Local is lekker

Issued by d6 group
Johannesburg, Sep 14, 2020

An innovative community-focused advertising platform has emerged as a new opportunity for South African brands and businesses to successfully reach school-going children and their families.

And the best part is: Education wins too, as schools share in the “ad revenue”.

How do advertisers reach rich relevance in the lives of millions of school parents?

To understand this vast potential, it’s essential to first understand how progressive school communities are now harnessing hi-tech.

The d6 platform is a leading example, used by more than 2 500 schools across South Africa. And each of these schools is now a “digital community”. E-mails always had severe limitations, between schools and parents. But now d6 has radically improved the health of parent-school relationships – covering news, announcements, calendars, child-specific detail, payment facilitation and many crucial information sets more.

Now that more than a million online eyeballs are focused on the d6 app, schools have a captive audience. And that presents a healthy advertising opportunity.

The commercial relationships offered by d6 are innovative – and benefit advertisers, parents and their children’s schools.

“Audiences of parents-of-children are a crucial, niche market,” reported Willem Kitshoff. “But in these school-to-parent relationships, it’s all about trust.

“Parents entrust their children to their schools, and so schools inevitably occupy extremely high levels of trust with parents.

“Therefore, if advertisers are endorsed by a school, parents will often display strong loyalty and affection towards the advertiser,” Kitshoff explained. This is superb news for advertisers.

Brands that have leapt to invest in this innovative advertising platform include: Outsurance, Vodacom, Woolworths, Caltex and MasterMaths – to name only a few.

For schools, the d6 advertising opportunity includes a “share-of-profit” relationship through d6 Rewards, which can develop into a healthy income stream for schools. Schools that use d6’s full spectrum of communication systems enjoy the most engagement with their parent bodies – and therefore earn the most from their advertising partnerships.

These schools can receive up to 50% of the advertising income.

And this income, for schools, is in every instance ploughed back into school budgets – ultimately improving the schools’ offerings. And that is great news for parents, whose children stand to benefit.

“This is a healthy, virtuous, symbiotic circle, which benefits everyone,” Kitshoff said. “Brands increase their trust, schools generate crucial income and learners benefit from healthier school budgets and operational effectiveness.”

Medium-large brands stand to benefit from reaching relevance with school communities – major sports brands spring to mind.

But so, too, can local product owners – eager to become known in the school communities on their doorsteps.

At a hyper-local level, the d6 advertising platform is a rare viable local digital advertising platform for community businesses. Think of the hairdresser, local restaurant or hardware store, and their potential traction with nearby school families.

This excites the d6 team most.

“This form of advertising is known as 'community-focused advertising', and strengthens healthy, resilient, connected communities,” Kitshoff explained. These advertising opportunities include banner advertising, sponsored articles, school branding sponsorships and many more potential media assets.

Simultaneously, the d6 advertising channel allows companies to be socially relevant – knowing schools profit-share from their advertising investment.

This week, a new “local listings platform” was launched by d6, on which school families can find local services, offered by trusted people they often know in their school or neighbourhood communities. The local listing platform includes services such as electricians, plumbers, vehicle repairs, personal care, etc. Best of all is that schools will share 50% on the advertising revenue generated through local listings.

All schools that already use the d6+ communication service are able to activate this listings service immediately. And for local advertisers, the listing is free until the end of October.

From the school side of the fence, the d6 is a compelling partnership. Schools know what’s hot in their school communities, and are encouraged to play an active role in identifying potential advertisers, who would most enjoy this innovative advertising relationship.

For more information contact d6 on 087 820 0088, visit https://d6.co.za or e-mail [email protected].