Regi has been getting ready to kickstart an entrepreneurship project in her Grade 6 class. But she wanted to do it with a bit of a twist… Dragon’s Den anyone? Yes, please! What better way is there for her students to introduce a new and useful product or service than pitching their invention to a panel of dragons? 🐉
Reel Them In 🎞️
When meeting with Regi to talk about this project, we got onto the topic of being “influenced” into buying new products when scrolling through social media. This is the way of marketing these days: short and captivating videos that highlight the innovation behind a product while giving a little bit of backstory into the invention. What if along with their pitches, her students also created an Instagram Reel style advertisement, with hopes to influence others into buying their product? I loved this idea and was eager to help out with this part of the project.
Since these students are already pretty proficient with Canva's tools, we decided the best approach would be to talk about what makes a successful reel and then build one together as a class with audience participation. Before getting into the parts of a reel, though, we needed a product.
Solving Problems
To highlight product design, Regi used her Stanley Tumbler as an example. Many large tumblers are too big to fit into car cup holders. Her tumbler is very large but it has a tapered bottom designed to fit perfectly into cup holders. Simple problem and simple solution.
This illustrated the role of product designers, who know the importance of identifying a problem 😖 and designing a solution 👍.
Ad Creation
Once the students understood this concept of identifying a problem and designing a solution, we spent some time thinking of problems they experienced. And since the Stanley Tumbler example was still on their minds, students said there was no good place to put their own water bottles on their desks. Solution? How about a cup holder built in or attached to each desk?!
- Product Name 📛 — The students had fun brainstorming different names for this new product. After many rounds of ideas and laughter, we landed on Spill Bee Gone with a bee 🐝 as the mascot/logo.
- Target Audience 🎯 — From there we identified who the target audience would be — both for the product itself and for the reel. How would our language and visuals change if we marketed this to students vs. parents vs. teachers vs. school districts?
- Reel 🎞️ — Once we had the product concept, we had a couple student volunteers work with me at the front of the class to start a very rough edit of their Spill Bee Gone reel in Canva. Taking suggestions from their peers, we mixed together images, videos, text, sound, and voiceovers, to create a short, compelling reel.
Pitch Perfect
Once they knew what they were working towards, the students were all eager to start brainstorming product ideas. They had the rest of the work period to form groups and start ideating; and later in the day they watched episodes of Dragon’s Den, specifically with kid entrepreneurs.
We’re looking forward to seeing all of their ideas and inventions come to life in the coming weeks! And who knows, maybe a few of us on the Classmate team will get the honour of participating as the Dragons in the den… 😎
A Real Life Baby Shark 🦈
Check out this 10-year-old entrepreneur pitching her product on Shark Tank (the US version of Dragon’s Den). Cassidy was inspired to invent the Baby Toon after participating in an engineering fair at school, where she was tasked with creating a concept that addressed an issue in her personal life. The company is now valued at over $1,000,000!