Amy G��続mez began her career as an academic researcher and instructor, but left the academy to pursue a marketing career focused on multicultural consumers. After 9/11, seeking a more purpose-driven path, she spent time as a bilingual third-grade teacher in the South Bronx of New York, where she advocated for her students and their immigrant parents. G��続mez’s expertise in cross-cultural marketing enabled her to be a more effective educator. This experience made her realize that the principles of cross-cultural marketing are as beneficial for school communications as they are for brand marketing.

Understanding cross-cultural marketing can benefit a school leader’s communication growth mindset. Just as brand marketers today must learn how to communicate effectively with increasingly diverse audiences, so must school administrators.

From multicultural to cross-cultural messaging

G��続mez says that many marketers still use the multicultural marketing model that was developed in the 1970s, when advertisers targeted their brand messaging to a general market of predominantly white consumers. Then, they’d simply translate or adapt the ads���often badly���for other population segments. The practice resulted in siloed messaging that varied in quality and relevance for multicultural buyers.

This approach might have worked then, but it won’t work today, since 92% of the population growth in the past 20 years has been multicultural. The majority of the U.S. population will be multicultural by 2044���but the majority of the U.S. population under age 9 is multicultural today.

Educators can adopt a cross-cultural approach as they make their school’s brand narrative relevant and impactful across diverse communities.

What distinguishes the cross-cultural approach is that it begins by understanding the distinct insights for each cultural segment of the school community, including Hispanic, black, Asian American and non-Hispanic white.

The majority of the U.S. population ��即will be multicultural by 2044���but the majority of the U.S. population under age 9 is multicultural today.

The school can then use those insights to build communications that are relevant to everyone, but are particularly resonant for multicultural parents and their children because the insights are part of the messaging from the start.

How can this approach be used?

Educators who prioritize dialogue with parents and observation get important data and powerful insight about the distinct attitudes, values and beliefs that characterize different cultural groups. Some areas to focus on are parenting styles, relationships with school bureaucracies, and experience with pedagogy.

G��続mez offers two tips to add to your communications strategy:
– Make communications relevant for all parenting styles. Different cultures express love in a different way. Non-Hispanic white parents may be comfortable with an egalitarian dynamic and negotiate with their children. Hispanic parents may have high levels of intimacy with their children and may be strict. Black parents may instill obedience to protect their kids.
– Understand the concerns of mixed-status families. In immigrant communities, mixed-status families, in which some members are living in the country illegally and some are not, are common. These families can be hesitant to supply personal information or to participate in school activities if other public entities are involved. How do you accommodate their concerns and modulate your communications accordingly?

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Superintendents must consider how their words connect with their unique communities. Cross-cultural marketing may be one way to shrink the communication distance between schools and diverse groups of parents.

Trish Rubin is a marketing instructor at Baruch College in New York and is the author of BrandED: Tell Your Story, Build Relationships, and Empower Learning.

The post 91心頭 op-ed: How cross-cultural marketing can improve your school communications appeared first on District 91心頭istration.

Educators may not see the value of a business-to-business or business-to-customer campaign, but a new approach, the human-to-human effort, may apply to schools seeking to engage communities. Educators serve humans who engage in daily storytelling through their mobile devices.

Connected school leaders tell their stories through multiple channels. Follow them by investing in smart strategies. Educators can build a brand through storytelling that defines and strengthens the school. Recently, Northwestern University in Illinois presented an ������ business concept on how engagement drives value.

The engagement engine for school brand

Keys to understanding the adaption of the engagement engine for schools include:
– Observe, participate and co-create. Use this simple model to share the brand through communication channels online and in real time.
– Follow the lead of top brands. The Apple, Disney and Hertz brands have built engagement from the inside out. Their ���internal cores��� drive brand and messaging. In a school, the core comprises teachers, students and staff. Customers will love a brand if company insiders show their love for the brand.

Ideas in action

Clay Reisler, a digital learning specialist at Wisconsin’s Pulaski High School, understands engagement, and lives it each day. Reisler says students can power the promotion of a school’s brand from the inside out. Here’s how his school’s messaging strategy illustrates the engagement engine.

• Observation. Reisler recruited students and launched the school’s first social media club. In the observation phase, they observed successful social media accounts���including student-favorite brand Wendy’s���to identify effective messaging strategies. The students’ personal connections to the school inspired the types of content they wanted to create to promote their school brand.
• Participation. For students, this was about ownership. Their commitment grew with the idea that ���it’s our school, not the adults’ school,��� Reisler says. A platform boosted students’ and teachers’ interest in participating as storytellers.
  The next goal was to get the whole school to share their stories with an unlimited number of stakeholders.
• Co-creation. The top of the engagement mountain is the co-creation of content to enhance school brand messaging. Students and teachers shared editorial control over their content before publishing it across social media.

To co-create with ease, the club members established a spreadsheet to assign weekly tasks to students. Specific content-development tasks were organized around special events: sports, musicals and promotional days.

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Creators can jazz up their content with graphics and emojis. Interviews with students are part of Reisler’s engagement strategy.

In addition, the school’s version of internet favorites such as Throwback Thursday, Feature Friday and Fan Art Friday invite the community to post content and engage with power.
(Learn more about Reisler’s ongoing commitment to the school brand, marketing and communication at his website, clayreisler.com.)

Trish Rubin is a marketing instructor at Baruch College in New York and is the author of BrandED: Tell Your Story, Build Relationships, and Empower Learning.

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