How an innovative campaign to get kids into surveying turned into a business and lit up the world of geospatial marketing with Elaine and Elly Ball

“What the cartoon posters have actually done is, it’s got them thinking in a creative way”

Key Takeaways

• The big problem today is that surveyors didn’t know how to communicate to their children or the school exactly they do.
• Visual marketing enables companies to be more creative and explain complex solutions in a memorable way. 
• The general public doesn’t know much about surveying and surveyors – it’s a very under appreciated industry. 
• The material in Get Kids into Survey is very much aimed at children to raise awareness of the industry as a whole.
• Everyone has marketing skills they don’t know about – by just doing and talking about what you love will help you unleash them.
• GKIS uses different posters, different themes and teachings which has opened a lot of people’s eyes to what really goes on in the industry.
• Cartoon posters got the general public and the industry to think creatively.
• Give technical people some options and tasters for them to get excited about marketing other than creating cartoons and posters. Its also finding like-minded people that find the same things exciting as well.
• You get somebody’s attention whether they are in the business or they have a network within their business, they will network you into certain people and they will get excited about what you’re talking and what you’re doing.
• When companies sponsor a character, there’s an emotion that’s attached to it and people will remember both the company and character because of the emotional connection. It’s something that people can relate to.
• People are hooked on different aspects of what you’re doing. So there might be someone whose a bit more techie,  a bit more visual,  a bit more audio, all these different things. So when you’re speaking one person, you’ve got something different to show them or different to engage with. 
• You have to focus specifically on even just one or two things. Just focus your marketing on one or two things that you’re really good at and promote it well. The other stuff will come.
• Video marketing like FaceTime and Instagram Story are really good because you get to know companies and the people in them more personally – you’ve just got to put yourself out there and do it. 
• People want to speak to people, they want to see what you’re like, as a person and not just the corporate face
• From writing content to putting out on Social Media like LinkedIn or Twitter, you should be future-oriented and write as if you are speaking to a friend.
• Using GoogleAdWords and advertising with specific features can help you focus on your marketing.
• When you’re talking person to person with marketing, it’s the same with kids as well. It’s how you relate to them on their level, and then you hook them in with actual education which develops further.

Elaine and Elly Ball’s 3 Tradeshow Tips

• Graphics and Images should be appealing
• Stay current, fresh, modern and engaging
• Speak through your banners as if you are speaking to your friend.

Mentioned Links and References:

Mentioned Links and References:

About Get Kids into Survey:

Get Kids into Survey began in 2017 with the creation of the first GKiS poster – a fun resource for the survey community to share with their children in order to help them understand what their parents did at work.

The response from industry members was so overwhelmingly encouraging that, just three years later, we have a whole range of survey posters in production, and we have distributed over 35,000 copies globally – a third of which were sent to the United States, with posters mailed to every state! And that’s not all…

Since its inception, the already highly-acclaimed Get Kids into Survey project has expanded rapidly. It now includes:

– An online hub of resources for young surveyors and educators

– ‘SurveyFest’ events (coming in 2021) where pupils can try out geospatial tech and meet surveyors

– The GKiS Education Fund, which raises money to support ambassadors, school visits and more

– The GeoSquad Comic – an action-packed, illustrated introduction to the world of survey