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After second block on Tuesday, students came out of their classrooms to find hallways bombarded with neon-colored papers. Walls, doors, cabinets, and even parts of the ceilings were covered with countless posters.
Waytown Rubdown and Shady Biz, Inc. are companies that students created for the Entrepreneurship and Business Management (EBM) courses at our school. Through these miniature companies, students are leading their own marketing campaigns and generating profit. Throughout the years, various EBM companies have raised over $15,000 together for local, state, national, and international charitable organizations.
Despite the companies’ creative slogans and marketing strategies, some say that they went overboard putting up posters around the campus. Ubiquitous posters may have backfired and hurt their public image; some people regarded the advertisement negatively, as they were annoyed with its redundancy and the pollution it potentially created.
One student was overheard saying, “Just because of these posters, I am definitely not buying [the products].”
However, the companies accomplished what the business students had originally planned—getting people’s attention.
EBM course instructor, James Page, says that “[putting multiple posters up] is a necessity to reach the Wayland community, especially since students are limited in using other media.” He says that the “trade-off, less than 1 ream of paper, seems fair and just considering the benefits derived; these posters represent a cost effective way of teaching, learning, marketing, and social responsibility…all the while meeting the school’s mission statement.”
Since September, business students have planned to lead a marketing strategy that would make a strong impact.
Although they should take some responsibility, they are not the ones to blame when it comes to polluting the school campus; people who abused the advertisements by tearing them down and littering on the floor are more to blame.
Throughout the day, posters were ripped off, thrown onto the ground, and stepped on by people who walked over them. In some cases, a few students dared to scribble some of their own comments on the posters.
Page, speaking of people who ripped off posters and threw them on the ground, says that he was “amazed at the level of disrespect that has spread and been sustained throughout the campus.”
Frustration comes for many, as people see numerous posters on the ground.
Page expresses his disappointment:
“When was the last time it was deemed appropriate to tear down materials off of any surface—public, private, or otherwise—and litter?”
Anon. • Feb 15, 2008 at 11:29 AM
I’ve seen four years of EBM classes come and go, and each year the marketing schemes AND the products have gotten worse. Who else remembers the days of Chapstique, Wayland Nalgene, and Wayland cinch packs. Not only were these great products by themselves, but their marketing schemes were classy, funny, and original.
Step it up EBM classes, no one wants your cheap sunglasses, silly putty, or lotion.
anonymous • Feb 13, 2008 at 6:57 PM
out of curiousity, why was the article taken down?
will you be taking into consideration all these comments?
Anonymous • Feb 13, 2008 at 6:00 PM
theres no such thing as bad publicity
all these posters are giving them so much publicity. they are all around the school and you helped them by putting them on-line
Shady Biz, Inc. • Feb 13, 2008 at 11:14 AM
You have no reason to comment negatively on our marketing campaign. It’s about brand recognition, son.
Anonymous • Feb 13, 2008 at 10:36 AM
These posters were in no way a waste!
The first round of the marketing campaign was considered a success for both companies, as the posters proved to be extraordinarily effective in raising student awareness of the upcoming EBM products. They also had the effect of increasing excitement and general intrigue. A representative of one of the companies has said that there were no negative effects of the poster campaign, and it is merely a preview of things to come. In response to the complaint that paper was wasted and trees were killed- Consider this: thousands of dollars will be donated to charities, potentially saving the lives of many children. I think we can agree that a couple hundred pieces of paper are a small price to pay for this goal.
Chris M • Feb 13, 2008 at 6:32 AM
“The business students who are leading those companies should realize that it is unadvisable to attempt to capture potential buyers’ attention by inundating them with advertisements.”
You have to get your product out there somehow and at our school this is the accepted way to spread a message having to do with the whole school.
I took EBM last year and we though about making a commercial to be watched in homeroom and putting it on the morning announcements, but the announcements annoy people and rolling TVs into every homeroom is unrealistic.
Also, if people are tired of being bombarded with images they need to face reality. Branding is everywhere, even in our school which is very unfortunate.
“In the real world, start-up companies rarely have enough capital to spend on advertising at such a scale, and most likely, their investors, like venture capitalists, would advise them to balance their spending through other ways.”
Well they raised the capital to buy these posters. They sold shares of stock, I don’t actually know how much this year as I am not in the class, but they raised all of this legitimately, they didn’t get it from their parents (unless their parents bought stock).
“Furthermore, let’s hope that the cleaning-up-the-posters business is not left solely to the custodians. If the companies managed to put up those countless posters around the campus, they should be responsible for putting things back in order.”
To me this is an accusatory statement as if they’ve already left it to the custodians.
Hamilton • Feb 13, 2008 at 12:15 AM
1. I found the posters to be striking. They certainly caught my eye. It was quite clever – previous years had never seen the halls with such a storm of posters. A flood of yellow and green. I’ll agree that it wasn’t considerate in terms of the fact that the custodians will probably have to clean up a lot, but they’re playing on the marketing idea of repetition. You see it more, you’re more familiar with it, the more recognition. So I did like how they worked on that aspect. Another thing: if kids are supposed to keep it real with advertising, that just wouldn’t work. One team would try be realistic maybe, and the other team might just be like “hey who cares about they. if we do it our way, we’ll get more people to buy.”
2. What I didn’t like was the posters themselves. Can’t we just admit it by now? These days, posters have the same attitude or method of drawing people in. There’s sex appeal in huge amounts. I think we’ve pretty much become numb to it. To be honest, when I heard the advertisement for the lotion, what was it, something along the lines of “smooth and sexy,” I just thought, “here it comes again, the whole humourous sex appeal advertising. like I haven’t seen this before.” And the humourous aspect of posters these days – I mean, we’re really become a society that’s embraced what’s traditionally considered “uncool” or odd with a funny bone. References to Pokemon, Chuck Norris, and the like, have now become the norm for advertising in our school, at least that’s how I view it. People! We need a change! Give us something new and fresh, come up with methods that people haven’t used before. To be honest, those posters don’t really catch my attention.