Is Edtech a “cool” domain?

The recent surge in EdTech products is unmissable and has been the talk of all the popular news portals. Its uncanny similarity to how E-commerce took form a decade back tosses up a few interesting thoughts as to why did the wave really take off. Isn’t it just education at the end of the day? Is every one enrolled on the various portals really interested in education, or they are simply following a fad? Are the learners going after the “coolness” attribute of anything with an e-?

E-commerce gives us tangible benefits, ed-tech gives us anything but tangibility for what we pay. This is where I saw Whitehat Jr giving away framed certificates, business cards and more to the kids enrolled in their programs. They wanted to ensure tangibility is also achieved. I am not sure if this really clicks with parents, it surely clicks for a short while with the kids — having their own visiting cards just as their parents! thats a high!

A lot of benefit we seek in edtech depends on our own degree of involvement and most of the times it cannot be downloaded on someone else’s incapability to teach (if we take the top MOOCs and other programs). Thus, I fear its the coolness quotient, a fad that we are following in Edtech. Unless something substantial changes and we look at it as a competitive alternative to classroom teaching with comparable learning outcomes, this fad will have a maturity phase sooner than we can perceive.

Edtech is actually been around us for a decade but it got noticed (and how!) because of no other option to go to in the pandemic lockdown. Even then, branding of the several Edtechs mattered and it now matters more. We see the trend of image building as Unacademy and others are sponsoring ads in the recent IPL matches. Who would have thought of the very innovative ad that shows a Pythagoras theorem in action on the cricket field, and many more such. Didn’t it look cool? Here comes my quest to understand if the Edtech players are trying to woo the students in the K-12 segment for their coolness factor. When kids all around are enrolled, your kid would also like to be enrolled for the same tutor. And in these times, the same Edtech player.

Studies have found that consumers associate cool products with generally desirable characteristics, including usefulness (Runyan, Noh, and Mosier 2013; Sundar, Tamul, and Wu 2014), excellence (Mohiuddin et al. 2016), and hedonic value (Im, Bhat, and Lee 2015).

I believe EdTech has the potential to be in all the three ‘desirable’ characteristics mentioned above. Its useful, strives for excellence, and has a great hedonic value with all the gamification integrated well with the programs. If we take notice, the advertisements of most EdTechs play around these key attributes.

Byjus, Whitehat Jr., Unacademy and CueMath are all vying for the K-12 segment. It is the segment which has the highest “perceived potential” in the consumers, who are also the only influencers. Peer pressure is the most when in school and this is what is monetized best with some trendy ads.

The Advertisements driving the inherent attributes

Lets see how they are building on the “cool” factor. When I googled for an advertisement of Byjus , I came to this ad where the teachers are given following titles: Math Magician, The Science Sorcerer, The Science Genius and more. All along with their high pedigree and credentials. And then I click on the main link which has a series of methodology explanation that is not as jazzy as the four key tutors of the portal in the previous link.

I am myself impressed with the magician and the sorcerer! If I were my son, I would be impressed enough to ask for atleast a demo session and then follow up to take it forward. We don’t need to go to Whitehat Jr’s advertising adventures that brought so much to the notice of the Advertising Council, but they did what they had to, got the eyeballs and revenue at the same time.

Next we see the advertisement posted by Unacademy in the IPL with the social media post with 12.2k retweets:

“You win some. You lose some. But you always learn something new. Here’s to one of the constants in life — learning!”

In my opinion, that was the coolest advertisement in years on a cricket pitch, the last was by Cadbury about 2 decades ago. Somehow cricket and Indian audiences will always have the most noticeable connect. Even if kids didn’t see the ad, their parents did. Even if none in the family did, the company did enough talk about the advert all over online media where parents can take note of the same, just as I did. Been out of touch with TV news, can’t comment if they are there too! Then YourStory published a detailed story on the initiative by Unacademy. With their ambition of achieving 200X growth in near future, Unacademy is going all about to create a brand that gets eyeballs on every pitch out there. K-12 test segment and the upskilling segment are the foremost growth segments for Edtech, as per the report published by Inc42.

Warren and Campbell’s (2014, p. 544)(reference 1) define coolness as “a subjective and dynamic, socially constructed positive trait attributed to cultural objects inferred to be appropriately autonomous”.

The above examples clearly follow this coolness definition of inscribing socially constructive traits that Indians or say Asians at large seek to fulfill in almost every household. If the Edtech industry does not play cool, it may not really get the attention it is getting at present. With previous generations’ focus on the seriousness of pursuing studies, and the current generation’s cool attitude, the combination is what we are looking at to get an approving nod from the learner and the guardian.

At the same time, EdTech is a domain unlike the consumer product domain. There cannot be a typical brand licensing that works very well for the CPG industry, and for that matter e-commerce as well. It cannot give away its license and then bear the brunt of a lower quality product offered by the licensee. The control has to be in the right hands. Thus, marketing efforts have to be aligned with the expectations of the users. When learning outcome is the only benefit, its a tough task for the advertiser to convince how something so subjective is a solution for one and all. Coolness is one answer.

References:

1. Warren, C., Batra, R., Loureiro, S. M. C., & Bagozzi, R. P. (2019). Brand Coolness. Journal of Marketing, 83(5), 36–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242919857698
2. https://yourstory.com/2020/11/unacademy-ipl-ad-film-praise-connecting-sports-learning
3. https://twitter.com/unacademy/status/1325399160854441984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1325733950606635008%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fyourstory.com%2F2020%2F11%2Funacademy-ipl-ad-film-praise-connecting-sports-learning
4. https://byjus.com/byjus-classes-book-a-free-demo-class/registration/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=K12-Byjus-Brand-Desktop-India&utm_term=byju%27s%20advertisement&gclid=CjwKCAiAzNj9BRBDEiwAPsL0d2dy5dgtwKtvQGmaul6qqG-gYNOVwm2jlBeLlNKNweu2GGNBD1-AhhoC2IEQAvD_BwE