The readers of Banker & Tradesman are gentle souls, at least when it comes to advertising.
The modern marketing tradition in banking and real estate is to peddle the goods, crank out the loans and sell the properties – all without suggesting that competitors are pathetic souls unworthy of getting any business at all.
Oh, sure, the credit unions and smaller community banks might hint that they are more lovable and chummy than the financial services colossus on every corner, and/or a stray Realtor or “sell your own home” operation might over-promise a bit on the sell side. But for the most part, the boys and girls get along just fine, without a bit of negative advertising.
The competition between like-minded financial services firms and real estate agencies remains fierce, which in many industries does lead to throwing marketing hand grenades at each other. But peddling and listing properties, or extolling the virtues of “free business checking,” doesn’t necessarily suggest that savage attacks on the competition are the way to go.
But where the disarmament treaty banning negative advertising should be null and void is in the field of public education, where relatively primitive efforts at competition cry out for some negative advertising to peddle the educational goods.
For the most part, public education has been free of advertising, in large part because the quality and quantity of product presented in any one jurisdiction tends to be communicated by word-of-mouth or guesswork. Realtors often face the uncomfortable challenge of characterizing the schools in a particular neighborhood or town, in response to questions about whether schools are “good” – which can often be an inelegant query about the racial mix of the student population.
The real marketing challenge for public schools today comes from the charter schools, which are competitors, and yet, still public schools themselves – presumably part of the one, big, suspicious family.
The underlying premise that fueled the charter school revolution is that interesting, important things might be going on in a school that is somewhat freed from constipated teacher-union work rules and other obstacles to common sense.
That scenario suggests that the charter schools must market themselves, whether to extoll the virtues and idiosyncrasies that make them different – or to suggest, in a negative kind of a way, that the charters allow kids to escape from the hideous traditional public school down the street.
Quality Competition
As close as most of the charters come to marketing is to create a brand for themselves – the Hotel, Hospitality and Bartender Charter School; or the Cops and Firemen Charter; or the Smarty-Pants Scholars Charter School. But what is seldom seen is a direct assault on the “competition,” the public schools to which all the student consumers will attend, unless they can be wrested away.
In Massachusetts, the number of charter schools has been limited and demand far exceeds supply, lack of advertising be damned. In any case, there seems to be little taste for open public-school bashing as part of the charter school master plan for marketing. The powers-that-be in public education aren’t interested in a food fight.
As Mitchell Chester, the commonwealth’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, told the Boston Globe recently, “I’m not interested in charter schools versus traditional schools; I’m interested in high-quality schools.” In other words, everybody should make nice and get along.
Of course, the marketplace is messy and the resulting chaos can be unexpected and unintended. A recent study in New York found that charter schools were a major threat to Catholic school enrollment. The Catholic schools and the charter schools were both going after the same audience. Both school systems emphasized discipline and a well-structured learning environment – and, of course, the charter schools were tuition-free, unlike the Catholic “competition.”
And as the competitive pressure builds, expect the charters to become more publicly rambunctious in their marketing – teetering on the edge of negative.
In announcing a campaign to open 60 charter schools in Chicago, the local school superintendent in May was inadvertently honest and blunt: “As a whole, people are not satisfied with their neighborhood schools. Clearly, there is a demand.”
Dissatisfaction? Demand? Sounds like the perfect environment for an ad campaign.
