Lions among LAMBS?

Rushing to claim its share of the juicy $14 billion U.S. toy market, Milwaukee-based Alottafun, Inc. sets up a holiday Web site that specially targets young computer-literate kids. Pembroke Pines, FL-based Claire’s Stores, Inc., a leading mall retailer of teen accessories with 165 million customers, opens its 2,000th store to warm applause. New York-based Delia’s, a teenage clothing retailer and direct marketer, pumps up its online marketing efforts and doubles its stock price.

But when ZapMe, a San Ramon, CA-based computer marketing company, gives away 120,000 top-of-the-line computers complete with word processing software, spreadsheet programs, and 17-inch color monitors to 8,000 high schools, what’s the reaction?

Like, uh, totally uncool.

“Absolutely immoral!” huffs Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, Ralph Nader’s Washington, DC-based consumer advocacy group. In a statement, Nader himself likened the ZapMe program to “child abuse” and went on to compare the computers with the sinister “Big Brother” surveillance TVs in George Orwell’s 1984.

“It’s not a program dedicated to education but to delivering teenagers to corporate marketers,” says Alex Molnar, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education.

Puff, puff, puffity-puff. And why? Because ZapMe’s program includes using advertisers to help pay for its costs, and brand promotion in the school is a topic that, like safe sex and birth control, seems to bring out the worst in everyone. Opinions here seem at home only in extremes.

To ZapMe president Frank Vigil (pronounced Vee-hill), his company’s program makes a lot of sense. In an age of strained capital budgets for schools, ZapMe sets up an intranet-based, faculty-supervised online experience for kids. According to Vigil, the ZapMe Netspace system consists of about 10,000 Web sites originally set up by a 12-editor committee, many of them former teachers, who studied online forums in education to determine what sites would be appropriate. The committee relied heavily on the educational standards of big states such as New York, California, and Florida. Vigil says the original network was tested in several East Bay schools near Oakland, CA, where teachers began sending in suggestions about Web sites they felt should be added to the program.

“We established ZapMe Netspace because we believe that children will be better prepared for the future if they have access to these critical learning tools for communication, collating, and assessment of educational information on the Web,” Vigil says. “We want to make money, but we want the kids to be as best prepared for the future as they can.”

In addition to the hardware and software provided by Compaq, Toshiba, GE Americom, Microsoft, and Phillips, ZapMe also provides a free computer lab and technical support, a $90,000 value, says Vigil. The school’s only costs are insurance and an extra phone line. Vigil also emphasizes that the students have no unsupervised access to the Internet at large (unless parents approve), keeping them free from adult and other unsavory Web materials.

Molnar doesn’t buy it. “That’s like saying kids like to sneak a beer in the basement, so we might as well have tightly controlled beer parties for 12-year olds.”

Vigil acknowledges that in order to finance the program, ZapMe sells advertising from non-computer companies that run rotating ads built into the Web browsers. The ads are constantly displayed in the left-hand corner of the screen. Vigil denies that any pitches are specifically targeted at kids. Still, a look at the Web siteshows ads from such companies as barnesandnoble.com, Amazon.com, and Lego. And a listing for PCGames.com features an endorsement from the Toy Manufacturers of America, in the form of a “wow” icon next to its listing.

This doesn’t bother some educators. At Connecticut’s East Hartford High School, which has just agreed to install the system, computer coordinator Denise Moynihan says her school board was aware of the advertising, but that “advertising can be done in an unobtrusive way as long as it doesn’t obscure education.”

This is all horse muffins to Ruskin. “The Internet has no educational value,” he says flatly. The Net “has never put up anything of substance – like, for example, the law.” Ruskin describes corporations as “vultures” and adds, “America’s kids need to learn to read, write, and add, not become the marketing tools of predator corporations.”

Coke’s crusade It has been nine years since an entrepreneur named Chris Whittle gave parents and educators fits because of a plan to put news programming and advertisements in American classrooms.

In return for putting free audiovisual equipment into schools, Whittle showed a daily news program that contained two minutes of commercials, including plugs for acne medicine, electric razors, breakfast cereals, and candy.

To many, it was the camel’s nose under the tent. And certainly, since Whittle’s Channel One debuted in 1991, ads and corporate promos have increased inside schools and out (Channel One currently broadcasts into nearly 13,000 high schools), and now include deals with athletic shoe firms, fast food chains, and soft drink companies.

For several years, General Mills’ Box Tops for Education program has allowed students to earn cash by collecting box tops from General Mills products. The exchange goes like this: A cereal package flap can be redeemed for 15 cents, while box-top logos can be redeemed for a dime. Individual schools are allowed to exchange up to $10,000 each year, and since the program began five years ago, more than 40,000 schools have been involved, says General Mills spokesperson Pam Becker.

“We give schools the money they earn in cash, to be spent on anything they wish,” Becker says.

Coca-Cola is an especially aggressive marketer to teenagers. Coke has deals all over the country in which schools get money up front and Coke receives exclusive vending rights. In Colorado Springs, CO, School District 11’s board said “no” to Channel One, but then went and signed a big contract with the soft drink company that is expected to bring in $8 to $11 million over the next decade, thanks to exclusive sales of Coke, juice, water, and other drinks distributed by a Coca-Cola bottler.

In Hawaii late last year, Coca-Cola started a loyalty program in schools, awarding elementary and high school students points with neighborhood retailers for drinking Coke exclusively in the school cafeteria. The program prompted one mother of three, who asked not to be named, to remark: “You wonder at what point the PTA is going to ask what is going on?”

At Hopewell Valley Central High School in New Jersey, Coke has offered to donate two $6,000 electronic scoreboards in exchange for placing the Coke logo on the boards during games. Exclusive vending rights are also included in the deal, with the school getting a percentage of sales. (The school’s Board of Education voted in favor of the program last Oct. 19).

Corrupting Youth? Are such programs, like Socrates’s teachings, truly corrupters of youth, contaminators of education? Or are they simply the activities of legitimate marketers seeking to expand their markets – while at the same time paying for educational improvements?

What everyone agrees on is that the teen market is a gold mine. There are 42.5 million U.S. children in kindergarten through high school, according to the Census Bureau, and their power to purchase is immense. A Texas A&M study estimated that kids four through 13 spent more than $23.4 billion in 1997 and influenced their parents to spend another $187.7 billion. It would be asking a lot of human nature to expect marketers to ignore a $211 billion market.

But what most angers Ruskin and Nader and like-minded critics is the Web’s direct-to-consumer marketing aspect. If forcing kids to watch ads is “revolting,” as Ruskin claims, even worse, he feels, is the tracking and collecting of data on customers. “It’s nothing but spying,” Ruskin says. By indulging in such practices, U.S. companies are “snooping and preying surreptitiously on kids,” he says.

Asked how can it be surreptitious if school officials approve the kids looking at ads in accord with parental permission, Ruskin replies that parents and school officials are merely “accomplices” of “predatory corporations” that are unscrupulously using vulnerable and impressionable kids to “hone their marketing pitches.”

Ruskin admits that he has no knowledge of direct marketing strategy or of e-mail dialog between buyer or seller. Nor will he concede that one of the Web’s basic marketing goals – gathering consumer data – is even legitimate. When Nader complains that ZapMe’s practice of giving data to marketers allows them to “target kids with laser-like precision,” he almost sounds quaint, because direct marketing on the Web aims at nothing less. Web marketers understand instinctively that marketing effectiveness is increased by interactivity, by being able to expose consumers to new and different brands and visuals based on their own interests.

The privacy agreement employed by New York City-based Delia’s maintains that the online retailer will use any e-mail addresses it obtains to notify customers of updates to its site. From time to time, Delia’s “will make its e-mails available to other organizations whose products or services we think (teenagers) will find interesting.” Teenage customers who don’t want this done need only notify the company with one click of the mouse. (ZapMe’s policy is the same.) In every case promo examined, including ZapMe’s, no personally identifying information is obtained from teenagers unless they choose to provide it.

SmartGirl.com, a New York City-based Web site that does not carry ads, does conduct specific surveys for corporate clients and will soon begin free sampling programs. According to SmartGirl founder and president, Isabel Walcott, such surveys are entirely voluntary. “The girls can either fill them out or not,” she says. The surveys will ask questions like “Which of these four packages is best?” or “Which ad copy do you like best?” or “If you have 15 minutes to talk with shoe manufacturers, what would you tell them?” The information is then given to marketing partners.

But where Nader and Ruskin describe kids as passive, nerveless, bundles of vulnerability, Walcott sees them as “very astute, very brand smart.” She adds: “There are always people disturbed to think that a child can decide for itself, that you don’t have to be an adult to make a purchasing decision. Girls are still the best judges of their own interests and don’t like it when someone else decides what they should be allowed to look at or not.”

Roberta Nusim, whose Easton, CT-based Youth Marketing International Ltd. has done school promos for 20 years, and whose client list ranges from American Express to Warner Bros., agrees: “We underestimate youngsters. They are very savvy, much more savvy than they were 20 or 30 years ago.”

Partners in education What should school promoters consider? What are the lines between an ethical promotion and an unethical one? A good one or a bad?

Are there any standards?

Stamford, CT-based Web marketing expert Don Peppers once wrote that the only way a large site owner can pay off his costs “is to sell advertising.” But what is to be sold? How? And for what purpose? Paul Folkemer, an executive vp for New York-based Channel One – who for 27 years was a high school principal – says that school officials are always “looking for strategies to accomplish their instructional goals,” but because of budget cuts, reaching goals often means taking on “private partners.”

When he was chief principal at the Ridgewood, NJ, high school, Folkemer’s administration was spending $10,000 per kid, but practically all of it was going to staff. Costs of special education had skyrocketed, and special ed budgets competed with allocations for upgrading technology. “You can’t get technology into the school when you don’t have enough in your own budget,” he says.

For Folkemer, the criteria any corporate-sponsored program must meet is whether a company’s ads are related to instructional goals or work to obstruct them. He cited the Coke program in Hawaii as an example of the latter. “What educational value do you get from drinking only Coke in a cafeteria?”

A school’s instructional responsibility in each case is to “teach students and help them manage and understand the advertising images they get,” he says.

Walcott agrees. She opposes instances “where a marketer just wants to get its name into a school in whatever way possible.” The well-publicized program in Atlanta that resulted in a boy who wore a Pepsi shirt on “Coke Day” being suspended “creeps me out,” she says.

Walcott says that if advertising is to be used responsibly, then teenage shoppers must be shown that the product advertised “is only one option among many options,” adding: “There has to be disclosure of choice. Otherwise, it’s misleading.”

“Educators are the gatekeepers,” Nusim concurs. “Any corporate materials have to be sound educationally and of benefit to the youngsters.” A panel of educational advisors to review corporate materials is a must, she says.

Regarding ZapMe’s program, Walcott says, “Any initiative that puts computers into schools, I love. The kids have to be told that companies are paying for it, and if you think it’s a good deal, great. If not, write the principal. If the majority approves, then it’s done.”

The alternative to companies paying for school improvements is stark, Folkemer says. “I went through an era where we were bombarded with fund-raising proposals that had kids out selling magazines or candy or peanut brittle or wrapping paper. What educational value is there for kids in that?”

Ruskin was asked if he is opposed to using kids as a sales force to raise funds for school equipment and supplies. Does he regard that as furthering education? “You raise a real issue,” he says, with no further comment. But mention advertising and all the “spying” allegations emerge once again.

Folkemer, who knows the real monetary squeeze school principals face, replies: “Look, zero tolerance for in-school advertising is ridiculous.”

But the debate is too serious to be settled by verbal posturing. Badly cramped budgets pose a threat to the quality of education. If schools cannot afford the improvements in technology that best prepare their students for the future, how are those upgrades to be paid for? Until someone comes up with a better answer, marketing-minded corporations will be around to lend a hand.

Elementary schools are a hotbed of competition for the yo-yo companies that sell more than $200 million worth of the eternally popular toys each year, some directly to students. One manufacturer, Spintastics Skill Toys, Inc. of San Francisco, sets up booths alongside textbook vendors at educator conferences so president – and 1992 World Yo-Yo Champion – Dale Oliver can pass out flyers about the company and its officers. “Warning! All yo-yo programs are not created equal. There’s only ONE that teaches both skill-building and science,” boasts one of Spintastics’ brochures.

That’s apparently the key to getting in the schoolhouse door: don’t sell, teach science. As part of his virtuoso routine of yo-yo tricks, Oliver – who has no science degree – gives kids lessons about “gyroscopic stability” which, he has often said publicly, “is part of the science of spin.”

Oliver offers schools a day’s worth of yo-yo lessons for a $500 fee, or, as an alternative, will work for free if the school agrees to sell his yo-yos for a week after he has left. (Since they receive a commission of 10 percent, schools usually choose the latter.)

Middlefield, OH-based Duncan Toys Co., which introduced the yo-yo to the U.S. in 1928, has come up with a school pitch of its own. With the purchase of two dozen or more yo-yos, the company throws in a classroom guide called “Teaching Science with the Yo-Yo.”

Transparent huckstering? For some, yes. But for Frank Blair, physical education teacher at Pamela Hodson Elementary School in Owasso, OK, the program was a godsend. Blair says Owasso has a “school site system,” which means that the principal is in charge of allocating money to people and departments to meet their needs. “I’ve had budgets where I haven’t had a budget,” he says.

So when Spintastics’ co-owner Valerie Krantz made a pitch, Blair immediately said yes. “The one who’s in charge of the selling gets the commission,” he says. Blair thought he would sell 60 or so , but sold 100 the first day and 400 for the week, raising $1,000 for badly needed activities.

For my next trick To warm up his audiences, Oliver does about 70 tricks, including Walk the Dog, Burp the Baby, and Around the World, accompanied by rapid-fire dialogue. Then all goes quiet as he begins to talk about geographic stability – moving his body, bracing his weight, emphasizing the need for the yo-yo to always stay at a straight angle in his hand to keep it spinning freely during tricks.

But is science just a marketing ploy or did the kids really learn something? What’s Oliver’s real trick? Pull the Wool Over the Eyes?

It depends on who you talk to. “I think they learned really quickly that yo-yos are round,” wryly responded a teacher from Lackland City Elementary School in San Antonio who asked not to be named. What the kids wanted wasn’t enlightenment but the yo-yos, said the teacher.

But Carole Smith, a phys-ed teacher at Lackland, is convinced the kids soaked up the science. She said of Oliver: “He’s an excellent teacher. He broke things down in a progression, and he knows how to work with children. Those kids will remember.”

Blair concedes that kids buying yo-yos was “the main impelling force” of the event, but still felt that the science provided by Oliver “can be used as a tool to learn.” And to Blair, the enduring value of the program was the money he made for his department: “I’ve never had anything to compare with it,” he says.

Which means that if people want to keep selling out of the schools, they better find other ways of pulling money in.