Things We Knew Are New For Others

     This may sound like another Marketing Matter (Tell Them What They "Already Know") ... but maybe, just perhaps, the people that we try to reach really indeed don't know.

     We hear so many things over and over again that some of them become ingrained in our minds - which is actually the end result of a process called branding.  However, once that happens, we tend to block additional messages out, and the continued repetition of a message easily becomes an annoyance.  The danger is that once we become "branded," we think everyone else is "branded" too, and they are, therefore, also annoyed by continued exposure to the message.

     But this is not the case.

     A new parent in our school is not necessarily accustomed to its patterns and habits, its culture and tradition in the same way that a parent of a 6th grader might be.  Or, parents that have moved here from out of state enroll their 6th grader, and are overwhelmed by the level of involvement expected - since all the other 6th grader parents have been together for 8 or 9 years (through PreK and Kindergarten too!)

     Remember that there's always someone that has not yet heard the message you want to convey about your school.  Those who have already heard it can consider hearing the message again as reinforcement.  Those who have heard it time and time again will eventually graduate from your school, leaving a whole new group of people that need to hear the message - AGAIN!

© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2007

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