Hard lessons in advertising

Discover your own river of revenue at the school gates. Whether it's first-graders learning to read or teenagers shopping for their first car, we can guarantee an introduction of your product and your company to these students in the traditional setting of the classroom."

This poetry comes from a US marketing company extolling the benefits of advertising in schools. After all, it suggests, children are required by law to attend school, so marketers literally have a captive audience. In the US, what's promised here has become a reality: ads have sprouted on billboards, on the side of school buses, on school roofs, and are being beamed in to school televisions.

The controversial "education" TV channel, Channel One, shows a 12-minute "lite news" programme with two minutes of ads to about 8 million children each school day. In the words of a former president of Channel One: "The advertiser gets a group of kids who cannot go to the bathroom, who cannot change station, who cannot listen to their mother yell in the background, who cannot be playing Nintendo, who cannot have their headphones on." The schools' payback from Channel One comes in the form of audio-visual equipment.

A ground-breaking moment for in-school advertising came in 1993, when school district 11 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, placed ads for Burger King in its hallways and on the sides of its school buses. The payback was not as big as the school had hoped, so, in 1996, the school administrators hired Dan DeRose, president of DD Marketing, to put together advertising packages for sale.

For $12,000, a company got five school-bus ads, hallways ads in all 52 schools in the district, ads in the school newspapers, a stadium banner, ads over the stadium's public-address system and free tickets to high-school sporting events. In August 1997, DeRosa pulled off a major coup, making Coca-Cola the district's exclusive supplier of soft drinks.

Other schools and school districts followed suit. DD Marketing became one of the leading negotiators of ad contracts for US schools. Dan DeRose has been responsible for school and university beverage deals worth more than $200 million.

He says his work brings money to school districts that badly need it. He pits one beverage company against another in bidding wars for exclusive deals and raises the price achieved by the school. His price: usually 25 to 35 per cent of the total revenue.

The downside for the schools is that many are tied into contracts specifying annual sales quotas. Back in school district 11, in Colorado, the schools sold 21,000 cases of Coca-Cola products in 1997-98, falling well below their quota of 70,000 cases. What was to be done?

The Colorado Springs Independent published a letter from a district administrator who proposed that school principals should allow students to bring Coke products into the classrooms. "Research shows that vendor purchases are closely linked to availability. Location, location, location is the key."

This rather crass approach is unlikely to find its way into Irish schools, where the ethos tends to be conservative. However, the US Consumers' Union has identified a number of other routes through which advertisers find their way into schools: in-school ads; ads in classroom materials and programmes; corporate-sponsored educational materials and programmes; corporate-sponsored contests and incentives. The worry is that much of the material is biased. For instance, the CU has found "educational packs" which state that fossil fuels create few environmental problems (sponsored by an oil company); or that the earth could benefit rather than be harmed from increased carbon dioxide (sponsored by a coal company).

Irish schools also receive educational packs sponsored by a range of companies, while many prominent children's competitions are also backed by corporate sponsors. Altruism or advertising? The arguments in favour of in-school advertising and sponsorship usually boil down to the fact that schools need more money. This money can then be used to improve the quality of children's education. Also, many teenagers are already walking billboards, from the Levi branding on their sweatshirt to the Nike swoosh on their runners.

Most teenagers will watch television before and after school, so their daily ad consumption is already high. Commercialism is a part of everyday life. And, after all, discussions about ads and their agenda can be a useful part of CSPE and media-studies classes, so why not have the ads close to the classroom?

As for educational packs, if they're accurate they can be a useful way of supplementing the school's resources. Competitions, with big prizes and publicity, boost students' confidence.

Consumers Union is unimpressed. It says: "Parents and educators must unite to make schools ad-free zones, where young people can pursue learning free of commercial influences and pressures. We applaud corporations that recognise that it is in their own long-range interest to provide relevant work experience to school kids and to donate basic equipment and financial resources to schools - but that attempts to peddle merchandise, services or self-serving ideas are inappropriate."

Not everyone agrees. In Canada, a recent survey asked more than 2,000 Canadians to choose between two statements: A) Advertising has no place in schools, since school is a place where children should learn without having products or services promoted; or B) Advertising in schools is perfectly acceptable if it allows the school to receive cash, services or equipment in exchange.

Seven out of 10 Canadians plumped for A. Which would you vote for?