Marketing Ingenuity, From a 7 Year Old

Summer is here and if you have children, this means either sending them off to camp, putting them with a babysitter, having them sit around the house, going on vacation or maybe summer school. While summers create wonderful memories for children, I used it as an opportunity to challenge my 7 year old to think of ways to help her community this summer.

While talking to her about this project, I realized how resourceful children can be, and how she is already using basic principles of marketing to overcome obstacles and get the job done. She doesn’t know it yet, but she put together a marketing strategy and I can’t wait to see the results.

This is how it went –

Start With An Idea

It started with me asking my daughter, “What could you do this summer to help your community?” My only requirements were it has to be something she can do (nothing unrealistic), it can’t cost anything, and it has to help someone else that needs help. She then came up with the idea of helping her school raise money for supplies by getting people in our neighborhood involved. 

Create A Plan

Her plan was simple and didn’t require anything other then her time. She was going to help her school raise money by getting people to donate box tops. Most people already purchase products with box tops, so it wouldn’t require anything extra from them. They would donate something they probably were going to through away anyway.

Determining the collection process was tricky. She wanted to take empty tissue boxes and decorate each one. The decoration would include information about what she is doing, and it would ask them to help her school by dropping in the box tops. The tricky part was, how was she going to get these boxes without breaking one of my requirements? She solved this problem by asking her parents, and friends, to donate empty tissue boxes. In return, she would decorate the boxes and return them to the owner.

What’s Next

Her plan is that before the end of summer, she will go to everyone that she gave boxes to and collect them back. Each box will list the family’s name and she will turn them into the school to help earn money for supplies.

As a mom, I am so proud of my daughter but I really am excited to see what happens over the summer with her project. As a marketing professional, I look at this and think how amazing it is to see a 7 year old apply basics of marketing to prepare, implement, manage and communicate a plan.

If you would like to stay informed about how this project turns out, I recommend you follow 4 Step Studio’s blog and Facebook page.