If you pay $25K a year for “Annual stratus hosting for DPS website and other technical services as required for District Office of Strategic Communication” as the Dayton Public Schools pay Oxiem LLC, you should call me. You qualify as “A sucker born every minute” (which it turns out wasn’t said by P. T. Barnum)- which fits with the general circus we have running the district.

It’s on the agenda for tonight’s “review session.”

As are a ton of resignations. Maybe if they didn’t spend so much on hosting, and a website that only one person can manage, they’d have money to pay teachers and bus drivers?

But, instead of hiring the low bidder for their marketing and communications needs, they went with the high bidder- and their mad spending on media. Billboards based on a lame premise, and a ton of web advertising (without ascertaining the reach of the web to DPS students and parents who live on the wrong side of the digital divide.) Instead of fixing the one bad site, they started building microsites. Lots of them. This is what people did back in 2005, not in 2017.

I’m not going to link to the microsites- or promote them. I wouldn’t want to increase the visitor count into double digits.

They’ve also released some web videos. The graphics have the sophistication of the current logo- in other words, child like. None of them have view counts anywhere near the ones we’ve done to expose their BS.

Here is an example of their mad video skills. It had 9 whole views- published on the 12th.

Note, the Ohlmann group subcontracts video production.

Here are the latest invoices for the DPS media campaign. What seems to be missing, is approval from the board to expend funds for these media buys. They authorized the contract with Ohlmann Group, but, the media budget that was part of the RFQ- never had a spending authorization by the board.

And if this isn’t enough to make your head spin, they have now decided to hire someone to be their head of marketing communications, for somewhere close to 6 figures.

I applied and put David Lawrence down as a reference.

There were a bunch of applicants, including the one long rumored as Rhonda’s favorite (not me).

Somehow, in Dayton, we think that reporting the news at one time, somehow gives you the qualifications to manipulate it and to solve marketing problems. The joke always goes that some of us have a face for radio, and then there are people like me, who don’t even have the voice for it. Marketing isn’t taught in journalism school. There are two local former journalists: Bonhart and Fogle.

But, here’s the list- with quick linkedin searches- not guaranteed to be the right person.

• Marsha Bonhart Director of Development at Dayton Contemporary Dance Company
• Anne Brewer- nothing obvious on LinkedIn
• Marilyn Burchett ESL Tutor and Substitute Teacher Licensed to teach K-12 Music, Spanish, Business and Marketing. Valid thru June 2020
• David Esrati, moi- Owner of The Next Wave
• Julie Finley- nothing obvious on LinkedIn
• Guy Fogle profile not available? Former News guy- and congressional candidate
• Ian Frank – possibly Principal at Reading Community School District
• Ryan Gilding – Public Relations Specialist at Beavercreek City Schools
• Tawn Graham – actual ad person: Account Director at Northlich
• Martha Hasselbusch Education Management Professional
• Roy Hatfield Operations Manager at Classic Country Radio
• Candace Hundley Special Education Teacher at Dixie Middle School
• Cornelia Jammer Nonprofit Organization Management Professional (from Texas and connected with new Meadowdale Principal Dr. Hill)
• Venita Kelley President, LOUD Family Entertainment; Founder, Kelley Communications and Consulting
• Susan Newman teacher at DPS (and challenger to DEA president David Romick)
• Adrienne Robinson Marketing and Public Relations Professional (formerly with the City of Dayton)
• Suzie Tyson – nothing obvious on Linkedin
• Sherri Waggoner Business Admintstration
• David Wedderburn unsure which one.

The first priority of this new hire should be to reevaluate the website contract, hosting, and solution. The second should be to actually write a creative brief, and then go through the RFP process again. Here’s the tip sheet on how to do it: Hiring An Agency: The R.F.P. Guide for Governmental Organizations

And if you want to transform the district, into someplace where people actually want to send their kids to school, here’s my video submitted with my application. No one paid me to do this.