Reimagining School Marketing: Partnering, Not Promoting

Doug Downs (00:08):

Back in the mid 19th century, a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis was working at a maternity clinic in Vienna, and he was troubled, deeply troubled women were dying. A lot of women child bed fever, they called it a mysterious and deadly illness that struck after childbirth. At one clinic, the mortality rate was over 18%. Doctors were baffled. Treatments failed, prayers went unanswered. But Dr. Semmelweis , a meticulous observer, noticed something odd. Women in a clinic run by midwives were dying less frequently than those treated by doctors. What were the midwives doing differently then Came is aha moment. Dr. Semmelweis realized that doctors were often going straight from autopsies, yeah, autopsies, to delivering babies without washing their hands. That sounds shocking today. But in the mid 19th century, germ theory wasn't even a theory yet. No one connected dirty hands with disease. Dr. Semmelweis had an idea.

(01:15):

It began insisting that doctors wash their hands with a chlorinated solution before examining patients. And what happened next? Death rates plummeted at that one clinic. Mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%, but instead of praise, Dr. Semmelweiss faced ridicule, his colleagues were offended by the implication that they somehow were causing harm. The idea of invisible germs seemed absurd. Dr. Semmelweis became increasingly frustrated and his career suffered. He died in obscurity, never seeing the widespread acceptance of his lifesaving discovery. It wasn't until years later that Louis Paste and others would prove Dr. Semmelweis right, handwashing could prevent the spread of disease today. His simple yet revolutionary idea is a cornerstone of modern medicine. The story of Dr. Semmelweis highlights a fundamental principle. Sometimes the right thing to do isn't immediately popular or understood, but if you pursue it with integrity and purpose, that just might change the world. When I say marketing in K to 12 schools, as a parent, you might think, whoa, they're just kids back off. Or if you're the company thinking about how to do that, you might also be thinking, whoa, parents screaming at me. Not good. No thanks. But what if the sponsorship you were providing was critically needed to help kids? Because schools are chronically underfunded today on stories and strategies, marketing ethically in schools serving needs and not agendas.

(03:14):

My name is Doug Downs. I got a quick thank you off the top. Prissy creates Prissy. I hope I'm saying that right. Prissy left a comment on Spotify for creators about an hour episode with Matt Creighton on political campaigns as PR case studies. Prissy said, love the analysis. I love the review. Those are gold, by the way, for independent podcasters. Really appreciate that. Prissy, my guest this week is Karl Mawhinney joining today from Brooklyn. Hey, Karl. Hey, Doug. And although Yankees are a deal for you, football's the big game and it's not a New York team. You've defected over to the Lions', your

Karl Mawhinney (03:53):

Team. It's even worse with a little background. Born in Detroit, Michigan. Grew up in Columbus, Ohio. So Detroit Lions fan, but Michigan fan and grew up in Columbus, so obviously big rivalries. And we had a big win recently.

Doug Downs (04:08):

They've had some good teams in Detroit, right? They just can't quite get there, but exactly. Maybe this

Karl Mawhinney (04:15):

Year. This year,

Doug Downs (04:17):

It's our year. We'll see. Karl, you're the founder and CEO of campus Multimedia, a company transforming school marketing with decades of experience in K to 12 program development with a career, spending leadership roles at organizations like Goo Noodle, which is formerly Huddle tickets, the Harlem Globe Trotters, which is another thump thump team close to your heart, right?

Karl Mawhinney (04:39):

Absolutely, yes. I even had a nickname,

Doug Downs (04:42):

Deerfield, IMG College. And you drive innovation and trust in education support. So Karl, right away, when you say marketing your brand to K to 12 schools, as a parent myself, I'm thinking, whoa, whoa, buddy. Okay. We're not putting pop machines down by the gym. We're not selling Doritos and Fritos in the walkways, but it'ss a different idea. Tell me what this idea is all about.

Karl Mawhinney (05:10):

Yeah, look, it's a great question. It is the number one question we get from brands and really just people that are starting to learn our business and hear about us, and it's what does marketing in schools even mean? It seems like a sensitive subject. Well, when a company or a brand think about their marketing, the brand to the general public and their advertising or their PR campaigns, it's usually focused on what that company is or what their product does or offers to the consumer. It's all about the company or their product. Well, marketing in schools is completely different. We have flipped it on its head. We have flipped the concept of marketing on its head. It's about partnering with a school, not marketing to them partnering. We tell our brand clients all the time that if your messaging going to be about you, it's not going to work.

(05:59):

It just won't. It needs to be about the school, what they need or what kind of value they can bring to the school community, which by the way includes teachers and faculty and even the parents, but all to the benefits of the students. And really with budget cuts happening in schools across the country, you'd really be surprised how little it takes to make a school happy. And it is not always about money, and we will talk about this, but in fact, with the thousands of schools and districts that we've worked with, and even with the principals, the athletic directors, the teachers, the school counselors, and even PTO PTAs, the number one request we receive from administrators by far is that they need more ways to recognize and reward their students,

Doug Downs (06:45):

Their

Karl Mawhinney (06:45):

Teachers and faculty. And it's not money, it's recognition. So teachers themselves, we're hearing of them and spending their own money buying gift cards to reward a student for an accomplishment or a teacher for doing something great. And a lot of the times it's food, it's restaurant gift cards that they're buying. This is just one example of the value that a brand like a restaurant company can bring. And really it's about how we can make an impact in a student's or teacher's life. We just finished when we first met, I told you about a program we ran with Kleenex, and we just finished a nationwide program with Kleenex and Costco called Heroes of the Classroom. We received nominations for stories of celebrating strength and life-changing impact by teachers in the classroom. We made a top 10 nominations and narrowed it down, and those teachers received a thousand dollars for themselves and a thousand dollars for their school, and they were so happy.

(07:43):

But honestly, the best story that came from this program was the grand prize winner. Her name is Lauren. She's a special needs teacher in Chicago. She's been a teacher, I think for 19 years. She's always been passionate about special needs kids and helping kids. One of her own sons, Frankie is actually a special needs. He was diagnosed with epilepsy and has a traumatic brain injury. So she has a very unique understanding and perspective of working with special needs, actually kids and their parents, to be honest, as the grand prize winner, she received $5,000 for herself, $5,000 for her school. But what made the story even more special is that we found out her and her husband were building a special room in their house to accommodate for Frankie and his medical needs.

Doug Downs (08:27):

They

Karl Mawhinney (08:27):

Were able to pay it off with the $5,000 she got from this program. So Lauren's one of those teachers that just defines epitome of strength and impact in the classroom. And the teachers are the heroes, as we all know. So,

Doug Downs (08:38):

Okay, so I love the story because it's brands doing good things for good people. But if I'm Kleenex and I put my sponsorship dollars into this, and there's awards recognition for kids, the special needs story you told was beautiful. But awards recognition for kids, for teachers, teachers aren't buying their own paper to give to the kids. I don't know if they use paper anymore. I'm thinking they do. Sure, physical items is a big request, but do I sell more Kleenex as a result? That's going to be the question from a lot of sponsors, right? Well, I haven't sold more Kleenex. I'm not doing this anymore.

Karl Mawhinney (09:12):

What's interesting, this you are a stories and strategies and you're a PR podcast. Well, this budget was a PR budget. And if you think about that,

Doug Downs (09:20):

Kleenex, okay, what are the KPIs? That's what I'm asking. How do I know it's

Karl Mawhinney (09:23):

Succeeding? Great question. KPIs was not driving sales. That was not the number one. Of course, they want to drive sales. Kleenex is celebrating their hundredth anniversary. So they parted with Costco to celebrate teachers. They decided they wanted to go around

Doug Downs (09:35):

Down. That's nothing to sneeze at. I had to say it. Ready? Go

Karl Mawhinney (09:37):

On. So honestly, the KPIs for us, we had to define them and they were simple from the beginning. Brand awareness and engagement, and yes, so hard to define social pose and stories from teachers and the parents and stuff like that. So very qualitative, not quantitative.

Doug Downs (09:56):

Okay.

Karl Mawhinney (09:57):

Yeah.

Doug Downs (09:57):

Let me break that apart. Brand awareness and engagement. Let me split those into two different questions. Awesome. One at a time. At the awareness level, if I'm Kleenex and I put my money into this program, I gain awareness amongst the students, the faculty, the teachers and school admins, principals, blah, blah, blah. But if I put the same money into a big ad and it splashes across magazines, don't I technically get more awareness by doing it the

Karl Mawhinney (10:26):

Traditional way? Great question. And it's why we are winning more on the school marketing side. While we can gain access to thousands of schools across the country, what we do is more impactful and meaningful. We talk directly to the teachers, to the schools, and yes, you can do a media buy and do get KPIs on massive reach while you can get more impact and engagement with one-to-one, with teachers and parents and their kids, us on a very local and personal level. And that's really what we do best at scale,

Doug Downs (11:00):

Emotion at scale. And when emotion plays into things, memory is so much stronger and affinity is so much stronger. Absolutely. Okay, engagement. If engagement is part of my KPIs, how am I measuring that? Am I looking at how many times do people tweet or post, Hey, thanks, Kleenex for the grand prize award kind of thing. How do I measure engagement on that

Karl Mawhinney (11:25):

Stuff? Very tough. A lot of our programs, including the Kleenex and Costco program, was really measured on, it was qualitative in that we had a lot of thank you notes and pictures from the school, from teachers and schools that even nominated. We got thousands of nominations and it was just about the stories that got submitted. So very, very tough question. Very good question. But what we call proof of performance, we get pictures and thank you emails and thank you letters from teachers and schools and athletic directors thanking us and thanking the brand for everything that they've provided they remember. So that's the type of what we call proof of performance that we receive.

Doug Downs (12:04):

Okay. I got another question. I've mentioned Kleenex about six times now. What's another sponsor? Just so I can pump somebody else's tires?

Karl Mawhinney (12:10):

Well, we'll talk. We have a lot. We work with some gray brands.

Doug Downs (12:14):

Give me another big one so I can ask my question.

Karl Mawhinney (12:16):

Jersey Mikes Jersey.

Doug Downs (12:17):

Mikes Jersey, mikes Love love Jersey.

Karl Mawhinney (12:19):

Mikes recently in the news as well. They're expanding into Canada. I think they have already.

Doug Downs (12:23):

Oh, love Jersey Mikes. No, awesome. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I always have some Jersey mikes. I've mentioned that a few times now. If I'm Jersey Mike's and I'm thinking about taking this approach, including it as part of my marketing plan, there must be a point at which we take a principles-based approach. What are the principles and values that I should be looking at to put into my marketing plan? Of course, that aligned with the company's values and mission and all that, but what are the principles that stand out? So if I'm Jersey Mike's, maybe this is a program for me.

Karl Mawhinney (12:59):

It's actually great that I gave you Jersey Mike's as an example. Not only because Jersey Mike's helped launch our company several years ago, Jersey Mike's came to us and I have a great relationship, long standing relationship with 'em. They said, Hey, it's not about driving sales for us. And to answer your question, it's about engaging with the local communities and making impact. So to answer your question, it's a simple answer. It's not about the school. It's not about the brand, it's about the school. And the number one rule we have in our company is for a brand is that if you cannot provide either value or a need, we won't implement the program. And we can talk about what that means, but that's generally the number one rule of thumb that we have at our company.

Doug Downs (13:40):

What are the missteps that brands might make when they're marketing within schools? But what you've described is really impressive, and I would love the brand if my kids were still in school. They're all in college by now, but what are the missteps that brands can make? Because this can be K to 12. The K part is really delicate

Karl Mawhinney (14:02):

Here. The K 12 is very, yeah, I mean really, really all of it under 18 is very

Doug Downs (14:07):

Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Karl Mawhinney (14:09):

I would say two things. The first is, and I've said this multiple times already, but it's not about your company's agenda. Obviously everyone wants to drive sales. You're out of business if you don't drive sales. But it is not about your company's agenda. It's about the school first. And finding that need that you can provide to them to then obviously overall drive sales. The second biggest one that we find with our newest clients that want to really enter the school marketing space is positioning. The biggest misstep we see is wrong positioning or messaging. I said it earlier, the messaging we see when a marketing team creates their marketing message for marketing, PR advertising, they do it for the general public or their targeted audience. You can't do that with a school. You have to talk to them differently. And we try to really massage the messaging with our brand clients when they're talking to schools. Because keep in mind, the schools are very busy. They're not focused on you. They're focused on the wellbeing of the students and the education first. So you can't just take that advertising or marketing pitch that you did to sell that product and copy, paste and repeat. You have to tweak it a little bit to speak to that audience

Doug Downs (15:20):

As marketers, why is it the middle of the funnel comes last? Because what you're describing here, for me, I translate it as very middle of the funnel. It sure creates some awareness and hey, might even spike up a little bit of action, but that not the goals, not the middle of the funnel. Interest and desire for the brand. You're creating emotional connection. Why do we tend to ignore the middle of the funnel so much as marketers,

Karl Mawhinney (15:48):

It goes back to it's not about you, the company, it's about the school. So that's why we found success. It's a great, it's literally the, we get this all the time. I want to get to the parents. They're the ones spending the money. You know what? But the parents love their kids and the kids schools need things. The teachers need things at school, the students. So if you can provide value and brand and create brand affinity with these kids, you can get to the parents, but do it in a way that's with integrity, and that makes a true impact and do it in a really a gate engaging way. That means something for them.

Doug Downs (16:24):

Do something for the kids and for the faculty that helps the kids. Yeah.

Karl Mawhinney (16:27):

Yeah, exactly.

Doug Downs (16:28):

How should a brand approach a school or a school board? Does it make any difference if it's public, private, or if there's a religious affiliation of any kind?

Karl Mawhinney (16:39):

Yeah. Well, I'll answer the second part. It doesn't matter. Public, private, we work with all kinds public, private, even charter, but Title one schools, we get a lot of requests and brands that really want to do good. They're targeting Title one schools. They're the ones that really have the needs across the country. And a lot of brands trust sometimes stay away from them because they want to target the other areas of the country. But you can make a lot of impact in the title one schools as well. And then that goes elementary, middle, and high school. Do

Doug Downs (17:10):

You get any jaded comments from parents? Because these days we are so hyper aware of anything a brand is attached to. Do you ever get emails or comments online like, oh sure, thanks. I won't say a sponsor's name, thanks such and such a sponsor for splashing your name all over my kids' Dean's list award or whatever. Do people get a little nasty about it

Karl Mawhinney (17:34):

Sometimes? Look, we've, we've been around for a few years now. We've been lucky, and fingers crossed, we have not. I think the reason why is we always have the school's interests at first, and it's, it's

Doug Downs (17:46):

Endorsement. Their appreciation

Karl Mawhinney (17:48):

For what you're doing it. It's we're saving. We're providing them need. We're saving them money. And even on the revenue side, it's because the school needs what we're giving them. We're not advertising to them, we're partnering with 'em. That's really why I think we've been lucky in that parents have actually loved it as well.

Doug Downs (18:06):

Where else could you take it beyond schools? I mean, schools is one aspect of a child's life. Churches is another. Sports teams obviously is another,

Karl Mawhinney (18:18):

I would say we fit within local marketing budgets. We fit in really marketing budgets that for brands and PR agencies that want to engage in communities. So to answer your question, if you think about it, communities are not just schools. They're churches, they're youth groups, they're clubs. There's a lot of different ways to go about this. And really with you being in Canada, we're currently in the States. We have done some programs in Canada with one of our clients plan of fitness, but we could expand beyond the United States as well. But there's over a hundred thousand schools K through 12, just in the United States alone.

Doug Downs (18:59):

Perfect. You shared a couple of success stories be on the spot to try to share a third success story for me to mention a brand, how they got involved, how it helped the school or schools or all the kids or the faculty. Just love to hear another success story from the program.

Karl Mawhinney (19:16):

Yeah, I mean, I would say there's definitely a few. I mean, I would say a, for example, Kroger. Kroger is a national, yeah, Kroger is a national, and some people may know them as Ralph's in the west coast in California because they own a bunch of brands. We do a lot of high school sports sponsorships. We really do. And Kroger came to us and we ran a program for them across 17 states this past football season. And they decided to make an impact through high school football. And as you know, college football,

Doug Downs (19:49):

Huge

Karl Mawhinney (19:49):

NFL, I'm a big fan as we talked about already. But they decided they want to engage with their local communities through high school football and cheerleaders. So we created a two-pronged approach program for them. One that was giving back to the schools and donating money to the school, doing a check presentation, having the band and the football team visit the Kroger, doing a pep rally. And then we did a check presentation on the field. And then secondly, which we do a lot of is what we call our student athlete recognition. I already said one of the things is recognition. How do we create recognition, reward certificates for student athletes, for coaches or athletic directors to reward their student athletes for doing good? So we created a umbrella program called the Kroger High School Student Athlete Award. The coaches were able to reward their student athletes weekly throughout the football season, and they got a gift card from Kroger and got recognition on the school's, social media and stuff like that. So it was a fun, engaging program that impacted the school's immediate budgets, but also engaged the parents and the fans of the football games.

Doug Downs (20:54):

I like that when kids get involved in competitive sports, my kids did. But what they learned, none of them went on to a professional league. But what they learned was, I'll get out what I put in. I'll get friendships out of this friendships that have lasted. But the hard work that they put in, that's thankless, sweat, tears, hopefully no blood, but the work that they put in, they'll get out of it in the end. I've got kids applying that in their psychology degree, in their finance courses in there. And my third son is taking economics and applying it the same way. That's what kids get out of sports. So recognition is so important.

Karl Mawhinney (21:33):

Absolutely.

Doug Downs (21:34):

Really appreciate this crowd. I appreciate your time today.

Karl Mawhinney (21:36):

No, thank you for having me. I enjoy your podcast and the content's really engaging and thoughtful, and I really enjoyed it.

Doug Downs (21:42):

Thanks for that. Hey, in a previous episode, our guest,

Frank Strong (21:46):

Frank Strong, he left a question for you. In B2B marketing, the account management model often puts sales between customers and marketing and public relations people. This makes customers, this makes, talking to customers very challenging as a salesperson is disinclined to spend a chip on a marketing reference when they can save it for a sales reference. Yet speaking to customers is essential for marketing. You can't be effective at marketing without the perspective of customers and products. There are numbers of studies that showing that only a minority of marketing PR folks connect with customers directly or recently or often. So my question is, how do we fix this? How can we connect marketing with customers in a B2B model without disenfranchising sales?

Karl Mawhinney (22:30):

It's funny because there's that battle, always common battle between sales and marketing, right? Old age battle between sales and marketing. It exists here, it exists at our company. I think we've done a good job of figuring out how to solve it, really. And what's unique about our company is we are not just B2B, we're not true B2B, we're actually, we have our brands as our one clients, but we have schools as clients as well. So it's very unique. So the way we're organized and the way we've solved for this to fix this is we have a brand client success team, and we have a school client success team, and then we have an overarching account management and marketing team that kind of serves both sides. So really the internal communication for us is paramount to ensure that the school relationships team is hearing what brands are providing feedback, where the school relationships team is telling the brand relationship team and the sales team, what schools are saying.

(23:23):

There needs to be an integrated approach to conversations with the customers. And we do, we have a sales process chart that actually says, okay, let's insert marketing here. Let's insert account management here so that they start to meet the different members of our company. And lastly, I think we figured out how to keep our team members close to our customers organically. I incentivize both our sales team and our marketing account management team so that our programs are successful and our clients are happy. And then the best thing I think we did last year was we created a school advisor team. It's made up of some of our best contacts at school. So we have some school district superintendents, we have some principals, athletic directors, even teachers and school counselors. We do a bi-monthly call with them. Just so think about that. We've created an advisor program with our customers. It's the best feedback that you could get. And I think

Doug Downs (24:18):

User experience, man, got to know the user experience. Yeah. Okay. Your turn. What question would you like to leave behind for the next guest?

Karl Mawhinney (24:26):

Yeah, my question ties back to what we do in that schools. Was there a memorable moment and or teacher in your early school days, either elementary, middle, or high schools, high school that has stayed a story that has stayed with you or someone that's impacted you in your now professional career or adult life? And then really just for fun, what was your high school mascot?

Doug Downs (24:47):

Okay, I can talk about my favorite teacher, Mrs. Cole. Karen Cole, who lives out in Toronto where I went to school and when I was one of her students, well, let's just say when I got back in touch with her years later on Facebook, she said, yeah, you were a handful. You were one of the troublesome ones. Yeah, that was me. But she was disciplinary for sure, but she had a way of doing it that she disciplined me when I wasn't achieving my potential, when I wasn't what I could be. That's a good teacher, genuinely could be. And she had a way of doing that. And that's why now in my fifties, I remember. So appreciate this. Thanks Karl. Thank you, Doug. Okay, recapping. Here are the top three things that got from Karl in this episode. Number one, marketing in schools is about partnership, not promotion.

(25:42):

Effective school marketing focuses on meeting the needs of the school community rather than promoting the brand itself. Number two, recognition and impact are key drivers. Schools value programs that celebrate and support students and teachers often through non-monetary means like recognition and resources. And number three, emotional connection enhances brand affinity, local meaningful initiatives, build strong emotional bonds, driving long-term loyalty and positive brand perception. If you'd like to send a message to my guest, Karl Ney, we've got his contact information in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies, podcasts. If you like this episode, while you're in those show notes at the very top, click that link to leave a rating and or a review. Those are so meaningful for independent podcasts. Can't say it enough. Thank you to our producer Emily Page. And lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.