Nearly two months ago I gave myself a flyering S.T.A.G. for the duration of February and March. It certainly wasn’t my favourite time of year to be out promoting スミス英会話 in front of the two stations that sandwich my school - 長岡天神 (Nagaoka Tenjin) or 長岡京 (Nagaokakyo). It was often cold, sometimes snowing and I could think of many more comfortable places I would prefer to be relaxing at 7 o’clock in the morning.
In a previous post I talked about one way I could distract myself, by viewing the whole enterprise as a kind of sport. That certainly helped, as did the notion that I was out on the street communicating with crowds of potential students. The communication itself can take on various forms. For example there’s the deciphering of nods, where sometimes a tilt of the head can mean “I would like to take one of those, please” other times “I’ve seen you in front of me, what on earth are you handing out?” and of course the “I’m in a hurry, would you be so kind as to get out of the way?” (The good folk of Nagaoka, I feel, are impeccably polite).
Then there are the morning greetings, sometimes in English, sometimes in Japanese. My opening gambit is invariably a “good morning” or even a “good morning, sir / ma’am”. This then may be followed by the aforementioned nod, a Japanese aisatsu, or a nice brisk good morning in English. If someone takes one of the flyers, I usually wish them a nice day, and perhaps a “your welcome” if they have thanked me. I myself always thank anyone who takes a flyer, and also those who have indicated they won’t be requiring a flyer on that particular morning (whether by nod, a shimmy of the hand or verbally). Sometimes a more senior lady or gentleman laughs at the prospect of their joining an English school, but I’m happy to offer them a flyer all the same whilst sharing the smiles: after all perhaps their daughter or grandson could be interested?
But my favourite form of communication was when I bumped into existing students. Even if it was only for a minute or a few seconds, afterwards I always felt warmed and encouraged by the brief chats I could grab, even when the worst of the winter weather was doing its best to freeze and dampen my spirits.
So flyering can be viewed as a kind of sport, an act of communication or simply as an effective marketing tool. I’ve been doing flyers off and on throughout my years in the Smiths sytem, and I have to say that with all the web support that head office has been providing these days, it’s become more effective than ever. Over the period of the 2 month S.T.A.G. the school signed up 8 new students, with one more starting tomorrow and number 10 next week.
Every one of my regular 6pm students knows that if they come a little early, they can watch the last couple matches of the 
Not the most exciting thing, but i noticed some other schools have some great location shots, and as we recently had new signs installed, i thought it would be nice for other schools to see what we look like now. As our school is on the 8th floor (the penthouse as it were), we need more ground level visibility. In the next little while we might also add some big signs on our balcony and in the windows….. stay tuned! I will post both before and after pictures. Ed
As strange as this may sound…… on Australia Day we have a special event night called “Canada Event Night”! This was unplanned, obviously i am not aware of Aussie holidays. Anyway, we had a very multicultural event night, including Canadians, Australians (my flyer guy), Brazilians and of course Japanese! We had fun playing trivia and especially learning about