What are Advertising Ideas for School?
Presentations can be so dull. An advertisement is a presentation with pizzazz. After spending hours fine tuning a project or creating a product, the subsequent advertising campaign can be daunting. However, advertising its potential and benefits to a target audience can be an exciting endeavor that pulls out the creativity in the student or the team. There are many ideas for producing an enticing ad campaign that will show off the results of your hard work in the best possible way.
Ad campaign ideas or school advertising ideas can range from those for school supplies, enrollment in school programs, school giveaways, backpacks, a new school year, prospective students, school websites and other digital marketing ideas. Email marketing can also work as a marketing strategy using high-quality images and graphics to entice receivers to open and read what is in the email ad itself. Back to school season is a perfect example of how schools and students can utilize advertising strategy to create back to school marketing campaigns as examples to their ad knowledge. Templates can be available online for ad creation, as well as best SEO practices for the text and placement of the ads.
Many high schoolers and college students interested in advertising may follow the path of marketing or strategic communication in their classes and extracurricular activities and clubs. Millennials are one of the first generations to utilize ads for different uses, like projects using school promotion, school marketing ideas, and other school needs for benefits made for school shoppers during back to school season. School ads can also be made for promoting websites that host quizzes to a school website’s landing page. Demographics are often used in ad campaigns to properly identify needed audience for certain products or services.
Content marketing is a rising career as ecommerce becomes more frequent and popular in our society, allowing for marketing opportunities to be found everywhere from Facebook pages in online marketing to potential customers in case studies that follow loyal customer buying choices based off of their ad viewing. Video ads are another option, as social media platforms, like TikTok, start to use search engines for their ad promotions and usage to bring more users to the app itself.
Purpose of Advertising
The purpose of advertising is to draw people’s attention to your product. A well-designed advertisement will not only make people aware of the product you have patiently created but also entice them to want to dig into their wallet and support your project or product.
A good advertisement provides a sense of comfort or excitement or otherwise stirs a strong emotion in the target audience. Many students can look to social media for examples and placements for any project that comes up during their school year.
Examples of Ad Subjects
To further understand the purpose of advertising, consider ads that have moved you to action or to repeat and remember the ad. These memorable and moving ads use the base of the target audience’s needs to promote a strong feeling.
For instance, medical ads tend to focus on how a pill or treatment will make users feel before and after. It may pull in images of family members or action shots to show how the medical product will improve their social life. This type of advertisement also uses an emotional angle and gives the reader or viewer the sense that the stigma they may feel about their condition is not as severe as they may have thought and that they are not alone in their problems.
Other ad subjects can appear from segmentation, like students who may be school shopping for school products during essential back to school shopping times of the year.
Advertisement Ideas for Students in English Project
Students can be assigned a book to read as a group to get the feel of how an ad campaign works or doesn’t work. Each student or team of students can choose a character from a book or play. As the students follow their chosen character, they can create posters and ads that support the character’s main goals.
For instance, using Tom Sawyer as inspiration, they can create flyers promoting the benefits of painting a fence. This can be done as a team project, or each student can choose his own book to create an advertisement around the characters or the problem.
A popular movie franchise such as those from DC Comics or Marvel can be the focus of an ad campaign. Students can create ads from the perspective of the bad guy and have the adversary pitch why his ideas should not be discounted.
Advertisement Ideas for School
An upcoming school affair, production or athletic event can be a great opportunity for students to hone their marketing skills. This can benefit the school as well as the team or individual student working on the project.
Different events will call for different approaches. Students can explore how the subject or genre of the event changes the way they approach the advertising techniques that they are studying. Some of the school events for which the class or student can work include:
- Upcoming Elections – This can be from a one-on-one perspective in promoting a specific candidate, or it can target the importance of each student’s vote for an overall political ad campaign. The students may also consider issues that affect the school that the candidates will or should be discussing in their campaign.
- Sports Games – From the build-up to tryouts to the actual event, there are many advertising angles to approach for athletics. The ad can center on the health and social benefits of joining a school sports team as well as the school spirit involved with simply supporting students who plan to try out for a team.
- School Dance – Often the pinnacle of the social aspect of the school year, a school dance can seem like a no brainer. However, an ad team can also focus on any community sales or discounts for dinners, limousines or formal wear to help students go to the dance in style and within a budget. This can be tied into the yearbook ad sales as well.
- Performances and Stage Shows – Shy students may yearn to have the confidence to even sign up for tryouts for the annual musical or production show. A good ad campaign can showcase the benefits of joining a production, boost the confidence of those who waver and highlight the camaraderie that working on a production can bring to all.
- Charity and Fundraising Events – Always a tough sell, these types of ad campaigns require teamwork and brainstorming. They need to be unique and target a wide audience in order to be successful. Ad campaign ideas include pointing out who will benefit from the earned dollars, how every cent can make a difference and what the charity will offer in return for dollars given if applicable.
The more-challenging ad campaigns can be used for extra credit or for seniors who may have an opportunity to work with community organizations and earn college credit as well as work experience.
Advertisement Activities for Elementary Students
Elementary students can create their own product around which to build an advertising campaign or can find inspiration from a product they regularly enjoy.
A simple advertising campaign can be built around a current popular item. Have the students flip through magazines to find an advertisement with the following components:
- A known catchphrase
- A visual logo or symbol that is easily recognizable
- An explanation of the product’s uses
- Details on where the product is sold and its price points
Once the item and its detailed ad have been chosen, have the students break down the ad into categories to better understand how the ad works. Students can perform the following:
- Analyze the colors that the ad uses, how often and where, any patterns of colors and how the colors attract the eye.
- Have the students analyze the main font size and type as well as where and in what section of the ad the font changes.
- The students should discuss the placement of graphics around the ad and any pictures.
- Break the ad into quadrants and discuss how each separately works to build the whole ad and draw in the consumer’s attention.
- Have the students analyze an advertisement for its shapes, shades, blasts of colors, font size and placement of graphics or pictures. Students can write a summary about what they found and how it affected them.
Creating Ideas for an Advertisement
Students are savvy about what they like and what they want. A brainstorming session can bring about their own ideas for creating an advertisement. A few brainstorm sessions to consider include:
- Students can throw out ideas for products they would like to use or play with to spark ideas for an advertisement of their own for that item.
- The students can come up with a list of their favorite foods and create advertisements to convince parents of the health benefits of French fries, potato chips, candy bars or other food items that parents may otherwise think are unhealthy.
- Students can also turn the tables on healthy foods that typically get pushed to the side of the dinner plate. Have the student or team create an advertising campaign that sells a food low in popularity, such as broccoli or beets.
Creating an Advertisement From Scratch
For an effective advertisement, the students should include the following:
- Use words sparingly. Be tight and concise with descriptions. This will have a bigger impact on your audience.
- Leave some blank space around the advertisement. Don’t feel that you need to fill up every blank space. If the advertisement is too busy, it will distract from the message.
- Create a catchy slogan or phrase that is memorable. Keep it short and make sure that it somehow references the product. This can involve the name of the item or what it does, such as move, bend, talk, satiate or fulfill and why it is beneficial.
- Choose a main idea that will stand out in your advertisement to someone who is skimming over the ad. Present the ad to a parent or teacher quickly and ask what the first thing was that stood out to them.
- To prepare, look at products that you have recently bought or for which you are saving. What has grabbed your attention? What about that advertisement made you want to buy that product?
- Analyze the ads behind best-selling products, from toys to electronic devices to food to fashion. Play around with the slogans to learn what makes it so enticing. You can emulate the slogan for a tennis shoe that talks about strength and performance and use it for a product in a completely different genre, such as a backpack, athletic wrist band or ear buds.
Advertising Ideas for Tutoring
Solid skills in rudimentary subjects are important for all students. Students can create advertising ideas for tutoring services that are offered for math, English or other necessary subjects for high school A good tutoring ad will showcase the class’s capabilities as well as how a student can benefit from using the tutoring services.
To create an effective ad for tutoring, create flyers and posters by using the following information:
- Explain your services – List the areas in which the class can help struggling students. This can be increasing their grade, moving up to AP classes or the ability to work with ESL students or students in younger grades. If the tutors are above average in the subject and can handle teaching college-level content in math, English, Spanish or other subjects, advertise that as well.
- Space – Make sure to include where and when tutoring is available. The directions to the classroom, study hall or community center should be clear, as should the hours that tutoring will be available.
- Credentials – Simply stating that the class offers tutoring isn’t enough to sway potential students to be eager to learn. List the credentials of the tutors and any awards the club, class or individual has won in the area of expertise.
What Is a Call to Action?
Most ads end with a call to action. This is more than just the phone number, email address and other contact information. It is the final instruction to the person whom the ad is targeting.
A call to action entices the reader to want to contact the subject of the ad. Some examples of effective call to action statements include:
- Email us today to get started on improving your future.
- Tickets are selling fast, so get yours today! Don’t miss out on the most exciting event of the year!
- If you are looking for a rewarding adventure at school, then contact us today.
- Take advantage of our services and reward yourself with better grades.
- Run, don’t walk, to sign up for the baseball tryouts today!
Related Articles
References
- Bright Hub Education: How to Create An Entertaining Advertisement for a School Project
- Education.com: TV Commercials and Advertising Psychology Experiment
- Canva: 30 Advertisement Design Tips That Turn Heads: Brilliant Case Studies
- The Daily Egg: 21 Call to Action Examples in Writing and 3 Rules for Effective CTAs
- Canva: 23 Tips and Ideas to Promote Your School Event
Writer Bio
Kimberley McGee is an award-winning journalist with 20+ years of experience writing about education, jobs, business trends and more for The New York Times, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Today’s Parent and other publications. She graduated with a B.A. in Journalism from UNLV. Her full bio and clips can be seen at www.vegaswriter.com.