Introduction
Topic and Importance
The topic of this communications plan addresses the recovery of financial contributions to the Lawrenceville School after an announcement to end the tradition of tackle house football at the school. This plan will address the importance of continued financial contribution from our existing alumni base to the Lawrenceville Fund which annually accounts for almost ten percent of our total revenue and operating budget.
Problem statement
The negative reaction to the house football announcement has caused a drop in financial contributions, and a potential decline in continued enrollment. This communication plan will address how we plan to alleviate the negativity surrounding this decision, and encourage pre-announcement levels of financial giving.
Overall Goal
The goal of this communication plan is to rebound the negative reaction from disgruntled alumni and increase the likelihood those alumni will continue to financially support the school. Through this same effort, we will attempt to increase the overall enrollment of The Lawrenceville School, and increase the financial contributions to the Lawrenceville Fund from pre-announcement levels.
Situation Analysis
In 2013, the headmaster at The Lawrenceville School, a private college prep school in New Jersey, unilaterally decided and announced the school would end a 124-year tradition of tackle house football and replace it with flag football. The alumni and the student community quickly made their frustrations known via letters, social media, and through community forums around the school. Negative reception of this decision by alumni threatened to cripple the school financially through the cessation of financial contributions to The Lawrenceville Fund and other school funding programs at Lawrenceville. Without the continued support of alumni and other contributors, the Board of Trustees feared blowback that would negatively affect finances, and continued enrollment at the school.
Situational Characteristics
• Tackle football has existed at the Lawrenceville School for 124 years.
o This is the key point that this strategic communication plan revolves around. The basis for this plan will attempt to paint tradition as the key tenant of The Lawrenceville School’s success and longevity.
• Lawrenceville draws a significant portion of financial support from alumni loyal to the school and their respective houses.
o As is discussed later in this plan, the target audience of this plan is drawn from the alumni of Lawrenceville. Regaining their support through targeted communication is key to the success of this plan and the school in general.
• Participation in the house football program has been in decline and dropped from 98 in 2011 to 63 in 2013.
o Tradition is more important than current numbers to many of our stakeholders. Regardless of the near 30% drop in interest in house football, contributing alumni especially those in our target audience must believe our messaging is sincere and truly tied to the legacy of the Lawrenceville tradition.
• Athletic participation is still a requirement for attendance at the Lawrenceville School
o This fact is key to tying current students with alumni from the beginning of the Lawrenceville School. Messaging will highlight the importance of athletic excellence as well as academic excellence. Both long-standing traditions at Lawrenceville.
• The health and safety of the students was officially cited as one reason the decision was made to move to flag football.
o The Board of Trustees allowed for the continuation of the house football tradition with a few caveats (reduction in team-size, etc). These must be linked to the fact that health and safety of the students is our primary concern and one of the key points that led to the decision. Messaging must indicate traditions are not more important than student safety.
NOTE: For purposes of this strategic communications project, all events in this plan take place in mid 2014; the year following the announcement and compromise to keep tackle football in the house system at Lawrenceville. This will be the timeframe throughout this plan.
Audience Analysis
The general audience for this communications plan will be alumni. The Lawrenceville School enjoys a robust alumni network that maintains strong ties to the school, the community, and each other. However, the problem as stated involves current and potential students and just as importantly, their parents and guardians. The success of the Lawrenceville School relies on continued financial support from all avenues. This being the case, it’s important to understand the positive and negative reception of our messaging from audiences we might not intend. The private school sector watches the actions of other private academic institutions. There will undoubtedly be interest in the success or failure of this strategy from competing schools. We must highlight the value of the Lawrenceville School specifically, while paying attention to the private school climate in general. Our research indicates that our target audience will be alumni who have and continue to financially contribute to the school, and are between 30-54 years old. This group of alumni has been the most vocal. 124 years of tradition is difficult to change with a memorandum. The attitude has been largely negative. Strong voices of opposition and disappointment were present in the preponderance of social media posts and letters received. Our communication efforts must specifically target this audience.
Audience Characteristics
• Typically, alumni who financially contribute to the school serve as unofficial ambassadors of Lawrenceville
o Messaging has to take the shape of shareable content on social media. The alumni who are the most vocal (positive or negative) regarding school decisions are extremely vocal on social media. Targeted content designed with to be shareable will be key to the success of this plan.
• The demographic of our TA is 35-54-years-old, alumni of the school, and participated in house football during their tenure at Lawrenceville
o This demographic is active on social media, namely the Lawrenceville School’s Facebook page which boasts 8,900 followers. We will use this avenue as a primary delivery method for this communication plan and push involvement and interaction through our digital media efforts.
• Pew research data indicates 30-54 year-olds are primarily using YouTube and Facebook as social media platforms (Smith, 2018).
o Our target audience is likely to view and engage with digital content pushed through Facebook. In order for the evaluation strategy outlined below to be effective, we will rely on direct interaction with our TA through our video product pushed through Facebook.
• Financial support to the Lawrenceville School comes primarily from the demographic that mirrors our TA
o Donations to the Lawrenceville Fund accounted for nine percent (just under $6.1M) of the annual giving received by the Lawrenceville School comptroller’s office. 93% of these donations came from within our TA demographic (Lawrenceville School n.d., 2017).
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Communication Strategy
Tradition at the Lawrenceville School is more than a sentiment. Tradition is the foundation upon which excellence has been built for over 124 years.
The success of this communication plan will rely on solidifying the importance of Lawrenceville traditions. Without simply focusing on house football, this communication effort has to reinforce the idea that commitment to Lawrenceville isn’t a nice platitude, but a lifelong commitment to tradition, excellence, and achievement – academically and athletically.
Since house football has been an enduring tradition (and the subject of our communication efforts), we should use past, current, and future Lawrenceville student-athletes in our communication delivery. The focus needs to be on the tradition and legacy of Lawrenceville, while establishing a link to our ongoing academic endeavors. This plan will target increasing the propensity (behavior) for alumni to financially contribute to the Lawrenceville School.
The rationale behind utilizing alumni and current students to deliver the message in this plan is designed to offer both the motivation and the trigger to changing behavior, two of the three factors outlined in Fogg’s (2009) Behavior Model.
Delivery
The vehicle for this message will be a digital video product. The video will depict former Lawrenceville student-athletes viewing nostalgic photos of their house-football days. The video will transition through several alumni and the strategic message narration will be voiced-over. The video will end with text information directing viewers to call, email, or engage via social media channels. (See Appendix A for detailed message explanation/storyboard)
There is a high probability this video ad message will be well-received by our TA as outlined in the audience profile discussed in the audience analysis section. Parents send their children to Lawrenceville for collegiate prep, high academic standards, and to nurture healthy competition (Mission and Strategic Plan, 2018). Utilizing past and current students in this ad will hopefully motivate and trigger (Fogg, 2009) alumni to connect personally and develop a sentimental attachment to the School.
Utilizing multiple social media platforms, this single video ad can be inexpensively distributed. The primary outlet and the intended primary medium will be spread across all Lawrenceville’s social media platforms, minimizing recurring costs.
Since our TA isn’t confined to one geographic area, we will use Facebook’s embedded audience-creation tools to target specific audiences built around the parameters of age, socio-economic status, school affiliation, and athletic interest. This demographic spread will reach alumni in the target audience, while addressing a significant portion of our alumni base that might not be financial contributors. Using targeted demographic data in our audience profiles for Facebook advertising purposes will reduce the overall cost and provide more return on advertising investment dollars spent. *
With our declared communication plan goal of increasing financial contributions to pre-announcement levels and beyond, the timeframe for publishing this video ad will begin immediately and continue for one month on all Lawrenceville social media platforms (primarily Facebook). This video will continue to be propagated and shared for the duration of the academic year. This will provide necessary time to evaluate the efficacy of this communications plan and to make necessary adjustments prior to our declared timeline of one calendar year.
The longevity of this messaging will rely on social media interaction and distribution. Considering the annual enrollment at Lawrenceville, we boast a strong following on Facebook. As of this month, the official Lawrenceville Facebook page boasts 8,366 followers, with 8,197 of those requesting notifications via Facebooks RSS subscription service. This means that almost 98% of those following Lawrenceville on Facebook will actively be alerted when new content is posted to the page.
The benefit of using the video ad on social media lies in the interaction our staff will be allowed. Statistically, social media users belonging to our TA (Dodd, M. & Campbell, S., 2014) tend to be more likely to respond immediately through primary post interaction. The ability to interact directly with this ad message and steer conversation can potentially alter financial contribution tendencies in our TA. Fortunately, according to Pew Research Institute data, our TA is comprised of people highly likely to engage and disseminate content on social media platforms such as Facebook (Smith, 2018).
Finally, we will begin to establish the means of evaluation of our plan through direct interaction, traffic directed to digital platforms, and increased financial contributions as a result of our strategic communication.
Evaluation
In order to appropriately measure the efficacy of our communication plan, we must ensure we plan a thorough evaluation strategy. Based on social media activity, open letters to the president of the Lawrenceville School, and a recent decline in financial contributions**, there is ample evidence that a significant portion of our alumni and historical donators have negative opinions about the decision to change the tradition of house football at Lawrenceville (Mission and strategic plan. 2018). We have the luxury of having a vocal alumni network and will use this to our advantage in the evaluation of our communications strategy. Our primary method of evaluation will be through direct observation of existing digital media platforms. When the video is posted, we will append call to action verbiage and offer a “donate now” button to encourage interaction with our alumni base. Previous communications using this method have had positive response numbers and indicate a high likelihood of repeated success. Additionally, utilizing our extensive student and alumni database, we will send targeted informational mailers with brief surveys querying recipients on their opinion and likelihood of continued financial contribution. We will use the same mailer to encourage financial contribution and offer a monetary pledge option if the recipient feels inclined to make a financial contribution. The Lawrenceville School will utilize the Meltwater Public Relations and Communications social media tool-set to monitor and respond to the effects of our communication releases.
• Goal 1: Increase financial contributions from previously-supportive alumni
o Evaluation 1: Facebook poll data appended to video content
o Evaluation 2: survey mailer sent to alumni
o Evaluation 3: survey mailer sent to current student's parents
o Rationale: Existing financial contribution data will be gathered at the onset of the communication release. Any subsequent interaction to specific communication related content will be collected and analyzed via the Meltwater (Outside Insight, n.d.) social media tool suite.
• Goal 2: Increase positive school image across social media platforms
o Evaluation 1: social media surveys
o Evaluation 2: survey mailer sent to alumni
o Evaluation 3: survey mailer sent to current student’s parents
o Evaluation 4: faculty and staff survey
o Rationale: social media is the leading method for alumni interaction within the alumni group and external through each member’s existing network.
• Goal 3: Increase overall enrollment
o Evaluation 1: enrollment data comparison from previous years
o Evaluation 2: email responses from recruiting literature
o Evaluation 3: website traffic data from targeted mailers
o Rationale: the communication plan triggered by the football decision is a prime opportunity to target future students utilizing the same “traditions” message. This plan can serve as both an explanation of our decision and reinforce the image of Lawrenceville to future students.
*Actual alumni database information isn’t publicly available. This data was fabricated for the purposes of this assignment, but is also factually based on the mean and median income amounts pulled from 2010, 2016, and 2018 census data for Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut.
**This data was fabricated from actual current statistical data to provide tangible information that could be used for the purposes of this project. The data is realistic based on the provided case-study material and the trends from the 2015-2016 annual financial report of giving posted by the Lawrenceville School at https://issuu.com/thelawrencevilleschool/docs/lville_annual.final. Additionally, the Lawrenceville School official Facebook page suggests an active alumni following with a high propensity to engage in official school communications.
References:
Administration. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.lawrenceville.org/page/about/administration/senior-staff
Facebook users by age in the U.S. 2018. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.statista.com/statistics/398136/us-facebook-user-age-groups/
Fogg, B. (2009). A behavior model for persuasive design. Proceedings of the 4th International
Conference on Persuasive Technology – Persuasive 09.
Outside Insight. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.meltwater.com/
Mission and Strategic Plan. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.lawrenceville.org/page/about/mission-and-strategic-plan
Smith, A. (2018, September 19). Social Media Use 2018: Demographics and Statistics. Retrieved
from http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/
Lawrenceville School. (n.d.). 2017 Report of Giving. Retrieved from