JANE CORBIN:
Tough times demand imaginative marketing strategies in the search for new
customers. The supermarket chain, Sainsbury, which has recently reported
disappointing results, is promising extra funding for schools when parents
collect shopping vouchers at it's stores. But it's not just parents the
advertisers are after. What better way of promoting a brand name than making
it familiar to children - as young as five. Teachers are being bombarded
with free educational material, sponsored by household names like McDonald's
or sega. Jane Renton investigates whether companies are contributing
to the curriculum or just harnessing the pester power of kids.
ACTUALITY/CHILDREN: (singing) A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken
and a Pizza Hut. McDonald's, McDonald's...
JANE RENTON:
There was a time when nursery rhymes told of tuppeny rice and treacle. Today
it's international brand names that trip from the lips of these London children.
ACTUALITY/CHILDREN: (singing) Chicken. Chicken. Burgers. Burgers. Yum!
JANE RENTON:
As schools struggle for funds, business is being encouraged to play a greater
role in the classroom. Simon Yaxley's school, Sprowston High in Norwich,
is no exception. It's been officially adopted by the local Sainsbury's.
That's meant a welcome £200 on extra books for the library. Sainsbury's
has just launched another scheme for schools, it's nation-wide, and linked
to the weekly family shop. The Yaxley's have to buy their groceries here
if Sprowston is to get vouchers for vital school equipment.
ACTUALITY/BELINDA YAXLEY: Claire, free range eggs? There, look on this top
one there.
BELINDA YAXLEY: V/O:
Well I do shop at Sainsbury's from time to time, but recently, instead of
going maybe once a month, everybody would like me to go there every week
and do every shop.
JANE RENTON:
The Yaxley children are enthusiastic supporters of the scheme. They want
their mother to buy as much as she can in their store. She finds it exasperating.
BELINDA YAXLEY:
They say it's a voluntary scheme, but it's not particularly voluntary
when you've got children who are pulling at your heart strings and your
purse strings to go and spend money in a particular store.
JANE RENTON: Sainsbury's says the scheme is an extension of it's work with
schools. It is also encouraging customers to use fewer carrier bags. Recycled
plastic bags are filled with Sainsbury's groceries by parents like Belinda
Yaxley. Each bag qualifies for one voucher.
ACTUALITY/BELINDA YAXLEY: Seven?
BOY:
Seven, yeah.
BELINDA YAXLEY:
Seven.
CASHIER: OOV:
Would you like...penny back or would you like...vouchers?
BELINDA YAXLEY:
By vouchers please.
JANE RENTON:
This time the family is entitled to seven, after spending £75.
S/I Cap: BELINDA YAXLEY BELINDA YAXLEY:
Well it's the pressure that I believe is put on me as a parent to change
my shopping habits, but equally the pressure that's put on my children to
take into school vouchers, that they are not only in competition with their
school friends for, but in competition with each other.
JANE RENTON:
Sprowston has over fourteen hundred pupils, but insufficient funds to provide
all the computers they need. They've already acquired extra equipment through
a voucher scheme run by Tesco's. Now Head Teacher, Geoff Best, is hoping
to do the same with Sainsbury's.
ACTUALITY/GEOFF BEST: Hello Malcom. We've got the Sainsbury's catalogue
for the purchases through their voucher scheme, and like the Tesco's one,
there's quite a lot of IT equipment in. There seems quite a range here Malcolm
- what sort of things are on offer?
JANE RENTON:
The school is aiming to get enough vouchers to buy £2,000 worth of
new computers.
ACTUALITY/MALCOLM: ...and printers.
GEOFF:
And a computer is round about 20,000...
JANE RENTON:
This represents about £360,000 spent in Sainsbury's. Many parents feel
duty bound to help. S/I Cap:
GEOFF BEST Head Teacher, Sprowston High School
GEOFF BEST:
We can't pretend that we are innocents abroad. We are well aware that
by saying that we are collecting these vouchers, that is putting some degree
of pressure on youngsters and their parents to shop in particular stores.
And by indicating the sort of equipment we hope to get from collecting the
vouchers, we are adding to that pressure. I feel uneasy. But the reality
is, that is one way I'm going to get equipment into the school that otherwise
I couldn't afford in the very straight and circumstances that I'm operating
within.
JANE RENTON:
Sainsbury's schools offensive coincides with falling profit margins and
cut throat competition. Some believe schemes like this are all about poaching
customers from rivals.
JOHN WARD:
The purpose behind it for the companies is to actually get people to switch
their shopping patterns.
S/I Cap: JOHN WARD Director, National Consumer Council
This is a market place and the object of this exercise is to encourage people
to shop in their particular store rather than somewhere else. They want
to build a market, they want to increase their market share.
S/I CAP: MIKE SAMUEL Marketing Manager, Sainsbury's
MIKE SAMUEL:
No we don't see it like that. We see it purely as encouraging our customers
to stay loyal and to continue shopping in the normal way that they have
done, but just to change their shopping habits, to reuse their carrier bags.
JANE RENTON:
But isn't this just blackmailing parents to shop at your stores?
MIKE SAMUEL:
Not at all. Not at all. As I said, I think all we are asking customers to
do is to continue to do their shopping in the normal way. And hopefully
they will do a little more of their shopping with us than they otherwise
would have done. We're not asking new customers to come in.
JANE RENTON:
Belinda Yaxley's youngest child, Megan, goes to Arden Grove.
ACTUALITY/BELINDA YAXLEY: (kisses daughter) Have a lovely day.
JANE RENTON:
Many companies want to do more than just raise their profile at primary
schools like this. Megan's head mistress is praying for money. For the first
time Avril King has had to ask parents to pay for basic text books. But
now...(?) Knocking at the door. Companies are spending more than 300 million
pounds a year on educational promotions. That's a twenty fold increase in
less than ten years. The first job after assembly is opening the post. Hardly
a day goes by without a letter from a company keen to offer it's services.
AVRIL KINK: V/O:
Well some days the post does carry a fair amount of items that I could happily
do without, I have to say. I think companies bombard us because they think
we're very hard up, and in that they would be right. I think they feel also
that they want to market their products and bring them to the attention
of our pupils.
JANE RENTON:
But advertisers know the potential of catching their audience young.
S/I Cap: Tamara Ingram
Saatchi & Saatchi:
Companies want to target small children because loyalties to brands are
formed very early. I mean, certainly we know, for example, in advertising
experience, that young children recognise brands at a terribly early age,
certainly before two. And they have points of view about them, and advertising
can affect them and how they feel about those brands.
JANE RENTON:
Since the introduction of the National Curriculum, schools have been inundated
by teaching packs.
ACTUALITY/CHILD: (singing) McDonald's, McDonald's...
JANE RENTON:
One of the latest is produced by McDonald's, for five to seven year olds.
It's a work book covering core subjects in the curriculum, like Maths, English,
and Geography. The pack has been sent to a thousand schools so far, though
not Arden Grove. We asked Avril King, a teacher with forty years experience,
to take a look at it.
AVRIL KING:
Well this is directed at the youngest children who are learning to make
what we call a one to one correspondence. And the overt advertising, I would
say, would make most teachers judge that they would be unwilling to use
it. I mean this is a word search, and certainly children of this age love
to do word searches. But, again, all the words are associated with the things
that they would be having if they were at McDonald's.
JANE RENTON:
So what's your verdict on this pack?
AVRIL KING:
Well I personally would not use it in my school. I do believe that there
are ethical considerations here for schools. We do have to aquaint children
with the power of advertising. And this pack is so overtly advertising
McDonald's product, I wouldn't use it, just from that point of view.
JANE RENTON:
McDonald's says the pack brings real life to the classroom. James Graham,
the company's Head of Education, argues it's about making lessons relevant
to kids, not pushing brands.
S/I Cap: JAMES GRAHAM Head of Education, McDonald's
JAMES GRAHAM:
It's certainly not advertising. We have a Marketing Department and an
advertising agency that spends a lot of money on advertising. It is very
much being part of the community. It's very much enhancing the image of
the company within the community. You cannot, and I defy anybody to say
that, okay, we've worked with 6,000 teachers over the last three years,
and that equates to X numbers of hamburgers being sold or has increased
our market share or has increased our profits. It would be very difficult
to show that.
JANE RENTON:
But many schools believe the material they're sent is not just educational.
Karen Sillett is a PE teacher in Norwich. She often receives free teaching
materials.
VIDEO/V/O: Water is dangerous...
JANE RENTON:
One of these was the Royal Life Saving Society video sponsored by the electronic
games company Sega. It's been delivered to 25,000 primary schools.
KAREN SILLETT:
What I find most distasteful about this video is that there's a very strong
brand image, which is interspersed with very valuable information that I'm
trying to get over to the children. That sort of Sega skull is very easily
identifiable by the children. They all know it, and they relate to it. And
it really detracts from the type of thing that I'm trying to get over to
them. And the next thing we have, and here it is, look, you can see they've
established Echo The Dolphin. And this is actually a game, a video game,
that Sega are marketing at the moment.
S/I Cap: John Ward Director, National Consumer Council
JOHN WARD:
Why couldn't they have actually handed the money over to a safety organisation
and said: Here, go and make as good a film as you possibly can on this particular
topic. We'd like a mention at the beginning and we'd like a mention at the
end. But as far as we're concerned, that's all we expect of it. But they
didn't. They haven't exercised sufficient restraint. And they've managed
to work into a very powerful message about safety a lot of very subtle marketing,
almost subliminal advertising. It's really rather worrying.
JANE RENTON:
Sega declined to be interviewed but told us teaching children basic life
saving was a worthwhile exercise, the video was a change to give something
back to the community. But Karen Sillett is uneasy.
S/I Cap:KAREN SILLETT
KAREN SILLETT:
For years teachers have been supporting the education system by scrounging,
but now they're actually being given these materials on a plate and said:
here you are, use them. The dilemma is that we are then becoming tools for
the company, we're actually promoting their product. And quite frankly,
I resent being used in that way.
ACTUALITY/AVRIL KING: D - I - N.. Good girl, that's the way. Dot at the
end.
JANE RENTON:
The Government backed quango of the National Consumer Council believes that
lessons like this should be free of all advertising.
JOHN WARD:
Too many parents really don't realise just how far the commercial interests
have began to spread into the schools.
JANE RENTON:
They are keen to encourage companies to help schools, but they're drawing
up guidelines to prevent the hard sell.
JOHN WARD:
All we can do at this stage is develop some voluntary guidelines which,
in fact, will, we hope will be observed by the greater proportion of the
sponsors. And we.... why we subscribe to that. And we think that if they're
prepared to observe some of these guidelines and exercise some restraint
over their commercial interests, then they will, we'll get maximum use of
the products. And this is both efficient and effective.
S/I CAP: Tamara Ingram
Saatchi & Saatchi
TAMARA INGRAM:
I think the market can regulate itself very well, and I think that is to
do with the fact that parents do have a powerful voice and that schools
are very careful and are very considerate towards their pupils. So, as I
said, I think the school will become the discriminator. And if they go a
step too far, the parent will then become the discriminator, So I'm certainly
not in favour of rules and regulations.
ACTUALITY/CHILDREN: (singing) Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut...
JANE RENTON:
Schools are actively seeking a helping hand from business. Without it
they can't hope to meet the aspirations of parents. But they'll have to
ensure that the stranger bearing gifts doesn't turn out to be the wolf at
the door.
JANE CORBIN:
Jane Renton with the consumers of the future. In next week's programme,
the jet that's easy on the frills and easy on the pocket. But can easy jet
really make boarding a plane as simple as boarding a bus? For now, from
The Money Programme - good-bye.