Chuck English
President and Founder
English Marketing Works
Author of Marketing that Works blog
You
may never have heard of it, but "unboxing" is not only all over
YouTube, it may be a great way of achieving marketing success at your
independent school.
There’s a video on YouTube
that shows a pair of hands unpacking five cartoon branded plastic eggs
each with a toy surprise inside. No big deal. There are billions of
videos on You Tube. But get this. This video has over 93 million views.
Now that’s a big deal.
It’s all part of a phenomenon called
“unboxing” that I recently discovered after listening to an interview
with Mireille Silcoff who wrote an article
about it for the New York Times. There are thousands of unboxing videos
on YouTube. You can watch people unpacking everything from high tech
gadgets to cosmetics to toys. Wikipedia even has an entry for unboxing.
What’s going on here? Why would millions of people watch someone else unpack something?
The
process of unpacking something you have just bought is a very visceral
experience. It’s pure emotion – excitement, expectation, pride of
ownership. There is great anticipation. That first look at or feel of
whatever is in the box can be a “oh wow!” kind of moment. And it’s so
powerful that people love to watch other people unpack things. Think
about birthdays or Christmas and watching someone unwrap a gift. There
aren’t many other events that can provide such vicarious enjoyment.
From
a marketing perspective, it’s one more reminder that sales is a
transfer of emotion and that people don’t just want to buy a product –
they want to have an experience. The best marketers meticulously
consider those first moments that a customer spends with a product to
ensure that the unboxing experience is not only fantastic but is
consistent with the overall brand experience of the company.
So,
here’s the question. Can the unboxing experience be replicated in
independent schools? Are there interaction points and special moments or
milestones that can effectively be unboxed?
Here’s
one. When a student is accepted, the package that is sent to parents is
an obvious unboxing opportunity. What does the envelope look like? Does
it have to be an envelope? What’s the first thing that is visible when
the package is opened and how does that shape the experience you are
trying to create? Does it create a sense of excitement, pride and maybe
even accomplishment? Is there something in the package for the student?
Perhaps there should be a separate student package. If you don’t have a
formal acceptance package, maybe you should create one just for the
purpose of creating an experience. If your acceptance process is
finalized online, there are ways of creating a web-based or email based
unboxing experience. Acceptance is a key moment in the sales process.
You want to completely validate the choice that parents have made and
align it with your school’s brand.
Another possibility. A child’s
first day of school is a watershed moment for parents. Tapping into that
emotion and making it an essential part of their experience with their
new school can be very powerful. How can you unbox that experience?
Perhaps parents with first-time school goers can receive a kit in
advance with helpful information and useful things like labels or tags
as well as something for kids like stickers. Maybe it comes in a box or a
special folder that identifies it as something the school has specially
created for first-time school parents.
Here’s a related
possibility. Every moment of a child’s first day of school is a
real-time unboxing experience filled with awe and wonder. What if you
use video to capture some of those moments and send it to parents. I saw
a news segment the
other day about a parent that had strapped a GoPro camera to her
child’s chest so that she could experience her daughter’s first day of
school. It’s a little extreme but there’s no question that it reflects
one parent’s desire to vicariously be part of her child’s first-day
unboxing experience.
Once you get comfortable with the premise,
I’ll bet there are dozens of unboxing experiences that you can create in
your schools – from things as momentous as grade 1 graduation to those
as mundane as tuition packages.
The key is to always think about
parents as customers and look for the ways in which you can create
validating experiences that reinforce your school’s brand.
What do you think?
Is
it possible to create unboxing experiences? Have you created unboxing
experiences in your school? I’d love to hear your thoughts.