• First the Three 'R's, now 'PR'

THE BOSTON GLOBE, Melissa Beecher (11/24/05)-

It isn't as simple as sending a letter home to parents anymore.

School districts have recognized that they've been missing a key element of any good business plan: public relations. Last month, the Maynard School Committee hired a consulting firm, New Media Associates in Amesbury, to look into promoting the district through commercials on cable television in the western suburbs of Boston and advertisements on the Internet.

"We have found that charter schools, private schools, vocational and technical schools use marketing regularly," said Super intendent Mark Masterson. "For the most part, this is a novel concept for public schools."

The $10,000 tab for the consultant is being footed by the Maynard Education Foundation, not the taxpayers. Masterson expects to get some grief from his peers.

"I think superintendents may criticize me for doing this now," Masterson said. "But in five years, those superintendents will be criticized for not doing it."

In Newton, at least, Masterson has a fan.
"You have to give Maynard its props; this is a wonderful idea," said Gil Lawrence, assistant director of human resources for the Newton public schools. "If you look at the competition across the state, some school districts have talented teachers and administrators and are hidden jewels people just don't think about. Newton is a known commodity, but Maynard is an up-and-coming town doing wonderful things that people may not consider.

"This has piqued my interest," Lawrence said. "In school systems where we're paying for books and teachers, the first thing to get sliced would be marketing money. But it's going to be needed in the future."

In Maynard, the consulting firm New Media wasted little time holding focus group discussions with students, teachers, and parents to see what was worth promoting.

The focus groups ranged in size from 20 to 30. During the 45 minutes to two hours they were held, participants identified the district's small size, varied after-school activities, and new middle school building as the most marketable traits.

New Media president Bill Plante said his company was able to get a reading on the community immediately. This is the first time in the marketing firm's 11-year history that it has been hired by a public school system, he said.

"Maynard has played the role of the underdog for a while," Plante said. "It's relatively a blue-collar town in a sea of affluence. And looking beyond our own self-interest, it is definitely true that the services schools provide have moved beyond an academic fortress. They are subject to market forces, like school choice, and every student Maynard gains or loses has an impact on the budget."

School Committee members said that is exactly the reason why they want to create some buzz about their district of 1,377 students. Last year, 149 children opted to attend private, vocational, or charter schools outside Maynard, taking state dollars with them. The town is a school-choice community, meaning that children living outside town can choose to attend Maynard schools; but only 32 students opted in.

It's not the programs, teachers, test scores, or students that are keeping newcomers away, school officials say.

"Our problem is that we're modest," said School Committee member Mary Brannelly. "We have not done well telling the public about the great successes here in Maynard."

School Committee chairwoman Ann Pratt agreed.

"We have not been effective in communicating a message of success to the public or to anyone," Pratt said. "This is a first effort to begin to bridge that gap."

Heidi Perlman, spokeswoman for the Department of Education, said the state has no formal position on schools marketing themselves.

"As long as they are not turning off the heat to pay for it, it's their money," said Perlman, who added that she wasn't aware of districts marketing themselves. "I don't see a lot of districts being able to afford it."

That's what Marlborough decided. The district had a half-time public relations position last year, but it fell victim to budget cuts.

James Jolicoeur, assistant superintendent of schools in Marlborough, said his previous work in business made him particularly aware of the power of marketing.

"Some school districts are larger than some corporations and face the same issues: being accountable to constituents or customers," he said. "With No Child Left Behind, parents have more educational options, and [marketing] is something we have to keep in mind."

In Marlborough, each school produces in-house promotional materials that are distributed to parents. The city recently invited real estate agents to an educational showcase. But without the public relations position, much of the work falls on the superintendent's office.

"I have never heard of a community getting a grant for this, but it's an interesting idea," Jolicoeur said.

Patricia Lange, director of finance in Hudson, said that without a grant she couldn't imagine her district spending money on marketing. "There are too many other priorities," she said.

Similarly, Framingham finance director David Proule said his town would continue to rely on in-house marketing and websites, because the district can't afford anything beyond that.

Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School in Marlborough sends out promotional materials to parents and taxpayers.

Superintendent Gene Carlo said he had never heard of a district securing enough money to run television commercials.

Carlo said he would be concerned that taxpayers who had not heard about such a grant would assume that the schools were being extravagant.

"Fliers we mail out help show `this is what your tax dollars are doing and what happened to the budget,' " Carlo said.

"But we have to be careful of [public] perception, because sometimes perception becomes reality," he said. "We never want a taxpayer to walk away with questions about where the money is going."

Maynard's marketing push will have an instructional component, as well. Students at the school's television station, WAVM, will be tapped to help produce the advertising spot. Masterson, the superintendent, said students and teachers would also help by updating the website.

"This summer the School Committee and I decided that we needed to market the district more effectively," Masterson said.

"We ran through the usual suspects letters to newspapers, newsletters to parents and decided to look ahead and invest in this."

"This is a very new, very novel concept for public schools," he continued. "We normally don't use the Web or television to publicize our services. But I think it's high time we started thinking differently."

• New Media Associates to Speak at Mass Bar Association Event

BOSTON (9/19/05)- At the invitation of The Massachusetts Bar Association, Bill Plante and Carter Welch of New Media Associates will offer insights and strategic advice to help law firms with their marketing, in a seminar to be held in October at the Association's downtown headquarters.

Joined by two counterparts from top Boston law firms, Carter Welch and Bill Plante of New Media will present "Effective Marketing in the Legal Vertical", as part of the Mass Bar's ongoing series of Continuing Legal Education classes.

Plante, who is New Media's President and Creative Director, will lead a discussion on ways to align, articulate and deploy marketing communication. He will touch on the relative up- and downsides of various media, and how their integration is creating a new language by which service companies can communicate their offerings.

As New Media's Director of Client Success, Carter Welch will be speaking on adapting classic marketing principles to the world of legal communication. Welch spent nearly 20 years working in brand management and sales for two of the world's leading classic marketers, Procter & Gamble and The Pillsbury Company. He will share insights from these and other and provide clear examples on how these principles can be used effectively and appropriately to help law firms developing thriving practices, quality leads and healthy brands.

For information and registration, please contact the Mass Bar Association at 617-338-0500.

About New Media Associates
We develop communications strategies and tools that enable our clients to attract new customers and create raving fans of current customers. Our goal is to help clients develop and implement integrated communications plans that increase sales and build brands in the short term and for the long term. We seek first to understand our clients' customers then develop compelling selling stories and effective marketing plans to deliver those messages.
Our clients are found in a wide range of service and manufacturing industries.

For more information contact: Carter Welch at cwelch@newmediaware.com or call 978-409-1388.

• New Media welcomes new Director of Client Success Carter Welch

(3/2/05) It is with great excitement that New Media Associates announces the appointment of Carter Welch as Director of Client Success. With a nationally recognized background in brand-building at companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Carter brings an entirely new dimension to New Media.

Before joining New Media, Carter was a client of the company.

"I hired New Media to produce a client-testimonial DVD for a high tech company I was consulting for," Carter explains. "I was so impressed by the extraordinary quality of the work and the experience of working with New Media, that I began a conversation with them that led to my joining the company."

"What is truly exciting about Carter's arrival is that he adds so much value to the services we can offer our clients," says New Media President and founder Bill Plante. "In particular, Carter has a passion about building strategies around customer insights. This is an incredibly effective strategy, both for us and for our clients."

• New Media offers new state-of-the-art High Definition video production

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What does this mean for your business? Your promotional DVD, television advertisement, corporate video, or educational tool will knock the socks off your potential clients, customers, and associates. And the impression you make will have a tremendous effect on your bottom line.