Using schools, students for fast-food ad campaigns

Students, teachers, principals and parents in the Jackson school district are participating in a clever fundraising campaign.

It's innovative, and it probably will be successful.

But is it appropriate?

Last week, I, along with many other parents in the school district, received fliers about this new campaign. I also received an email from the principal encouraging my family to participate.

The campaign is a partnership with a certain fast-food place. In large type across the top, the flier announces a hashtag referring to the fast-food restaurant and is labeled as a "social media fundraiser."

It includes the following instructions (I'm excluding the name of the fast-food place so as not to draw more attention to the brand):

• Grab your favorite restaurant product.
• Take a picture of yourself enjoying your product and wearing your red and black Jackson pride.
• Post your picture to Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag, to be entered to win a free popular sandwich for a year.
• The fast-food place will donate $1 for every post/tweet to the Jackson R-2 School District Foundation.

The campaign was scheduled to run from April 20 through today.

In the email that notified parents of the campaign, it was explained that the fast-food place would give three ice cream treat parties to teachers. The winners would be selected from those teachers and students who participated.

As a father of three children -- two in elementary and one in high school -- in the Jackson School District, I'm a big fan of the schools. I'm also a frequent customer of this particular fast-food place. I have no problem with either entity, but the relationship between the private and public enterprises has taken a new step with this campaign.

The fast-food restaurant is now leveraging principals, teachers, students and community pride for blatant advertising purposes. It's a subtle change from the teacher nights that are held a couple of times a year. Those campaigns, which are done everywhere, invite students and their families to the restaurants to buy food in exchange for a percentage of the proceeds going to the schools. This is a gray area in itself.

But now the business is asking students and their families to take another step. The restaurant still is asking students and families to purchase its product, but it no longer is sharing proceeds with the district. Instead, it is asking students and parents to consume -- and then advertise -- the product in exchange for a donation to the district.

The purpose of this column is to bring awareness to two issues:

1. Do our schools and their fundraising arms understand the value they are giving away to private enterprises?

2. Are we OK with advertising campaigns being funneled through our public school systems?

A third question that I won't go into great detail about, but is worth asking: Is this business worth promoting by our schools from a public health standpoint? Certainly, the district is promoting fast food, including as a prize a free burger with special sauce for a year. The sandwich has 23 grams of fat, 42 grams of carbs and 467 calories. Again, I choose to eat at this restaurant several times a week; but I don't know that the district should be promoting it, based on its own health and wellness policy that can be found on the district's website.

The Jackson School Foundation does a lot of great things. I talked to the foundation director, Meredith Pobst, who couldn't have been more friendly and direct in answering my questions. She pointed out that just last year the foundation gave away $31,000 in teaching and learning grants, including a $13,000 grant for technology at the junior high school. Much of the funding was raised through events such as the Red and Black Affair, a dress-up banquet. The semiannual fast-food teacher nights raise on average about $1,200 for the foundation.

The foundation is pushing the limits and willing to experiment, as evidenced by the latest campaign, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The fast-food place is clearly bringing innovation to the mix as well. The campaign is very smart.

But I think it's also smart to step back and evaluate exactly what is going on here. I have no doubt the owners of the fast-food restaurant are thrilled to help the school district. This particular fast-food business is highly thought of in Jackson. The chamber of commerce has given it a major award in recent years.

At the same time, if you live in Jackson, you understand clearly how much the school district, the town's nucleus, is valued by our community. The school pride is palpable, and that extends to the business community as well.

Fast-food joints, though, don't offer any educational value to our students. There are no obvious educational or physical health benefits to our children for being involved with fast-food places. The students only benefit indirectly from the money that goes to the foundation.

But there are direct and tangible benefits to the business.

Let's break down what the business receives:

• Free delivery of 5,000 fliers to its target audience (fliers provided by the business)
• Access to the best "brand" in town, the Jackson Indians, the school district and the pride that goes with it
• Email blasts to parents (numbering in the thousands; both parents of one student are emailed separately in some cases) promoting its product
• Guaranteed word-of-mouth marketing by teachers, particularly in the classroom to impressionable students
• The leverage of classroom contests that create peer pressure to encourage participation
• Posts of photos of a business and product, using a hashtag bearing your name, with a reach numbering in the thousands.

How much is all of that worth?

Certainly more than $1 per post, three ice cream parties and free sandwiches.

Pobst said one of the reasons the foundation has adopted the new approach is because the teacher night campaign had, in a way, become too successful.

During the four-hour promotion of the teachers night (in which customers would cast votes to foundation volunteers at the drive-thru for their favorite teacher for parties), so many people were participating it was backing up traffic on East Jackson Boulevard. So that was a problem, and the limited time frame discouraged participation from some who had made other plans. The foundation was looking to get more people involved over a longer period of time. Makes sense from that side of the equation.

About two days into the campaign, there were 23 posts on Twitter with the hashtags. I was unable to determine how many were posted to Facebook. Several of my Facebook friends, most of whom are district employees, had posted photos.

I think it's safe to say that as of midday Thursday, fewer than 100 photos/hashtags were posted. That doesn't mean the campaign wasn't working. But it does mean the fast- food restaurant is getting a huge return on its marketing dollars. Think about those posts and how many followers will see the images and fast-food branding. The numbers quickly add up. For $1 per post, that's a good deal for the private enterprise, even if the campaign were to have stopped then.

The direct mailing costs for 5,000 fliers in the Jackson area and the purchase of an email list the size of the one Jackson uses to reach parents of students would cost several hundred dollars. And that's not including the attention of children, a prime demographic, and the hiring of independent contractors as salesmen (teachers).

In my view, the philanthropic nature of contributing to a school should be, at the most, a break-even proposition for a business. The private enterprise should not be getting more out of the arrangement than the public body. In my mind, the school should not be seen as a place on which to capitalize.

Can there be mutual benefits? Sure.

To make that equation work, it's important we understand the value the district is bringing to the table. And let's also remember that the district's purpose is to teach students, not to help businesses reach audiences.

Pobst said the foundation board was looking at this scenario as a way to solve a participation problem, and hadn't looked at the marketing offered by the school from a dollar value standpoint. The campaign is an experiment. Risks are worth taking.

But the foundation and the district need to go into such arrangements with eyes wide open.

Now, to the question of whether we should allow such social media campaigns, Missouri's Department of Secondary Education says it isn't aware of any laws that regulate school fundraising or advertising. I think the district needs to rein this in. There is a difference between being a customer and an advocate.

Being a customer is enough, maybe too much, to expect in return for a donation to a school. But let's not be turning our students into human billboards just to raise a dollar.

The campaign is a clever idea, and it is useful for spreading school pride. But the business gains too much, and the district too little.

Unfortunately, I'm not lovin' it.

Bob Miller is editor of the Southeast Missourian.