Hoekstra's Bicycle Logo

Noticed while walking the pooches yesterday morning, that Republican candidate for Michigan's governor Pete Hoekstra's campaign yard signs include a little red-white-and-blue bicycle.  I did not realize he was part of the bike caucus in the U.S. House (his current job).  So, I looked up his record on environmental issues.

Now I see why I wouldn't realize he was bike enthusiast.

Michigan's Nutty Schools Count Day

Michigan counts students on two days (yesterday was worth 80% and one day in Feb. from last school year is worth 20%).  This is then used as a basis for calculating student populations that is used for deciding funding.  I find "count day" to be a particularly annoying and disingenuous part of the school year in Michigan for two reasons:

First, if you are truly trying to figure out how many students attend a school, counting them on two days a year is going to produce a skewed result.  In other words, its not a statistically valid way to measure the population that actually attends the school when that population is artificially inflated (or at least can be).  I know they are trying to measure the census (that's everyone) that should be in the schools. But statistically speaking, the schools are only teaching a sample of the census.  So to be accurate, they should be measuring the samples. 

The second annoying part is, if you have to entice students to show up for school with TVs (does that strike anyone else as ironic?), laptops, and Ipods, then maybe you actually don't need the funding for these students?  And just out of curiosity, who is paying for that big screen TV and other electronics?  Does that come out of the school budget?  Is there a $10,000 "Count Day Prize Budget"?  No, actually there is a $500,000 "count day" budget (sort of).

I know. I get it.  It's all about school funding and school choice.  And don't get me wrong, I don't want to see funding fall for Detroit Public Schools... lord knows they can't afford to lose any more cash, and we as a state certainly don't spend enough on inner-city schools to begin with.  And, yeah, the current system is designed to be stacked in favor of large urban school systems (DPS isn't the only one with these count day incentives).  It's much easier to bolster attendance for two days rather than 40 or 50 days.  But, if you want school funding based on accuracy, then this isn't the way to do it.

I am annoyed by the prizes, but the $500,000 budget isn't actually just to get kids into school for one day.  It's a campaign to have parents choose to keep their kids in DPS. In that sense, this is probably a good way to spend money.  However, aiming for this one day, well, that's ridiculous.

I'm happy to say that DPS Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb, appears to understand this.  He told WDIV:

...he’d continually fight to keep students in the district, including contacting parents to reassure them of the quality education their children get in a DPS school.
“Those are the parents we are going to start reaching out to throughout the year," Bobb said. "For all those children that are leaving the district and moving to other schools, our campaign will continue."

Well, I hope he does continue to fight.  And to keep him honest, if I were in control, I drop this "count day" nonsense.  I'd make it "count weeks" (one or two weeks a month for as many months as I could get) and then calculate the daily average to use as a base for the funding. 

The other side benefit to doing it this, is IF you can get more kids to come to one particular school AND show up for school during count weeks, then you might actually get some consistency and be able teach them something too (and isn't that really the point??) --  note the big "if".

Obviously, if you are going to do this, then you have to address the funding disparity between suburban schools and inner-city schools.  One thought on this might be to dump the separate school systems funding as they are now.  Why not shift to funding based on county-wide counts, instead of separate districts?  Heck, while we're at it, why not dump the separate districts all together and make county-wide districts?  I know, parents at every other Wayne County school district will pitch a fit at having to help clean up the mess and corruption at DPS.... 

Anyway, that's obviously a whole different can of worms.  However, with the state teetering on the brink of insolvency (or should that be tumbling over the edge?), I have to wonder if there is an opportunity here to change either Count Day or even the school system structure to help DPS make the most of substantially smaller state funding overall.

Afterglow

Yesterday's festivities were very inspiring. I am feeling the hope that we've been hearing so much about over the past year. The crowds, the music, the speech... I am feeling as though today is really the start of the new year. So, let me wish everyone a Happy New Year!

If we can just get past this debacle of a stimulus package, then I think that we may have a great new era of politics. I know that's a giant hurdle, but I'm "hopeful" today.

Are Spokespeople really Tweeting?

After having a discussion about how twitter is actually used for business purposes yesterday (something I'm still not sold on), I was reminded of this op-ed piece by Jonathan Salem Baskin in Ad Age. Baskin says:

We live in an era when people find time during the business day to tell one another what they've just put in their coffee, yet it's still possible for an executive to be "unavailable for comment" in a news story.
I find this intriguing in a quaint sort of way. It's like saying, "Sorry, he's buttoning his spats" or "Sorry, she can't come to the phone; she's busy sorting punch cards."
I think corporate communicators need to invent a better excuse, or perhaps altogether revise their approach to unwanted inquiries from the media.

As I re-read this, I had to wonder, are there really spokespeople out there who are updating on twitter and facebook, while having admins tell the press they aren't available? I'm sure there are a few, but I have to think this is the exception, not the rule. I suppose that they think their privacy filters are enough to block media folks who seeking comment, but I'm not sure this something that I'd trust. Besides, as Baskin points out, others in the department are likely to be busy blogging, tweeting, facing, etc. about it anyway. I like Baskin's idea of dumping the "on the record" concept altogether:

What does "on the record" mean anyway? It's an archaic idea. Today's social mediaverse means every tidbit of content gets captured online by somebody, with or without veracity or attribution. To paraphrase Tom Friedman, the world is hot, flat and noisy. Nothing is off the record.

As I read this is threw my brain into an interesting historical parallel. My wife and I were pretending like we old last night and watched a history of the White House during Lincoln's presidency on C-SPAN. One of the most intriguing things from this was that Lincoln used to have several hours during the week that the public was welcomed into the White House to give their opinion in-person directly to Lincoln. Talk about tossing out the concept of "the record"! Can't imagine that these days, though I wish we could.

Wouldn't it be great if a president (of either the U.S. or a corporation) set up a feedback opinion loop like that, that was actually monitored? And no, it doesn't need to be twitter - sheesh, talk about minutia overload!

There's a lesson in all of this.

In the words of reality tv show fans, the world is a "hot mess" (if you listen to the pundits, that is). That's part of the reason why President-elect Obama's message of Hope played so well this election season. But there are other marketing-related reasons why he did so well...
- he had a much more consistent and singular message than his rival
- he had a huge following of younger activists that were engaged and participating
- he presented a compelling image that was easy to understand and get behind

I'm not at all going to dive into the specifics of policies between the two campaigns or examine ideology or tax policy or anything political really, that's not the point to this article. But what I do want to look further into a few things that I gleaned from that second point...

Obama's campaign was very effective at "getting out the vote." A lot of individuals got involved and many, I believe, felt a tangible part of Obama's election because of their participation. (Ok, I'm not going to argue that this is a simplistic view of what occured, but again, we're not talking politics in this article, its just to see the lesson for us marketers. And that's all.) I have several friends who participated in the Obama campaign, some traveling great distances to canvass or offer help. Some took time off work to do community events for Obama. And when I speak to them about it (once you get past the politics), the reason is because they felt they were physically doing something that they were passionate about.

Earlier I posted an article about DIY projects and why those appeal to me. I suspect that there are fundamentally similar things going on deep inside the brain of community activists for Obama: These community activities are hands-on, they are interesting (moreso than people's day-to-day activities), they are social, and a fourth item (not included in the DIY article but I think applies to both), is that they tap into people's passion (you may not be passionate about calling strangers during dinnertime, but are passionate about the cause).

There's three important lessons for marketers in this:

1. To get interest from people to participate in your branding or marketing, you are going to have to make it interesting, hands-on, and social. Just putting a message out there, that doesn't have aspects these three things is going to be dropped quickly by target consumers.
2. To compel people (stronger than just interest in), you have to tap into their passion.
3. Finally, the conversion to action for both the campaign and a brand is a critical final step, that is often ignored

That final step of converting "potential customers" into current customers is what is going to make the difference between an interesting conversation with folks vs. having a business relationship with them.