hamilton house
public relations agency

Competitions and events can work as ways of enhancing your image within schools, and as a way of getting publicity when the results are announced. 

But do remember that simply announcing a competition does not bring thousands of schools knocking on your door, or hundreds of editors begging for details.

All schools have been offered entry into many competitions that have no interest to them and which they have subsequently ignored.    For your competition to be successful in terms of entries, goodwill among teachers and interest from editors, you need to be:

... and this is exactly what we seek to arrange.

Of course we always try to be positive, but there are so many poorly thought through competitions and events that it is worth showing an example of a an event that simply does not work.

In this case a food manufacturer and its PR agency were interested in getting publicity for the food product, and they had the idea of using schools as a means to that end.  As they said in their briefing to us, "the teachers are fairly irrelevant to us - schools are just a means to an end."  They turned to us, and we tried hard to persuade them not to work in this way, but they persisted - although I should add not with us.

Their approach was to run with a headline that said the schoolchildren could become record winners and win £500 for the school.

In effect a £500 prize is likely to do little for any school - it is a modest amount of money in contemporary terms and is unlikely to find its way to the teacher who does all the work on the project.

What in fact this approach does is illustrate that the school and the children do not matter - the children and teachers become pawns in the game of getting publicity for the food manufacturer through an event which involves becoming involved in a specialist art form.

What is not at the centre of this episode is any real benefit to the participants in the schools - the whole issue of teaching and learning is set aside for the notion of £500 and becoming a world record holder.   While some teachers and children might find it a fun day out many others will despair of the lack of true educational issues.

In other words teaching and learning has to be at the centre of the theme no matter what the competition or activity in which you are involved - and the offer of £500 to a school is by and large not appreciated as relevant by many heads and deputy heads who will need to give their permission before such an event could involve children from their school.   

Entrants

The normal way to get entries into a competition is to direct mail the schools.  To get a suitable number you might have to mail schools many times.

You can of course define your age range and location for entrants – but do remember this: widening the age range might appear to be a good way to bring in more entrants, but it will also put teachers off if they think their children are too young or too inexperienced to win.  Teachers, quite reasonably, don’t want to put a bunch of 5 year olds in competition with 11 year olds or even 8 year olds.  So your key stage 1 competition might sound ok – but what you will get will be entries from the high end of KS1.

Operation

Once you have announced your competition you will want schools to register their interest.   At this point you have to make the whole process simple.  Asking schools to download files may appear simple but it defeats a lot of them. 

You will also find that unless you stay in touch with registered schools all the way through the process they will drift away from you.  It is not at all unknown for 100 schools to register for a competition but only 25 to send in entries.

By staying in touch with registered schools you can help them overcome problems, encourage them and ensure that they do enter.

Prizes

The conventional notion that all schools are short of money and that therefore teachers are grateful for any scraps is not a reasonable starting position.   Everyone wants more money – true.  But equally true is the fact that schools are better funded than ever before.   The reason there is a perceived money shortage is that there are now more items than ever that schools want to buy, and these items cost more than ever.

The prizes you give should be relevant to the department the teacher teaches in (not something for the school) and should be of high perceived value to the teacher.   The pupils should also get something out of it.

Thus a computer for the teacher’s room is ok – but it is meaningless to the pupils.  What the pupils will value is a trip to a radio or TV station.

Benefits

Competitions need to benefit the company both in the process and in the prize giving.   If the teachers, pupils and parents don't feel good about the whole process then much of the point of the competition is lost, and it is not normally a good idea to run a competition just because of the final press release and presentation.

If, however, everyone enjoys the competition and then you have a great prize-giving with pictures in the papers, interviews and follow-up articles, that is fine.

You will also have a friend in the winning school - a teacher who should be willing to give you all sorts of insights into the products and services of your rivals.