As often as possible, the marketing officers from each school will gather and attend a meeting called ‘The Round Table’. The purpose of these meetings is to go around and share any updates, enrollment trends, learnings relating to marketing (duh) within their schools. Below is an image of the marketing team minus one person, plus the principal of the school we were at for the day. Doesn’t look like a circle in the photo below but you get the gist!
(Fun fact: the girl second to the left also did her Reflective Practice at the same place as me, and is now working as a marketing officer for two of the schools!)
In preparation for The Round Table, my supervisor assigned me my first case study about WA school advertisements in The West lift outs which I had to present. This entailed going through all the published issues in 2020 one by one to see:
- What schools were advertised in that issue?
- And what kind of coverage did they pay for?
Once that was done, I would record it in an Excel spreadsheet, which had indicated a school’s spending per month across 2020.
Thank goodness for the maths function in Excel which allowed me to add up how much a school spent on advertising that year. From this, I had to gather what were the current trends, any census dates that might potentially encourage schools to make an advertisement for that particular issue.
The highest advertising spending school was a private all-girl school that spent a whopping $54,000 in 2020! Note that this was just a print advertisement in The West, not including other advertising channels. I was shocked when I saw this figure because my mind couldn’t comprehend that amount for just print advertising so I talked to my colleagues about it, which was no surprise to them. It is quite normal for high-end schools to spend that much money because they will do whatever it takes to get their enrollment numbers going up.
As I’m driving to the meeting, all I felt were doubts and my insecurities rising through the roof, even though I was going to present to the friendliest bunch of people! I think what brought me down was presenting my case study in front of people who have studied and worked in the industry. Who am I to tell them this and that?! I’m still studying and currently interning…
When I got to the school, we were welcomed with a communal lunch with the other marketing officers with not one, but THREE types of curries and assorted sides to go along with it. It looked and smelt so good – I wish I took a photo but I was just too excited!
After our lunch, every person in the room was stuffed to the max! But the show must go on as we proceeded with the real reason we came to the school. The Round Table agenda included:
- Each of the marketing officers presented an update from the school they’re at,
- Had our graphics designer present personalised ‘back at school checklists’ according to the school,
- LinkedIn case study and how to utilise it effectively and
- School print advertisement analysis from all over Australia.
(One of the checklists the graphic designer made for one of the schools – how cute!)
Overall, what did I learn from this experience?
- Have some food in your system! Sounds silly but it really changes your mood and energy for the day. Especially in my case where I had to present in front of people I barely knew, eating lunch together and talking about random stuff calmed me down
- Schools can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on print advertising. The numbers on Excel blew my mind away, thinking “why would you spend that much on print advertising?” Little did I know that if a student gets enrolled into the school, the school would probably make a good return on investment.
- Just because you’re an intern, doesn’t mean you’re less of a person. After the meeting, I had people come up to me and say “Well done on the case study”, “That was a really good analysis” etc. It goes to show that if you work hard towards something, the results will show – regardless of your title
See you for the next blog!
Jasmine