When I sat out to teach marketing to grade 4, I was not sure if it’s a good idea. I had done these hundreds of time with engineers and MBA’s with a fair bit of success but never with 9-year-olds.
We were planning an Honesty Shop in the school, where kids make things, put them up for sale and kids only buy it at a minimal price as 1 or 2 Rs an item. The shop is not be supervised or watched over by anyone. Kids could go there during a designated period, buy whatever they like and put money in the box kept in there. The idea was, eventually all or at least majority of the kids will learn to be honest. I thought of taking this opportunity and make kids design posters for the ad for the shop.
We had to make ads for the honesty shop for 2 purposes.
- To make kids aware of the shop and buy things from it
- To make parents aware of the shop and its purpose
As it seem, first point was very direct and easy but to give second message in a short and intelligent waywas not an easy task.And to include both the audience in one ad looked a complex task even for an experienced adult.
I took one class to explain them the idea of the shop and shared a story of an honest taxi driver I had come across to make them aware of how difficult it is let go of greed and how it helps the beneficiary. Wasn’t sure if it will work but it seem to invoke interest in them. We even spoke a little about rules of marketing and attracting customer attention using different tools. I just kept asking and giving clues where required and they knew the answers.
We summed up that they need to make an ad on a chart paper for the honesty shop, which will meet the two purposes listed above and the best ad will win a price. We also listed down the tools they can use and points they can keep in mind, which are.
- Attractive Colours
- Attractive pictures
- Words that can grab attention
- Meaningful punch line/ jingle
We divided them into 4 teams of 5 to 6 people randomly and did a mock trial of making an ad in 15 min.We even spent a little time and discussed what was good or lacking in each of the poster made by them and hoped to get them thinking. In the end I suggested them that they should mull over it over the whole week every day, discuss with their team and list down the how and what they would like to do in the competition so they are better prepared for the d-day. I didn’t expect them to take this seriously and discuss and list down the plan butthought that even if they pondered over it a little, they would gel better as a team and come up with better ideas.
On the day of competition, they were all dressed up in fancy dresses for some celebration and I wasn’t sure if it was a good day for 4th graders to take part in competition on as serious a topic as marketing! But had no option, as I had already announced and couldn’t afford to delay it further.
To my surprise, they got out of their celebrations and got to the business in a matter of minutes!They had even listed down ideas for this over the week!
I offered them white and colourful chart papers to work on with a suggestion that I would prefer white as that would give me more options to use other colours on it. As it goes, they readily agreed and asked for white chart paper. Unfortunately, one of the white chart papers was torn and so we were short of it by one. I told the fourth team that they can go with light blue, as that was the second best option.To give them confidence, I even suggested that if they used colours well, it may actually give better look than white.To my surprise, they didn’t whine about it at all and straight away got onto work!
I gave them one hour, which I think is really short to come up with a good attractive poster/ ad for fourth graders on such a serious topic.
Three of the four finished the posters in an hour and they were really good. The fourth group couldn’t, not because they were short of ideas but they couldn’t gel as a team and ended wasting time in coming to agreement on what to do. One of the team members even cried and I had to counsel her a little but I feel in the end, they learnt the most about working with team. The one who cried is also one of the brightest in the class but confessed just after 10 minutes of competition that she will loose as she never wins in competitions and gave up at the very moment. In the end, she also confessed that she was more afraid of people teasing her for loosing. I suppose the pressure of self expectation is one of the hardest.
To give her and that team a second chance, I announced a surprise assignment with a price that all of them would have to come up with a small write up on their experience of doing this assignment as a team and the best and most effective essay will get a price. I hinted to this team that they have the best chance of winning this one as no other team had better understanding of pitfalls of bad team work than them. I was hoping that the disheartened team will not only get a chance to win but also ponder over what went wrong and learn the most important lesson of life, working as a team and taking defeat in a stride. Life always gives another chance; we only have to be up for it.
The girl took the chance and came up with the best write up on her experience of working as a team in this assignment. She was quite happy to prove herself wrong about never able to win a competition.
I
also got to observe an unbelievable display of harmony and team work in one team, which was not only the first to finish a neatly done poster but had lots to share about work done by their team mates to others! This was the same team that had to do with light blue chart paper. Not that they didn’t have more than one power houses (dominant kids) in their team!
Another surprise, was one of the best jingle in English created by one of the weakest in English! The jingle was, “If you be honest, the world will be honest to you.”
Is it always good to run to your strength to get a good output? Not sure now! Another team had a bright girl, who is obviously a power house and is also extremely good at English. As expected, she was quite well prepared and got to job at the word go but her team mates hardly got to do or say anything. The girl had many good ideas and in the end that turned out to be a problem for them, their poster had too many things. But I am sure with time and right guidance, she would do really great. For now, it’s time for her to imagine more. Problems of plenty are easier to solve.
Halfway through I threw another challenge to change the situation and announced that the team with the best team work would get another price, though, by then I was sure of which team deserved this price. But as I had hoped, in both the teams (other than the team with major conflicts and the best team work) the dominating kids suddenly started looking around at people who were ignored or weren’t happy and started inviting and giving them work. And my parents feel, as we don’t have exams, our kids are not competitive!
Rahul Desai