Can Advertising save our schools?
By Tim Heffernan
Esquire
November 20, 2007
We first met Harvard economist Roland Fryer two years
ago, when we showcased his provocative work on race in
our 2005 Best and Brightest issue ("Roland Fryer's Big
Ideas").
Earlier this year, Fryer had another big idea. In June,
he took on a pro bono, all-consuming job as chief
equality officer for the New York City Department of
Education. His task: to raise the quality of the city's
poorly performing, generally minority-dominated schools
to the levels seen in more affluent, generally whiter
neighborhoods. His idea: Turn educational achievement
into a brand and market it to minority students as
successfully as sneaker companies, video-game makers,
and hip-hop clothing labels have marketed their stuff.
Fryer was, in part, inspired by the innovative work of
marketing genius David Droga (a 2006 Best and Brightest
honoree). Droga's Tap Project, launched in last year's
Best and Brightest issue and supported by Esquire,
turned ordinary tap water into a marketable commodity
and launched a radical new charitable venture. Last
March 22 (World Water Day), New York restaurant-goers
were asked to pay a dollar for their normally
complimentary glasses of water. And through that simple
request, Tap raised more than $100,000 mostly in one
night for UNICEF's clean-water initiatives. Fryer
figured something similar could be done for promoting
classroom success. In July, he approached us for help in
getting the project off the ground.
In the weeks that followed, we arranged meetings for
Fryer with a number of marketing agencies known for
their work in minority markets. Fryer, in the meantime,
refined his goals.
To begin with, one of the big ideas he'd written about
in 2005 was adopted by the city last spring. The
Honoring Performance project, or HOPE, as it's known,
provides cash rewards to students for good grades. Only
performance -- not mere check-mark goals like attendance
or homework completion -- earns the money. There's no
way to cheat the system; kids have to figure out how to
succeed by themselves.
But, Fryer acknowledges, that was only the first step.
For inner-city education to improve permanently,
education itself has to become the incentive. Doing well
in school must become as desirable to students as any
consumer product. That, Fryer concluded, would be the
goal of what's now known as the Achievement Project.
By the end of the summer, six marketing agencies had
agreed to design complete Achievement Project campaigns.
And in the second week of September, before Fryer and a
select group of city representatives, they presented
their pitches.
One immediately stood out -- "absolutely brilliant,"
declared one onlooker -- and will be developed in
addition to whatever is chosen for the marketing
campaign. Coincidentally, this idea came from Droga5,
David Droga's agency. (Esquire played no role in the
decision.)
Droga5's proposal is called the Million Phone, after the
approximately one million students in the city's public
schools. In a bit of marketing judo (Droga's term), it
aims to make education cool by turning something that's
cool already -- a cell phone -- into a tool for
education. Outside of school hours, the phone does
everything kids want: sends texts, takes pictures, and
yeah, makes calls. During school, those functions are
blocked (except emergency calls). Instead, the phone
acts like what it really is: a minicomputer. It carries
class schedules, lecture notes, calculators, digital
encyclopedias, and other educational materials; it can
tap into other resources through the school's own
computer network. Every kid would get one, but here's
the incentive part: the better a kid's grades, the more
calling minutes and other bonus functions he or she will
earn.
This November, a trial run for the Million Phone will be
launched in all five of New York's KIPP charter schools
(a Best and Brightest honoree in 2005) and possibly
others; Fryer is searching for additional partners. At
about the same time, the city will name the winner of
the competition for the advertising campaign. And in a
year or so, Fryer hopes to have an answer to his daring
question: Since good intentions haven't saved our
schools, can advertising? We'll keep you posted.