Thank You Teachers

Today is National Teacher Day, a day we are reminded to say thank you to the 3.2 million teachers in K-12 and 4 school personnel and higher education teachers across the country. 

Teachers create an excellent marketing demographic for many businesses.  Consider that in many areas the public school system is one of the largest employers in most counties across the country and provides an average salary of $50,000 a year.  Also, about 70% of teachers are female.  Large numbers of employees, a livable wage, and predominantly female, is this a demographic that your business wants to target? 

Many businesses like Barnes and Noble and Borders offered teachers discounts on children's books for the classroom, but I suggest going beyond that for business.  I suggest that you consider finding other ways to say Thank You to teachers beyond just providing discounts for the classroom.  Consider that teachers like many of us hate spending our own money on work, provide a deal for them in their personal lives.  Only thing you have to do is decide how to guerrilla market to get the teachers coming to your business by "thanking them" for all that they do.

Thank You to all the teachers who read this.

Fun Fun Fun... For Now.

I just saw this video and had to post it for review. It suggests that making something fun will change the behavior of people. I'd argue that this works for a limited time, but soon people will see the benefit in gaining those extra minutes rather than obeying a sign, because the lottery approach would only work for so long. Not enough people would win and pessimism (or rationality) would eventually kick in when the general public finally figured out their chances of winning were rather slim.

Insurance companies, like Allstate, have tried a version of this by rewarding people for safe driving records. Allstate has a good idea because it's based on individual behavior with individual rewards.

State lotteries that reward safe driving? I'm not seeing a future in this, however, I will applaud a good attempt and some creativity.