Promotion

Abraham Academic Academy plans to get a majority of our marketing messages across to our target market and end users through hands on public relations, and grassroots marketing. We divide our promotional budget 3 ways: national corporate-wide schemes, community schemes and localized ad targeting. On the national scale, our intentions focus on public relation and our intentions are to attend fairs, conventions, exhibitions and shows. In addition, we will host events and set up stands at opportune moments around the country. At the school level, we teach our franchisees the importance of establishing their school as a member of the community and the benefits that can be received when the school is perceived as a pillar in the eyes of community members. Here, we focus on a schools involvement with the complimentary and supplementary services available in their area. In addition to this word of mouth, grassroots approach we intend to get out and make other friends and key partners within the local community. We want to learn about the local businesses and the influential and special people that exist in our school's community. We then will want to select a few noteworthy ones that represent some kind of value or interest that we would be proud to be associated with and then approach them to see if they would like us to speak highly of and endorse them. The purpose of this is to begin an exchange of services; the promotion of one another through the spreading of awareness and love. As for the localized ad targeting, a portion of our budget is set aside and is used to motivate local schools to work together for advertising purposes. In this scheme, we try to foster strong franchisee relations by partnering up local schools and working with them in hammering out a mutual advertising plan with mutual benefits. The idea is that corporate head-office will match each school’s investment in their proposed marketing plan. In times when schools are not willing to work together, we will focus efforts on bettering relations. However, when relations are abundant and we do not have the funds to finance all the proposals, then we will turn it into a competition and reward those with the best ideas. As for the utilization of these three promotional avenues there are good, better and best times to promote educational products and launch ideas. The best time would coincide with a seasonality that exists in the industry. It is during the school holidays and semester breaks that students’ and families’ have time to breathe and are able to think about their next educational steps.

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The majority of our promotional work will not be done through conventional media. We will not try to reach our audience through the press, on TV, or on the radio. However, we will try to attract some attention through marketing strategies. A good example of one is our "Make the World a Better Place" campaign program. Ideas will be generated based on relevant community, national or age specific interests and children will be taught to tackle these issues in ways possible by them. For example:

• Someone terminally sick in the hospital. Write them a greeting card and send them wishes.

• The Japan or Thailand natural disasters, mail the government wish card.

• Clean up local parks.

• Help old ladies across the street campaign.

• Stray dogs; send a letter to the local or municipal government asking what is to be done about the problem.

• Make a birthday cake and card for the oldest elder in our community.

• Expressing thanks to an old gentleman in our community who has done something for it.

• Fund raising for a cause. Athletic activity (like running or catching balls) for money.

• Donate funds to a charity in the name of a winner of a spelling bee contest.

• Blood Donation.

A lot of our promotional cues have been taken from McDonald's, focusing on their extensive advertising campaigns in the decades before they could afford to use mainstream public media.

In actuality, McDonald's promotional campaigns are an excellent fit with a school's prerogative of how to appeal to kids through parents and parents through kids. In this era, McDonald's makes significant use of billboards, signage, event sponsoring (like sporting events ranging from Little League to the Olympic Games), and making coolers of orange drink with its logo on it available for local events of all kinds. This is why the majority of advertising will be done on billboards, signage, flyers, pamphlets and posters and by using direct marketing mail shot and on the Internet. Furthermore, we will make use of the Social Networks (Flickr, Facebook mainly) to promote our school and activities and interact with our consumers. Abraham Academic Academy will also be sponsoring and hosting local and national events and will try to make our schools a focal point in the community. In a specific

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school’s community for example, we will keep Saturdays available to serve as an open house in order to showcase our school to potential customers. These open house days will allow us to show consumers our programs and activities, while letting them interact with parents. An open house day allows those curious to acquire more information about the greatness of our schools and services. On occasion, during these days we will organize events and have themes for our patrons to participate in. Some weeks, community members can come down and join us in flying kites, racing bikes or coloring pictures in a contest.

Abraham Academic Academy will follow McDonald's lead in investing in different trademarked items like slogans, jingles, logos, mascots that are used in advertising. One method of promotion that we will employ, from time to time, will be to launch public interest and support by requesting their help and input on issues. In this situation we would ask the public to be creative and come up with something that we need like a slogan, logo, or new program offering. The best way to know how we sit with our customers is to ask them what they think about us through a reward system in which the best few entries are selected and are eligible for prizes. Many companies have now moved into this realm of public relations with great success (Doritos, Pepsi, coke, McDonald's). Cisco provides an excellent example of how to do this through their "search for the next big idea". Cisco launched an external innovation competition called the "I-Prize"; one of the many results was the spinning off of a billion dollar company based on a sensory-enabled smart-electricity grid submission. Sometimes it pays to ask what people think about issues.

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The modern form of education has come to abide both national and global requisites causing the prerogative of a good 'recognized' education to be one of mobility; transference through standardization. It is not good enough to learn, but to be recognized via the process of learning. Therefore, Abraham Academic Academy uses an analogy of education as an industry as being a puzzle in order to imbue the notion of its elements as pieces with a dovetail fit.

If the institutionalization of education took a form, it would be that of a school, which the public sector has long since ratified as being correct in form. Private schools are now perceived as an extension of public education and abide by the models used in practice.

Language and cram schools belong to a subset that operates within the public and private realms and supports their systems. Therefore, our business plans are based upon the widely used models and our success constrained by our fit to the systems we support. Ergo, it is our plan not to be different, to stand alone and revolutionize the industry. It is not our intention to change the game from a minuscule position within a subset, but to extract value through fitting better, providing services that are overlooked, bridging gaps in already existing services through a tailored schedule and curriculum. Our students will want to come to us because they are better off in the system, further along and aligned with, due to our efforts.

In terms of the traditional model, language and cram schools, like all schools, are middlemen.

Language and cram schools essentially provide the interface between the materials producers and the materials consumers. Researchers and educational specialists create the material;

publishers sign the best, put it in print and distribute; schools then buy selected material according to their curriculum and schedule designs, which then gets taught to a class of students that they or their parents deem valuable.

It is this middleman aspect that explains why the traditional model involves a physical