Building brand awareness
Employers often engage with schools and colleges to help raise awareness of an enterprise, product or service or as a means to reinforce or change the attitudes behind that awareness. By working with schools and colleges, employers can save on marketing budgets, secure free publicity while moving customers from awareness to advocacy. In the UK, there are 7.4 million family households with dependent children, comprising 14.7 million adults (representing one in four of the adult population). Campaigns such as Sainsburys' Active Kids build on such strong latent interest in supporting education.
"At a business level, [working with schools and colleges] is the cheapest advertising campaign that small and medium-sized businesses will ever have. It's a fantastic promotional tool for them to promote their business to young learners, their parents and guardians in the community in which they work" Gill Morris, GMTTEC
It is not just large employers that see partnerships with schools and colleges as means of raising profile. Many small businesses see opportunities to demonstrate their commitment to their community through working with schools and colleges, giving customers extra incentive to buy their goods or use their services.
Many employers are happy to secure coverage of their involvement in local media which is inherently interested in stories involving children and young people. Some schools and most Education Business Partnerships have resources available to secure media interest.