Before jumping in, let’s roll back a few years & imagine a situation set back in 1997. It’s a Saturday evening. Friends & family have come over. Everyone is having fun when suddenly the little girl takes out the school magazine & shows the poem which got printed in the magazine. The little girl is smiling ear to ear with pride & happiness.

Let’s analyze the scene we just witnessed?

1. The little girl feels happy showing her poem published in the school magazine.

2. Parents of the girl feel a sense of pride & shows the magazine around their circles.

3. Other parents who were visiting the house that Saturday evening, also flipped through the pages & noticed how wonderfully the magazine had been curated.

4. If there’s an extra copy of the magazine, be rest assured, the little girls’ parents would distribute it with pride, showing their daughters’ achievements.

These 4 points were a result of the little girl showing a magazine, which is the school magazine, which essentially curates what happens at the school, it’s achievements, it’s accomplishments, student write-ups, poems, anything & everything about the school.

The school magazine is the physical medium through which it is getting their word out to the parent & student community of the city
Fast forward to the present day & come back to the original question of having a marketing budget, if the school doesn’t have any, why are they printing a magazine? The magazine isn’t obviously in the course curriculum. It may not have been specified in a written format, but schools have always marketed themselves, just that they knew a very good way of marketing. Content marketing.

In the form of a school magazine. Magazines are branded too. Every school magazine will have its unique name. The sections of magazines would be different. We used to love submitting our entries for the magazine. It is a unique feature magazine, showcasing the school in the best light possible, which would be used as the primary marketing material.

Let’s retrospect a little, shall we?
100 years ago, printing was the only way of getting the word out. Printable in different formats were used for advertisement & outreach purposes. Newspapers, Gazette, Letters, Magazines, etc. When the physical paper was the only medium of communication, schools chose the Annual Print Magazine as the material for outreach.

Interesting read about the history of magazines – http://www.magazinedesigning.com/history-of-the-magazines/

When the television industry took a boom, schools couldn’t afford to have an outreach “TV channel”. So the AV media which was the backbone of TV was never fully taken advantage of due to the considerable higher affordability factor. While all of the above was happening in the ’90s, Heritage Schools based out of Kolkata never saw a huge competition in the market, the market was fairly divided locally, & new schools weren’t being constructed like we see today. That is why, schools never had to advertise & keep any separate budget for outreach purposes, because the school magazine was serving its purpose well.

Observation of the rapidly changing education landscape
Post-2000’s, many businesses have entered the education field which has resulted in a division of the market which the so-called “heritage” schools used to enjoy. New-age schools started the education venture with a very noble vision. Increased competition is not bad for any sector & this increased competition has only helped our education system in more ways than one. We are experiencing much diverse curriculum being followed in schools, stress on the mental health of children & parent alike are being taken into consideration. This is progress that we all wish to see.

As far as advertising & marketing is concerned, educational institutions which came into existence during the past 20 years, came into the business of education. They started the education venture with a very noble vision, but “still a venture”. They already have a sales, marketing & outreach budget for gaining more market share.

All of that is fine

But what happened with our beloved school magazine?
As far I know, many schools even to this date, have their magazine being published year after year. Nowadays the school magazine sits there on the drawing-room table, while everyone is scrolling through their phones. When friends & family are coming over, everyone is chatting up & showing all the happening stuff they have been doing through their phones. Through photographs, videos captured on each other’s phones & social media. And when they keep their phones away to just chat, there are a lot many other things to talk about than the 7-month-old school magazine, which has been shown more than once since its arrival. For all intents and purposes, the magazine isn’t in the conversation anymore like it used to be. The world is moving so fast that an annual magazine is filled with old content only after a month of its curation.

Does the annual school magazine serve the same purpose it used to serve? That’s something which we may have to rethink. The original purpose of publishing the school magazine was primarily for strategic outreach purposes.

With the advent of this hyperactive digital age, with multiple social media platforms, outreach mechanisms can take a whole new direction & dimension if we can look at these platforms from a different perspective. Imagine, Instead of a physical magazine, if there would have been an online version of it? That little girl would be opening the magazine from the phone & show how she is selected as the little poet of the class for this week. She had submitted the poem to the school arts society, & her poem got selected. Her parents would share that page link on their social media & WhatsApp groups filled with pride in their daughters’ achievements.

That is the power of this digital world.

I just demonstrated 2 simple ways of achieving the same purpose of outreach which the traditional printed magazine was made for but in an online model.

I’ll try & demonstrate another power of this digital space.

Just think of the alumni of your school.

How do they feel?
“I don’t enter the school anymore because I’ve passed my class 12 exams, & had to go to college. but why did the school stop communicating, why didn’t I ever receive any more issues of the school magazine” – a thought a lot of alumis’ may have.

Yet even to date, a physical copy of the school magazine never reaches an alumni’s house.

With an online magazine of your school you start connecting & communicating with all the stakeholders of your education community, past, present & future. As decision makers in the education institutes, you still don’t need an advertising budget, all you need to do is take your magazine online.

Sharing an example of an existing online magazine by an educational institute. I find NYU’s initiative commendable. Learn more about it here – https://www.nyu.edu/life.html

Don’t you still think it is time to digitise your school magazine?