Marketers build brand loyalty in schools
Many marketers try to get their products into consumers' hands as early as possible to build brand loyalty. That means companies are heading to the classroom. Sean Cole reports.
A commercial for Old Spice (oldspice.com)
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Kai Ryssdal: There's a huge branding conference happening in London today. All about how companies can better market their products to students. The Web site doesn't say exactly which students, though. College or maybe high school, we'd figure. But Marketplace's Sean Cole tells us companies are getting their brands in front of students who are a lot younger in the classroom.
SEAN COLE: There's this guy I know at member station WBUR here in Boston.
STEVE BROWN: I'm an anchor-reporter here.
Steve Brown. He's on the air a lot. And one night recently he came home to find a note that his 11-year-old daughter had brought home from school. It said all of the fifth-graders would be taking a puberty education class called "Always Changing."
BROWN: And then I get to the paragraph saying, "and this is funded by Old Spice deodorant and Always feminine products."
Turns out the curriculum is provided free of charge by Procter & Gamble, which makes Always pads and Old Spice and Secret deodorants. It's a one- to two-hour class covering personal hygiene and menstruation. It was developed in 1984 and now reaches 85 percent of America's fifth-graders.
BROWN: And I thought schools were sort of an advertising-free zone.
I called the school to ask if I could sit in on the class. They said, "No." But...
COLE: All right, we have a package here.
Procter & Gamble sent me the curriculum. It comes with a sample pack that's handed out to the girls called . . .
COLE: "Your Happy Kit."
With the Always logo on the front. It's got pads and panty-liners in it. There are also pamphlets and coupons.
COLE: And a little thing of Secret! "Invisible Solid." Kuku Coco Butter is the scent.
The boys get a little thing of Old Spice. So is this education or is it marketing?
Susan Linn, who heads up the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood in Boston, says it's marketing.
SUSAN LINN: Companies love to market in schools and one of the ways that they do that is by creating what are called sponsored education materials, SEMs.
COLE: There's like an acronym for it?
LINN: Yes. And there's a wide variety of them.
From the American Coal Foundation, and McDonald's, and Clorox. And no for-profit enterprise, says Linn, can possibly provide unbiased information about its field.
I showed her part of the video that comes with the Procter & Gamble curriculum. The scene is little Megan's sleep-over, and little Allison wanders away to the bathroom. She stands there, staring blankly. Enter Megan's mom.
MRS. JORDAN: Hey Allison, is there something you need?
ALLISON: I don't know. I just started my period.
MRS. JORDAN: Oh...
Her first period. Dutifully, Megan's mom fishes out a package of Always brand pads and grabs a pair of clean undies from a laundry basket.
MRS. JORDAN: It's really easy. They stick right on your underwear.
The Always package is clearly visible throughout this shot.
LINN: And that's the whole purpose of this video, really. If it wasn't the purpose of the video, they wouldn't have product placement in it.
LELA COFFEY: Honestly, in this company, as cheesy as it can sound sometimes, we go beyond the products that we sell to really understanding how to help the consumer behind the products.
Lela Coffey is an associate marketing director for Always. But she says marketing is 100 percent not the intent of the curriculum. Puberty is scary and P&G wants to help. And sure there might be some corporate benefit.
COFFEY: And it would be disingenuous of me to say that we don't believe that that benefit is there, but if we were choosing to directly market at these girls, I think the program would look a lot different than it does.
The branding would be more blatant, she says. But Susan Linn isn't convinced. And, Linn says, in this economy, underfunded schools might make room for more sponsored materials.
LINN: You know, I hear from teachers a lot. "These materials come in, they're free, they're colorful, they're engaging. You know, what am I supposed to do?"
Question is, intentional or not, do they work as marketing? Will Steve Brown's daughters grow up to use Always and Secret?
BROWN: My wife has trained them well. They will use what's on sale.
In Boston, I'm Sean Cole for Marketplace.
This story was brought to you by the makers of candles, broccoli and finger paint.
Comments
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From cincinnati, OH, 04/23/2009
I am a school nurse and I live in Cincinnati. I caught your story last night and could not believe the irony. I live in the city that is the home of P&G. I can't get these free programs and samples for dental and puberty education any more. To my knowledge P&G has stopped the practice and much to my dissapointment. It was always a crowd pleaser and almost a right of passage. To heck with brand loyalty. The school district and the kids I serve can't afford bandaids much less name brand feminine hygiene products. I have always been glad just to get the supplies! Seriously, I have kids that have to share tooth brushes with siblings if they have them at all. And here's news for your reporters, dental caries are caused by a bacteria that is not naturally occurring in your mouth. It has to be introduced. It is a communicable disease! Kids should not share tooth brushes and children die from dental abcesses. By the way, The puberty video really isn't that bad. It engages the 4th to 5th grade girls better than some others I've had the pleasure to view and this is the perfect time of year to show it because, this is when my 5th & 6th grade teachers start complaing that the funk has returned. I'll take the smell of Old Spice and Secret over puberty funk any day. So,if anyone at P&G is listening, the 1st graders prefer "Geena's Tooth Adventure" to the "Spakle" video for dental hygiene. The love to sing "New Teeth Coming Your Way" but King Cavity wins hands down.
From Oakland, CA, 04/23/2009
There are many source of FREE educational material. Corporate marketers are not the only game in town. For just one example, the Annenberg Foundation has many free online video lessons at http://www.learner.org/
From Oakland, CA, 04/23/2009
I wonder what type of user-license the educators must agree to in order to use these types of Sponsored Educational Materials. Can they modify them to correct any inaccuracies or to provide a more balanced perspective?
From Scarsdale, NY, 04/23/2009
My son came home yesterday and proudly showed off his very own Old Spice deodorant! I appreciate P&G's marketing efforts - it's actually an ingenious strategy for encouraging good hygiene among otherwise unwilling adolescents. Marketing companies have an intimate knowledge of the target audience based on significant research investment so they're able to assemble a curriculum for these subjects that is likely more focused than a school-developed program.
From waterbury, CT, 04/23/2009
I remember this in school. But it made no difference in my purchasing decisions. AND - I am all for this because the truth is our schools need money - they need textbooks and supplies and heat andi desks and basic equippment so if showing my daughter some always pantiliners means she gets a better education, then I say show away.
From Boston, MA, 04/23/2009
I saw this, or a very similar video when I was a fifth grader in the early 90's. And got my little trial pack of pads and really at that age, you use what your parents buy you. When you get older, you make your preferences based on experiences and price. I don't think it overly effected my purchasing decisions.
From Payson, UT, 04/22/2009
The reality is, who else is going to pay for the education?
From Atlanta, GA, 04/22/2009
As I was listening to this story, I had to laugh. Now that you've mentioned it, I remember someone from Tampax came and gave our classroom full of girls (the boys were somewhere else)a lesson about what type of feminine products we could use when we got our periods and how to use them properly. She didn't explicitly say, "Use Tampax," but it says something that I remember where she was from. This was when I was in middle school; I'm 20 now.
You asked:
"Question is, intentional or not, do they work as marketing? Will Steve Brown's daughters grow up to use Always and Secret?"
Maybe I started off using Tampax, but I switched to OB shortly afterward.
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