The Education Business Blog

Great marketing infuses a brand promise into everything a company does. It isn't about the slogan - it is making the promise come alive for your customers in every small detail.

In honor of a Thanksgiving traipse down the tryptophan trail enjoy the images below from the Heart Attack Grill. They make a very simple promise and then drive it into every single thing the company does with quality and humor. They are also unabashedly politically incorrect.

They have done something remark-able - people will talk about it. TV news has covered it, blogs have been covering it, and radio is in on the act.

In education - where at least 50% of everyone's sales come from referrals - this ability to be remark-able is essential. Yet we are saddled again and again with conservative copycat sample brochures and catalogs that could have been printed 15 or 20 years ago. What are you doing to make your products, services, and company remark-able?

I'm not suggesting that you mock 50 years of public health announcements - but just look at how they made a big promise and then delivered on it.

I don't think this translates directly into the education publishing market - institutional sales have to be politically correct as anyone who has tangled with the California Legal and Social Compliance guidelines can attest to. The reason I'm highlighting it is that it is a stark example of driving the brand promise into the operations - taking messaging beyond empty slogans that no one believes or pays attention to.

First the menu:

When you are done get wheeled out to your car by a "nurse"

Follow below the fold for more hilarity.

Continue reading "Heart Attack Grill - Great Marketing" »

Posted by Lee Wilson | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (1)

Posted In: Good Marketing , Marketing Management

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In the US we just had the most interesting election of my lifetime. What to do now that all the hullabaloo is over? Take the civics quiz to see much you remember from Social Studies and how closely you have been paying attention.

Take the test here.

The core message - that we ignore civics at our peril - is well taken. Social Studies is one of the subjects that has taken a hit under NCLB. Publishers, to their credit, have tried to help by creating programs like QuickReads (Pearson) that teaches reading fluency through Social Studies and Science. The reading passages are aligned to grade level standards. But don't you think it is a little odd that we have to "sneak" this in?

Elected officials did significantly worse than average citizens on this test. While this sounds horrible - well it is. 79% don't know that the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official state religion and only 32% can properly define the free enterprise system. If you wonder why we have an endless stream of deficits and a soaring national debt look no further than the 59% who were unable to identify business profit as "revenue minus expenses." Sigh.

Or not. I don't buy that somehow in the past we had this idyllic total knowledge of the public sphere and that all citizens were well informed. We have always been free to be informed and free to be ignorant. These days - with information overload hitting us from all sides - a little selective ignorance isn't a bad thing, its a survival instinct. That said - if ignorance is bliss why aren't more people happy?

I follow politics the way a lot of people follow sports so I'm fairly well tuned in. I was also a History/Political Science major in college. That would explain how I got 100% on the quiz. No - I didn't peek.

So in this week of Thanksgiving see how tuned in you are to civics and perhaps learn a thing or two. See if you can beat the 78% average for the month.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute puts a survey out every year. Their mission is "to further in successive generations of American college youth a better understanding of the economic, political, and ethical values that sustain a free and humane society."

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Posted In: Culture , K12 Publishing

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This short video chronicles the rise of credit default swaps and the subsequent impact on the financial industry better than anything else I've seen.

Through financial engineering - not value added - the Wizards of Wall Street were able to create a financial black hole that ultimately - well watch the video. You'll see.

What does this have to to with education? Our industry is going to suffer along with everyone else as we work our way out of this one.

Tap tap.

Phil Sansom and Olly Williams are the filmmakers responsible for this bit of fun.

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Products designed for the classroom must meet the needs of teachers first. If students are the primary users of your instructional materials this may sound a little backwards - but it isn't. Teachers can make or break your product before a student ever sees it.

Designing for teacher ease-of-use should be a core competency at any education publisher.

Today we tackle issue #4 in the series on selling and marketing to educators.

Part 1 - Obey the Calendar
Part 2 - Education is not a target market - it is an industry
Part 3 - Education is a zero sum market

In the rush to get a product to market too often education publishers overlook the features and resources that make life easy for the teacher. The problem isn't that teachers are lazy, as many in the business world tend to fantasize, quite the opposite. The challenges and demands on a teacher are every bit as daunting as mid-level supervisors in large companies. Their time is at a huge premium and to manage their workload they develop detailed processes and structures - known more commonly as lesson plans.

Your Challenge

Your product has to insert itself gracefully into this workflow or it will fail because the teachers won't make room for it. They already have things humming along, thank you very much.

If students can learn more effectively with your products shouldn't teachers be willing to bend a little to make this happen? Yes they should - but even the most elegantly designed product requires the teacher to go through a learning curve. The time they invest in learning how to use your product shouldn't be amplified by additional time demands because your product isn't complete.

Almost anyone can find a small group of teachers willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make a new product work. Don't be tempted to conclude that all teachers will be willing to put this amount of effort in. If your goal is to reach a broad cross section of classrooms you have to design for the average teacher.

Poor teacher design surfaces differently for technology providers than for print publishers. The software paradigm of iterating to success tempts ed-tech companies to cut corners on teacher tools. The most common oversight is that companies assume that teachers will key in student rosters. I can almost always tell who knows something about the market when we get to this part of the presentation. Inexperienced companies will hand wave past this topic - assuming some kind of magic will occur to get student names into the system. Those who have been around the block a time or two will have a thoughtful approach that doesn't burden the teacher too much.

Populating rosters is tedious and time consuming. In districts with high mobility rates accuracy is a huge problem - the average district has a mobility rate of 20% but I've seen extreme examples of up to 90% where there is a high migrant farm labor population. There are simple solutions (.csv files) and more automated options (SIF) but you must think this through.

Textbook publishers have a different problem - since they tend to see a product as complete and done when it is published any aftermarket additions are outside of the normal workflow and are unanticipated expenses.

In these cases it is more often a case of not including supplemental resources that your target population needs and/or that your competition is providing. Examples include ELL teaching guides, standards correlations, presentations for electronic white boards, and on-line homework help. None of these things are particularly hard to add to a product - but they erode your profitability, and play havoc with your schedules - and you can't sell much until you have them.

A Caveat

Is it possible to go too far in accommodating teachers? Yes. The trick is to balance an almost endless set of feature requests and enhancements with what is essential and compelling.

Companies in this market have to strike a balance between business and learning - and the best way to do this is to have a team that is a mix of former educators and business people. Go too far in either direction and you are out of business. If the educators rule the roost your products will be perfect but marginally profitable because of all the extras tossed in. If you apply rigorous business standards only you won't address the core needs of teachers and you won't sell much.

Your goal should be sound business decisions that are educationally appropriate.

The Solution

There are a few things you can do to reduce your risk of alienating teachers with a new product.

• Ask at every turn during the product planning and development "how will a teacher implement this and how can we make it easier?"
• Make sure you understand teacher's priorities so you can optimize your development options. Talk to a lot of teachers, visit classrooms, observe how things are done today. Dig into the details. Make sure everyone on your team has an opportunity to do this if possible. Don't extrapolate from a small sample - talk to as many people as you can afford to.
• Hire former teachers if they have the right skill-set. Sales, mar-com, and product marketing are all areas ex-teachers can thrive in.
• Many education companies encourage employees to volunteer in local schools partly because it is a good thing to do and partly to get exposure to the reality of the classroom.
• Develop an educator advisory board and challenge them to think about the average teacher (the folks who participate in advisory boards tend to be the same ones who would put extra effort in to use your product).
• If your budget and schedule permits, build a pilot phase into your roll out where you do a limited deployment to a handful of classrooms. Incorporate the feedback prior to general release.
• Watch the competition closely. Often something that wasn't required becomes so once a competitor is offering it. Better yet - make the competition respond to you by innovating.

Posted by Lee Wilson | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Education Technology , K12 Publishing , Marketing Management

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In times of disruptive change the cutting edge is the safest place to be.

To many people this seems counterintuitive. If there is rapid change the inclination of most people is to circle the wagons around the familiar. But, when the market is moving, breaking camp and moving forward is actually a lower risk approach. If you are taking risks in your job and trying to invent the future you are actually in a safer position than those who cling to the status quo.

Education Market Forces

The education market is in a period of rapid disruptive change driven by multiple forces.

• Technology is upending traditional textbook markets
• State budgets are under assault from the financial meltdown
• The textbook industry has consolidated into three major players who are using global sourcing to drive down costs for an increasingly commoditized market
• Open source and Web 2.0 technologies are putting the tools of production directly into teacher's hands
• Content is atomizing and moving to the web
• Teachers are buying everything else on the web - you're next

"A" is an incrementalist. In a normal market she will prevail through a steady series of improvements in products and processes. The education publishing world is largely made up of A's.

"B" is an innovator. In normal times B's position is really risky but it is the safer place to be during disruption. Generally speaking there are more B's in Educational Technology.

Whose shoes would you rather be in today? An A trying to hold a position by doing more of what "always worked" or B who is already where the puck is moving?

Like all generalizations this doesn't do justice to the complexity of the environment but I think it speaks to the major trends we see going on in the market. The old line publishers are struggling to respond to the market changes because the balance of power still tilts to the "A" textbook publishing executives. Their incremental approach isn't working but they don't know any other way to tackle the problem.

Sources Of Innovation

Look to the small and mid-size companies - both print and technology based - for the innovations that will drive the future of this market. These companies are being forced to deal with the disruptions more directly since they have a smaller margin for error than the big guys. They are also scrappier in their general approach and more amenable to innovation. I also expect to see change sweep the supplemental market long before it comes to the basal materials market for the same reasons.

Consider the book - not all the innovation we are going to see will be technology based. Books themselves will evolve to reflect the new learning ecosystem. Publishers need to look at every aspect of books and consider what can go in the age of the Kindle, youTube, and Wikipedia. Will the textbook of tomorrow be shorter and have a fully integrated companion site where most of the content is created by students? Its possible. Are you waiting for someone else to try it? Why?

There is innovation going on in the large companies (e.g. Pearson's forays into blended tech/print products) but most of it is not life or death the way it is in the smaller players.

Innovation is needed across the entire business model - sales, marketing, editorial, operations, and support are all being affected by the explosion of information in the hands of our customers. This kind of systemic change is really difficult and will take several years to sort itself out.

So step out of your comfort zone, try a few things that scare you a bit. The first step is just to become familiar with the new technologies for your own use. Once I got started it was like going back to graduate school - it was a blast to be learning new things every day. You need to re-experience this kind of learning - because it is precisely what we should be providing today's students in school.

There is a global community waiting for you.

Related Posts

Here are several related posts which expand on concepts in this article.

Textbooks vs. Education Technology - Clash of Paradigms on the different management cultures and how they put the "fun" in disfunction.

Education Publishing - A Wave of Change Sweeps Over the Industry lays out the quantitative case for technology substitution finally happening at scale and what it means for publishers.

10 Ways to Build Instructional Materials for 21st Century Skills presents some ideas on what innovations to focus on if you want to make real change.

Posted by Lee Wilson | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Education Technology , K12 Publishing

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