STREAMWOOD, Ill. — This time of year, commercials from a host of companies offering products that range from classroom supplies to clothes are in the swing of things when it comes to self-promotion. After all, it’s “back to school time!”
In some of these television spots, the script calls for kids boarding, riding or exiting a school bus as parents, sometimes frantically, chase after the kids with a forgotten lunch pail or some other necessary item. The message is clear: parents must get with it to buy, buy, buy to get their kids prepared for the school year ahead.
If we didn’t know better, we would say the advertising agencies seemingly “get it.” Regardless of the reasons why (see revenue), they recognize the need to have school buses in nearly every frame of the commercials they create for their clients. See one of them here.
Of course, reality also dictates that school buses are merely a prop in these commercials. The vehicles, after all, have become as synonymous with school as the old red school house of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Then there was the red apple on the teacher’s desk.
Yet, it’s interesting once we turn our attention back to reality that school bus routes nationwide continue to be cut. But obviously a large number of people nationwide, especially parents — and advertisers — equate the school bus with learning or at least getting kids to and from school. And that includes frequent sightings of the school bus, like this one in a recent Kansas City Star newspaper article, when talking about preparing kids for school in the first place.
As pupil transporters begin busing kids again in full force, or prepare to, it will be interesting to see if any discussion abounds this week at the annual American School Bus Council summit here in Chicago about how the industry might piggy-back on this national albeit commercial message.
