Why branding matters; an unorthodox tale about homeschooling.

A few weeks ago if you had asked me what was my biggest challenge during this pandemic, I would have answered — homeschooling.

I love teaching and have been teaching for as long as I can remember. I started tutoring young children when I was 12 years old and tutored my way through high school, college; even after, when I taught a young journalist how to read and speak Arabic. Having said that, homeschooling was not meant to be a daunting experience.

But it was. I could barely hold my daughters attention when we sat down to study, she hardly listened or seemed interested, making her and myself very frustrated.

Her behaviour was clearly indicative that our studying sessions were in pretty bad shape and needed a makeover; a rebranding. So I devised a simple straightforward strategy to help me through; it looked like this,

Strategy: Brand our studying sessions as an event to look forward to in the morning.

My tactics included a three phased approach of pre, during and post event.

Pre-event tactics: Informative and inspirational posters; setup studying desk, add set time and location; partner with influencers to promote good learning habits.

During: Start the session with a stretch and a song; include favourite snacks to keep her attention engaged and prolonged

Post event: 30 minutes of screen time as a reward.

I also had to measure my plan through an ROI metric that included my daughter receiving the class title ‘star of the week’, within a month since the plan launch.

For our advertising posters, we got crafty and creative, we made posters that had these messages, ‘Learning in session, do not disturb’! Or ‘School is cool!’ …… Also creating posters for events suggested by the school, like blue day and wacky Wednesdays.

Our sessions also started with a song or two and a stretch, that always helped put us in a better mood; and don’t happier people tend to perform better? So that’s what we did.

What’s a marketing plan without the influence of influencers? After much research, I chose two characters that my daughter looked up to. Matilda, from the Roald Dahl book-Matilda, a 6 year old girl who loves to read; and Poppy from the Troll Movie, a happy go getter troll, who goes after her dreams. I then directed her attention to the character’s perseverance and intrinsic motivation to succeed.

The rest of the tactics also added up to final results, the delicious snacks, the setup and the screen time reward was something to look forward to at the end of our sessions.

As the days went by, her growing enthusiasm also spilled over to me as well. In music, we were asked to compose a 4, 6 and 8 note rhythms and in the first few weeks, I would skip over that lesson, because it seemed challenging and difficult, even for a grownup like me. But as we moved along, I guided my daughter to compose an 8 note rhythm and I wasn’t sure who was more proud, her or me!

Three weeks later, my daughter’s efforts were recognized by the school as they awarded her ‘star of the week’ but for me the ROI that really mattered is a girl, who comes up to me each morning and says,

“Mama, shall we do our work now?”