Businesses have been urged to spend 20% of their global corporate social responsibility budgets on education by 2020 and, done properly, corporate classroom initiatives can be a win-win. Schools receive much needed resources; young people can access new skills and more support; brands benefit from a boost in positive sentiment; local communities are more engaged.
However, if it’s to be more than just a box ticking exercise, brands must consider the following:
Know your target audience
Be mindful of the different types of school and each key stage and adapt your style, content, design and tone accordingly. All children are a distracted and demanding audience, but engaging a seven-year-old is very different to engaging an 11-year-old – yet they’re both in primary key stage 2.
General Electric’s #EmojiScience initiative is a great case study; the brand has really delved into the digital mindset of its target audience (teenagers) to make science more engaging. At the centre of its Emoji table of experiments and science videos is Snapchat, an ideal platforms given the age group’s fondness for bite-size, shareable, image-led information.
The teacher and school is the gatekeeper to this audience, so your programme needs to be appropriate, credible and imaginative for the relevant age group. Consider the difference in schools, too, and tailor communications accordingly. Academies, for example, don’t have to follow the national curriculum. Our overall key tip? Work with teachers early on to tailor-make your materials.
Be relevant and credible
Education integrity is paramount, or your programme will fall at the first hurdle. The reality for today’s teachers is budget cutbacks, Oftsed inspections, targets, paperwork, new curriculums and less time than ever for lesson planning. So they’re open to initiatives that create true, effective learning experiences, save them time, but show how their teaching is relevant to the real world and business.
Equally, make sure your ideas are relevant to your business: to engage and inspire, the campaign needs to be a natural, obvious fit with your brand and what it stands for. For example, we worked with Barclays on its Life Skills programme, which aims to improve young people’s employability skills. It fits with the brand’s corporate interest in ensuring young people are ready for the world of work and have strong financial literacy skills.
The initiative has been a real success, reaching 1.5 million young people, with 74% reporting afterwards that they felt more confident making decisions about their future career. The payback is a boost in Barclays’s corporate brand reputation and staff motivation.
Work within school guidelines
Support, don’t sell. Your objectives matter, but you are on the school’s territory and need to be relaxed about your corporate guidelines. We’ve all seen school campaigns that have flopped because the brand was too overtly commercial or didn’t fit in with the education principles with which it was aligning itself. Think sports equipment programmes funded by chocolate manufacturers, or companies that look to do good but use their programme to directly sell their products to students.
Get staff into schools
Teachers and pupils want to see and learn through real-world context. Businesses can provide staff, mentors, work experience, advice, career talks, site or office visits and of course, digital learning resources that bring the curriculum to life. Manchester Airport reaped the benefits of this approach via its partnership with the Manchester Enterprise Academy. Sending employees in to schools to provide Dragon’s Den-style challenges, mentoring and job shadowing contributed towards the school becoming one of the most improved in the city and better supported the airport’s future recruitment needs.
Bonus tips
- Have integrity and provide genuine value.
- Identify where teachers need support and how you can bring the curriculum to life.
- Test your idea repeatedly before launch.
- Be bold and creative.
Sam Mercer is director of Hopscotch Consulting
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