ad to cross promote the fact that the High School item is worth something (discount, two for one, Buy one Get One) at their store, thus effectively driving traffic. Ie: "Show your Anytown High School Bandanna Friday night before the game and receive $1 off a 16" 2 item pizza. Bandanna available from the Anytown High School Newspaper." Admittedly, the local business offer has to be of benefit to the consumer for it to effectively drive traffic. The best way for the local business to find out what the students would want as an offer - is to ask them. As an advisor, you'll want to encourage your students to encourage their clients to do their research. Better yet, the students are already "hooked up". They should do some preliminary research and make suggestions to the their client.
The business reaps the benefit of the goodwill created by supporting the local school through sponsorship on the item. The local business also achieves measurable Return On Investment (ROI) by being able to measure how many people bring in the item for the discount.
Hyping The Program Inside The School
Obviously, the school newspaper will run a great story about how their item is for sale and list the sponsors. As an added bonus to the item sponsors, they could also receive a short article in an issue of the paper, based on a short interview by a High School newspaper reporter. Call it Sponsor Spotlight.
Hyping The Program Outside The School
Remember to issue a media release about the program to the non-school media such as local newspaper, magazines and radio and tv stations.
Tips To Ensure Success
Smart newspapers will print their item with an expiration date of say August. That way, when a new school year starts in September, the newspaper can sell a new towel for the current year … and sell new sponsorships. Most fans who bought the 2007-2008 towel, will want the new 2008-2009 towel, especially if it is dated, carries the school mascot/logo and includes school information such as phone numbers and websites. You may even consider imprinting the high school football schedule on it. Depending on how you price your sponsorships you could consider a separate item for the basketball season or simply combine the football and basketball schedule into one item.
Simple layouts are better for spirit towels. More complex layouts require a bandanna because of the imprint surface. In certain cases, t-shirts are a option to consider, however once you get into size issues, you're just complicating the issue. Best bes?, Keep it simple … towels and bandannas.
Summary
Learning to cross-promote your media is a valuable lesson for high school newspaper sales people. Gee whiz, it's a valuable lesson for adult media salespeople. Perhaps selling sponsorships on bandannas doesn't appeal to you. No problem, because that's not the real point of this article. Here's the main point: creative thinking will help move your student salespeople from selling ad space to selling effective promotional programs that:
• genuinely benefit the advertisers,
• help the newspaper achieve their financial goals, and,
• teach students real-life lessons.
And isn't that what school should do … teach students something they can use in the real world?
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)This article was extremely helpful.Peter! I'm glad your found the article helpful. And I sincerely appreciate you posting a note. Warm Regards, Michael Crooks
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