The Middleton Lake Elementary School was looking for fundraisers and we considered many options. We were looking for one that many people would want to participate – and especially one where entire families could join in and enjoy. We looked at a number of fundraisers and finally decided that a charity 5k walk a thon was the ideal choice. A healthy fundraiser was perfect to encourage children to be physically fit as well as raising money for the new school gym.

Our biggest challenge seemed to be letting families know about the charity 5k to encourage them to sign up and also support families that were walking. We just didn’t have a budget that would support lots of costly advertising. We chose to make bumperstickers promoting our charity 5k and they were a great success. The school office and every teacher had bumperstickers available for parents and families to take and put on their cars. We also gave bumperstickers to a number of the local businesses that supported our walk a thon, like the local deli that donated snacks and drinks.

I think one of our most successful choices with the bumpersticker was that we had a contest with the kids to design it. The top designs were voted on blind – so students didn’t know which other students created them. The best design was selected and announced at our kickoff for the event. It was something that generated a lot of excitement. Even though only one child won, many children had fun designing for the contest. This is something I know we’ll do again because the children had so much fun with it.

The bumperstickers were a great success! After the first week of giving out the bumperstickers – we had to place a new order to get more bumperstickers. It seemed that everyone wanted one for every car the family owned. Some were also giving them to grandparents and other family members – like as a thank you gift for supporting them as a fundraiser for the walk a thon. This was just terrific. Every time we saw the bumper stickers around town we would smile and know that more people in town were being informed of our charity walk a thon. Our dreams of building a new gym were finally coming true.

Things got more exciting when we got a call from the local newspaper. They’d seen a bumpersticker on an employee’s car and asked if they could do a story about the walk a thon. The newspaper was at our school for nearly an entire day, taking photographs and talking with teachers. The newspaper article was a terrific boost to everyone who worked so hard on this event. I know for a fact we wouldn’t have gotten that newspaper article without those bumperstickers.

The day of our walk a thon was momentous. We had quite a crowd. Hundreds of families came out to support their school. Even people that didn’t have kids came out to support the school. It meant so much to us. The walk a thon day was a terrific day. We raised nearly $25,000 after we paid our expenses.

The bumpersticker was such a success with our supporters that we decided to do a thank you bumpersticker saying “I Supported” for everyone. We gave these out at the end of the walk and mailed some of them to the larger contributors. This bumpersticker was just as popular as our original bumpersticker.

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Ever driven along in the commuter traffic with your mind somewhere else only to look at the bumper sticker on the car in front of you and think, “A Ha!”.  As Forrest Gump’s mom said about life and chocolates, the same applies with bumper stickers – they are all around us, but with every car journey you take, you never know what you’re going to get.

Bumper stickers are the repository for the nations self-expression, which is why we see so many stickers proclaiming “My kid’s an honor student” or something of that ilk.  The real nuggets, what we like to think of as the real bumper sticker equivalent of fortune cookies, are those stickers which catch you at that precise moment in time when you are attuned to the message they are sending.  Usually, it’s a humorous message which grabs you but it isn’t always the case – there are some deep and meaningful bumper stickers out there if you open your eyes and your mind when you’re on the road.

Some fortune cookies which have impressed us include:

“I’m an intellectual and I have the bumper sticker to prove it”

“Run Hillary, Run”

(fixed to the rear of the car if a Democrat and the front if a Republican)

“I’m an atheist, thank God!”

Bumper stickers resemble fortune cookie advisories but for different reasons: they are both made up of throw away lines, sound bites in fact.  They are by necessity, brief and short because they impart a strong message using very few words, practically performing the same function as poetry – expressing ideas rhythmically with as few a number of words as is possible.  Imagine what would become of a bumper sticker line if it was matched with verse: certainly the result would be very interesting, but this is also where bumper stickers beat poetry because you only have time to see a snapshot of a line and not an entire verse.

The successful bumper stickers which feed the brain are those which have just enough of a hook to attract your attention and make you think just that little bit extra.  This applies even if you are a redneck driving your truck with the oversize mud wheels down the road:

“No mountain too high, no ditch too deep”

We challenge anyone to say that is not as deep and meaningful as something such as, “Minds are like parachutes; they don’t work when they’re closed”.

Bumper stickers are far more prevalent in our society because they are so widely used, much more so than fortune cookies and yet, the latter has more of a place in our cultural lexicon.  We find this very strange given the impact bumper stickers have in our daily lives but perhaps our familiarity with them has led to some relative contempt.  Bumper stickers are clearly much more valuable and far more likely to bring a grin to your face or provoke a thought in your brain than any fortune cookie.  Unlike fortune cookies, what you are likely to read on a bumper sticker will also have far more relevance to what is happening in your life and immediate future than any proverbial claim to expect to become rich in the future.

Perhaps the trend towards combining fortune cookies with bumper stickers is a salutary nod in the direction of just how important the latter has become in our lives:

“Your eyes are telling you – Keep your eyes on the road moron!”

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There are many uses for bumper stickers. One of the most popular today is to create personalized bumper stickers for schools. Parents, family members and friends are proud to have bumper stickers that say something great about their child and the school they attend on their vehicle. It is an easy way to brag about their child and share their accomplishments and success.

Schools can also use bumper stickers as a way of letting the public know about the great programs they have and the achievements of their students. These bumper stickers as they are seen on the road, grocery store and other places let people know just how wonderful the school is. Whether it is a public or a private school, these bumper stickers can only serve to boost the morale and image of the school. It can also increase enrollment as parents want to learn more about this great school they’ve heard about from bumper stickers.

One of the reasons bumper stickers are so popular is they are easy to produce and are fairly inexpensive. It is something that is quite practical to give to parents and families as a small gift. There are other promotional items that are a lot of fun – like t-shirts – that can be much more costly. Best of all, with bumper stickers they are “worn” every day, rain or shine.

A popular bumper sticker for schools is proclaiming that “My Child is an Honor Student at (name of school).” This is something that any parent would be proud of – to have a child on the honor roll. A child who achieves getting on the honor roll is obviously smart. So the school is praised for encouraging and nurturing smart children and helping them to succeed with this bumper sticker.

There are many ideas for school bumper stickers. You aren’t limited to just an honor student bumper sticker. Remember there are many achievements in school and lots of student successes. Sometimes one of the best student successes is participating in a student event. Like a talent show or school fair. If your school has a talent show or a school fair, why not create a bumper sticker for this event? That would easily be a popular bumper sticker for parents and their children.

Another excellent choice is physical fitness. Many children excel at physical fitness. Or they like to participate in a particular sport. Create a bumper sticker for children who excel in gym or who participate in a health day at the school.

The best bumper stickers you can create are ones that make parents feel good about their children and children to feel good about themselves. Some ideas might be to give away less bumper stickers – say for example to all of the students in the school band. Not every student plays a band instrument. But playing an instrument is a great accomplishment and it says something nice about your school that you do have a band and instruments for the children to play.

Bumper stickers get an A+ from schools as an ideal choice to give to parents and families.

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We can say a particular bumper sticker has a great tag line, something funny which makes us smile; there may be a great design which catches the eye; it can be promoting something emotive, such as a political or religious viewpoint, or it may be something completely unconnected with any of these factors.  Answering a question like this is very similar to giving a precise answer to “how long is a piece of string” – we don’t really know, but what is reasonable is that a good bumper sticker touches us in some way on a human level.

The majority of bumper stickers are of the humorous variety, and what makes people smirk, smile or laugh has never been defined or quantified, certainly with no more success as anyone may have with herding cats!  Typically, what qualifies as a good, funny bumper sticker is that they are short and punchy, usually very personal (as in the words, “I”, “my” or “your” being used a lot) and they have popular appeal.  It’s a rarity to find a high brow joke on a bumper sticker, but there again is something of the characteristic of a good bumper sticker – you have a highly visible sticker on one of your most valuable possessions, so you’re certainly making a statement and probably you want it to be a popular one.

There is another characteristic which we commonly see with bumper stickers – they are highly personal.  How many times do you see a sticker proclaiming, “My daughter is an honor roll student” or “My son is a US Marine”?  If we have something to say, especially if we are proud of it, there is little better than a bumper sticker to tell the whole, wide world.  Well, perhaps there is the internet with Facebook, but bumper stickers have been around for a lot longer than the internet!

Sticking with the personal theme, another characteristic of a good bumper sticker is that it appeals to our emotions.  Bumper sticker themes are rarely unemotional, usually they are the complete reverse and little else is guaranteed to raise an emotional reaction than politics or religion.  No surprise then that many bumper stickers promote political candidates and parties, or take a stance on religious views in both a positive and negative fashion.

It is wrong to think that bumper stickers are “throw away” philosophy and the product of junk or pop culture.  Many bumper stickers are thought provoking – they need to be because their brevity requires the reader to make some leap with their imagination to get the point.  While the standard, “I Love NY” leaves little to the imagination, many bumper stickers do represent a brain teasing experience as in, “If You Can Read This – I Can Slam on My Brakes and Sue You”.

We can summarize the key features of a good bumper sticker in three words – personal, emotive and short.  There cannot be any such thing as a “long” bumper sticker because the car bumper is too small or the lettering will be unreadable.  The challenge is how to make your bumper sticker demonstrate your personal attributes in an emotional fashion, and how good a sticker is really comes down to how well it provokes that emotional response with a punch.

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Bumper stickers have been around almost as long as the automobile – it seems that people just can’t resist adorning their car with something humorous or a personal statement.  It seems that when Henry Ford said customers can have the Model T Ford in any color, as long as it was black, that customers took it upon themselves to take matters into their own hands – after all, the customer is always right!

Bumper stickers started life as an identifier – usually telling other motorists where the car was from – but rapidly was adopted by marketing men in the 1950′s and shortly thereafter, by the hopeful candidates in political elections.  As the 1960′s came and went, bumper stickers have become ever more humorous, more visible and much more popular as a sign of individuality, demeanor and driver personality.

Forget the internet with Facebook and MySpace which lure advertisers with the prospect of millions of eyeballs looking at their web pages – just think of how many more eyeballs are focused on the bumpers of cars every single day!

“Your message here” is very true when you consider how popular bumper stickers are, but just as with social media and internet marketing, there is one attribute you should be looking to emulate – the viral campaign.

Viral marketing seeks to get individuals to take part in a campaign but at the same time, the campaign is designed to encourage or require that other members of their circle of contacts (family, friends, work colleagues) are introduced and in turn, they participate too – one person introduces 5 more, they all introduce 5 more and so and so on.

Bumper stickers can also be used in this way, but they have to be engaging and it also helps if there is something unique about the bumper sticker which makes it a sought after item.  In turn, this allows you as the marketer, to leverage the desirability of the bumper sticker to engage potential customers directly in return for which, they get the opportunity to market your company or product on their car bumper!

Designing a bumper sticker for marketing purposes requires good design skills and a good insight into the minds of potential customers; marketing appeal must be subliminal as you are looking to latch onto an existing social trend and are in effect, gatecrashing someone’s private party.   An example would be where you design a bumper sticker providing a rendition of the flag or name of the state or town you are operating in; this forms the center focus of the bumper sticker but within the design your company and product are incorporated.  Use words such as “Limited Edition” to enhance the impression of exclusivity, and use the sticking backer to provide instructions on how a consumer can get more, e.g. by visiting a website and completing a survey.

Bumper stickers are long lasting pieces of marketing collateral, usually lasting as long as the car itself is on the road.  Bumper stickers are a small, moving billboard which you don’t have to pay for and over the life of the bumper sticker, it will be seen and read by hundreds of thousands of people, and even better, read repeatedly by a significant minority.

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