Hopefully you’ve read some of my previous posts and found that I know a little bit about the subject.  And you should know by now that this is my business and I’m passionate about it.  We really do care about whether or not our planners can move the needle on college-readiness (and that includes making better grades in middle and high school).

When it comes to printing student planners, paper and ink cost about the same anywhere you go.  The big differentiator is labor cost and companies in this business have figured out how to get that cost as low as possible, whether they are running idol printing presses in the US or using the new global economy to compete, the playing field is pretty level.

In the end it is the cost to acquire a new customer (advertising, sales commissions, etc) that add much to the cost of a planner.

When we started selling our page-per-day student planner in 1996 this was a fledgling industry.  Over the last decade printing companies have flocked to the business and schools have seen one option in various flavors marketed in various ways.  They seen covers become 3-D, seen pockets and rulers and pouches added.  That’s about it for innovation.  One makes a change and the rest follow.

But in the end, it’s been the same mouse trap repackaged over and over.  Someone once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  And this is partially why so many schools have abandoned student planners.  They say they school planners don’t work for the majority of students.  I think they are right.

But a daily student planner…we’ll call it a student day planner…is a different animal.  When designed right it is the perfect vehicle to teach organization and planning skills that translate into good time management skills.

A weekly student planner doesn’t cut it.  Seriously, ask every friend you have to show you their day planner and then come back and post how many of them use a weekly planner (7 days spread out on two pages).   There are some great ones out there, I’ve used just about every planner on the market because it’s my business and my favorite is the “Planner Pad” but even that great planner doesn’t translate into the academic setting.

iPhones don’t work, computers don’t, PDA’s don’t either.  There is something about the tactile feel of writing down assignments and seeing how they fit into a busy day that begins to orient the mind toward what can and can’t be accomplished in a given day.

AgendaWorks student planners have taken all of this into account.  We can print and sell “weekly student planners” but that would be against what we know to be the best planner solution for the modern student.  And if you think that’s all there is to our planners…you’d be wrong.  Every aspect of our planners map back to solid research.

Still, the academic planner industry as whole may have missed the boat and taken the school planner market along with them.  When the big education planner companies like Premier came along the graphic designers and marketing organizations went into action to make visually appealing daily student planners.

But that’s were we went wrong.  Like medicine that tastes bad but is good for you, that beautiful student day planner with all the fun stuff on the page may have become just another layer of “noise” in a student’s world that is begging for “less” noise.

It’s one of the reasons that magazines like “Simple” have become so popular…we all know that we are overloaded…we have stimulus overload from the TV to the checkout line at the grocery store.  Add in hectic work and personal lives and it’s easy to see why the current research is indicating it’s this crazy busy lifestyle is causing much of the ADD and ADHD symptoms we see in students and adults alike.

So is all that Flash really a help or is it just good old marketing 101?  Remember the Generic isle in the grocery store about 20 years ago?  The isle with the white and black labels?  Who wouldn’t want full color, factoid packed, brain teased, busy student planner over a blander, simpler planner designed for the student of today (who happens to have a pretty high chance of being ADD/ADHD)?

Something to think about.  More thoughts in my next post.