Back to school: Using teachers as brand ambassadors.

March 11th, 2010 by Julie Napieralski

If you have a consumer health product designed for kids, then you know how important it is to get moms to interact with your brand. But did you also know that teachers could be highly influential resources to moms, dads, and kids alike? After all, teachers are often parents, too, and they spend a majority of their day with our kids. When executed correctly, teachers can be a valuable resource for building your brand.

Take Insight Pharmaceuticals, for example, which launched Sucrets ICE—a novel frozen lozenge for sore throats—at the start of the 2008 cough and cold season. Leveraging social media, Martino Flynn made big waves for the brand among a host of highly influential mommy bloggers.

In 2009, Insight wanted to reach out directly to moms and kids during the cough and cold season. To do this, Insight teamed up with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment—which had just released its latest “Ice Age” movie on DVD—and developed an in-school curriculum designed to make the cough and cold season “cool” with the “Save the Polar ICE Caps!” challenge.

The causal campaign included valuable lesson plans aimed at helping kids think about the environment and a contest that challenged school-aged kids to submit a billboard concept—illustrating what they would do to save the polar ice caps from the threat of global warming—online at www.SucretsICEChallenge.com. Teachers all across the country received a curriculum that included homework assignments for parent interaction and fun lessons for their kids, all while interacting with the Sucrets ICE brand. Entry collection just ended and a winner will be announced at the end of the cough and cold season in March. Meanwhile, Insight has received hundreds of positive reviews from teachers suggesting how much they value this type of branded content.

Teachers can be a valuable resource to health care marketers who are trying to reach kids. And if appropriate for your product, developing an in-school curriculum that is fun and engaging for this audience is another way to help build support for your brand.

— Julie Napieralski

This entry was posted by Julie Napieralski on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 and is filed under Blogging, Clients, Health Care Marketing, MF, Marketing, ROI, Social Media, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.